Mike Bayer
You're listening to the Vacation Rental Success podcast, and this week's episode is brought to you by the kind sponsorship of Minut. Are you worried about noise complaints and unauthorized parties or smoking in your rentals? Meet Minut, your peace of mind solution. Minut sensors discreetly monitor noise levels, occupancy, and even detect cigarette smoke, all while respecting guest privacy. Easy to install and manage from anywhere. Minut integrates seamlessly with your smart home devices and enhancing the guest experience while ensuring your property's safety. Say goodbye to Sleepless Nights and hello to Happy Neighbors and guests. Protect your investment with Minut. Check the link in the description of this episode to find Minut in our virtual vendor showcase.

Mike Bayer
Without further ado, let's get this episode started. Here's your host, Heather Bayer.

Heather Bayer
In this episode, I'm welcoming back Kerri Gibson, the owner of the magical Chalets Hygge in the Eastern Townships of Québec. Since I last spoke with Kerri, I've been to Québec to experience her hospitality for myself and to learn what makes her business so successful. I was fascinated by how she creates partnerships with local providers and integrates what they offer into the guest experience. You'll learn a lot in the next 40 minutes, so stay tuned.

Heather Bayer
This is the Vacation Rental Success podcast, keeping you up-to-date with news, views, information, and resources on this rapidly changing short-term rental business. I'm your host, Heather Bayer, and with 25 years of experience in this industry, I'm making sure you know what's hot, what's not, what's new, and what will help make your business a success.

Heather Bayer
Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer, and I'm super excited to be back with you once again in this second episode of the New Year. Amazing how time flies, because it was just over a year ago, and I can't believe it's been a year ago, that I got an email from the owner of a group of chalets about an hour south of Montréal. I'd been asking on the podcast for a long time for managers and owners to email me with their stories, and so few had responded, but Kerri did. She told me about how she started her business in Québec after leaving a high-powered corporate job in the US and was really inspired to create the perfect guest experience in the property she was purchasing alongside her husband, Philippe.

Heather Bayer
Kerri accepted my invitation to come onto the podcast, and share her story, and I'll put a link to that one in the show notes. And then she invited Mike and myself to spend a couple of days experiencing the location and meeting some of the local people who she partners with. We took a ton of video footage, and it's taking some time to compile that into what's going to be an excellent case study on how Kerri's business works and succeeds. It's a work in progress, but we're going to be sharing it as soon as it's finished. And now I've been talking about it, that means we've got to get on and get that done.

Heather Bayer
So Kerri joins me again today to talk about this past year in which she's renovated more houses, she's attended and she's given presentations at conferences, and she continues to make her mark as a role model for owner operators. In this episode, we talk in-depth about partnerships, about community involvement, and how she's worked with her local tourism organization to attract and host influencers and media people as well. I'm going to let her tell these stories; she's really good at it. So let's move straight on over to my discussion with Kerri Gibson.

Heather Bayer
So I am so delighted to have back with me once again, Kerri Gibson from Chalets Hygge in the Eastern Townships of Québec. We had such great conversations in Nashville at the Vacation Rental Women's Summit, and I'm so excited to have you back with me again, Kerri.

Kerri Gibson
Thank you, Heather, for having me back. Actually, I can check off of one of my 2024 goals already, which was be invited to be back on your podcast. So when I got your email, I was like, Oh, well, this is too easy.

Heather Bayer
Well, we talked about it, didn't we? When Mike and I came and stayed and took advantage of your incredibly generous hospitality back in September. And we learned so much more about what you did and about your community involvement and partnerships and influencer marketing. And I said, you've got to come back and talk about this. So this was a perfect opportunity as we start up into the New Year, I think.

Heather Bayer
People are thinking, what can I do that's different? I did a newsletter last week and talked about, We do the same old things. I know this from our property management company. Year after year, we'd say, We'll do something different next year. We never did. We did the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. I am certifiably mad now.

Kerri Gibson
I think we all have a bit of us in that. I do, too. I have to keep my strategy board as a reminder for me of why to get out of my comfort zone. It's just a physical reminder, a visual reminder for me that I'm not going to accomplish this if I don't move out of my comfort zone.

Heather Bayer
We are going to have to have a picture of your strategy board, because I've...

Kerri Gibson
Absolutely.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I need a picture of that, because it was something that I always said I would do. I do honestly think I went out and bought packs of sticky notes with the idea that I was going to stick them all over a wall somewhere. Never used them. But anyway, I think for those who have not met you before, then I'm putting our original podcast in the Show Notes so they can go and have a listen to that. But can you give us a potted version of who you are, Chalets Hygge, and your vision in building the business.

Kerri Gibson
Certainly. I'm Kerri Gibson - I assume you said that - and I started what is now Chalets Hygge back in 2017. It came from a hard 180° pivot in my life when I decided to exit the corporate world and look for something more fulfilling to do. We purchased a chalet during that time, my partner and I, Philippe, just more to give me something to do as I was thinking through what came next. And it was something we'd always talked about that would be fun as a side project. So it didn't come out of nowhere. But we had the opportunity to come up to purchase one, and so we did. And out of that, grew Chalets Hygge because I found a joy in renovating old properties, giving them life. And then after hosting, the immense joy I got from creating spaces of tranquility and safe harbors for family and people to come and create memories and the gratitude that they had for that. And I found that that filled my cup in ways that I had never experienced before. So, yeah, that's how we started in 2017. And we have now evolved into a full-time business for both myself and my partner, Philippe.  We have six owner-operated chalets outside of Montréal, Québec, about an hour and 15 minutes in a region called The Eastern Townships, which is one of the most lovely regions of Canada, which is hard to say because we have many lovely regions in Canada, but it was a top 52 destination by the New York Times, so that backs me up.

Kerri Gibson
But yeah, so that's who we are. That's what we evolved to. Our intention is to always be small as we scale. We're going to scale intentionally because we want to be hands-on. We want to write the story of our chalets, of our guests experience, of our brand, and honestly, of our lives after turning over that for so long in the corporate [world]. So I wouldn't say our aspiration is to explode and it's not going to become a global or national brand, but it's really to focus on what we do and do well and scale intentionally in ways that make sense for us and for our guests, because we are the brand. Like, Kerri and Philippe are the brand.

Heather Bayer
I love that you use the word intentionally, because that is my word for 2024. That's a great word. Intentional because we spent years and years not being intentional. And your intentionality, it's apparent in everything you do. You don't do anything 'just because'. It's because it has a purpose and there's value in it. We had such pleasure in coming to visit with you and experience this at first-hand and actually go around and look at all the properties. I've never been to The Eastern Townships, and my goodness I was just blown away by how gorgeous it was.

Kerri Gibson
It's not just gorgeous, but the culture and the vibrancy of the people just brings all of it together into this really unique blend that you don't experience in many places. It's organically grown, a bunch of small villages in a beautiful region that have just grown and developed over time. To use an overused word, but I love the word so much, it's very authentic and very cultural and very true to who Québec is.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. I'm just going to kick off. You're in Québec, you are an American, and you're married to Philippe, who is French-Canadian. How's your French?

Kerri Gibson
C'est bon! No, it's like one of the first things I had to do after I left my job was learn French. Not only because it's a beautiful language, and I was actually, even before I met Philippe, I was loosely taking French lessons. I say loosely because I don't have a lot of time to commit to it. But once I moved here and it was apparent I was going to be here full-time, I felt it was not only of interest, but my cultural and social responsibility to learn French because it is the first language here. We live outside of Montréal. The primary people speak French here, a lot speak English because we're in tourism, but they appreciate it. So yeah, I live 90% of my daily life in French. I recently graduated to medical appointments in French last year, which I was super proud of. But yeah, I did learn my French.

Heather Bayer
I was so impressed when we stayed. The lady came from the tourism organization And you just immediately rolled over into French. In England, we all had to do French because we were that close to Europe and France, but I only have a smattering of it left. So yes, it was quite impressive. So of course, you need French to create and maintain the partnerships that you have with local providers. I'm impressed with everything you do, Kerri. I'm going to keep saying that. I'm so impressed. But while we were there, we went to visit the Lavender Farm, and you have a partnership with them. We went to one of the places, the little restaurants. We went to have lunch, and you work with them to provide ready meals that go into your fridge for your guests when they arrive; they can order that off your website. So there is these unique connections that you have with local providers. So just elaborate on that a bit, the different types of partnerships you have and how they impact your relationship as Chalets Hygge with the community.

Kerri Gibson
Growing up in the '80s and '90s, local and sustainable wasn't really a thing. And even though I grew up in a small town, we still went out of town to shop and did all of our shopping in the bigger box stores and things like that. It wasn't until I not even became a small business owner, it wasn't until I was here full-time and I was no longer traveling. And honestly, I didn't have a car when I was here either. It was just me and Philippe was still working. But I started using my bike just to get around. And that's when I really started understanding the concept of local and community and the heartbeat of a community being founded in small business. And I think that's part of why I wanted to start the Chalets Hygge was because I loved the joy of visiting these businesses, whether it was going to lunch or to buy toiletry products or whatever. And you're meeting the person who's either the creator who owns it, and you've developed a relationship, and you understand what you're doing immediately impacts their life, and you see the joy of you coming in.

Kerri Gibson
And it really, really touched me. And I knew that was something that I wanted to be a part of. So it had a huge impact, not only in my personal philosophy and how I source my own products for my household and for myself, but also in how I decided that I wanted to run the business and that I wanted to be intentionally local. And I would say a lot started there from when I was just becoming part of the community, and I was learning my French, and people loved that I was learning French. And so they were so charmed by that. So that opened up doors for me to have more conversations. But what I realized, when I think about my own travel and ours is, our chalets, the business I was developing, is where they [the guests] start their day and where they finish their day. But a lot of the experience happens what's in between. And that's really, really important to build out and to introduce people to, because they don't know when they're coming in. They don't know what's the best restaurant to go grab a coffee or where's the best place to rent skis from, or things like that.

Kerri Gibson
And not only having that knowledge, but also being able to say, Oh, go see Jason at.... He's going to take care of you. Tell him you're staying with us - really elevates not only the guests' experience, but it elevates the experience of the whole entire community, and welcoming tourism, because welcoming tourism into a community is really a community effort. They need to feel welcome. They need to feel like we want them there when they're there, as opposed to, you can have some negativity when people think, Oh, they're tourists. They don't respect the rules, blah, blah, blah. So being part of just being the bread on the end of each day and everything they sandwiched in between, I wanted to have a hand in helping them create that magical experience, because when they walk away and leave, I want them to remember the magical experience that happened while they were staying with us. And the way I can do that is to foster those relationships that help not only them have a magical experience, but also help the experience of our community with welcoming them in and helping them be prosperous as well.

Heather Bayer
I think that is so great. It just reminded me of... Because we live in quite an impersonal world, a very impersonal world now, we shop in these big box stores and the Wal*marts, and there is really no connection with the local community, because you could be absolutely anywhere. I just bought an E-bike. I could bring my E-bike to your place now and go up and down. And one of my neighbors here in the campground came past the other day, and he just handed me a card and he said, If you have a problem with your bike, you need to go to this guy at this little bike store up in Orange Beach. And he's very happy to take care of E-bikes that aren't bought from his store, because there are some that won't service any bikes that they don't sell. That was just so lovely. Now I feel I've got somebody local to go to. Somebody asked me today when I was out on my walk, did I know anybody who would repair a laptop? I said, yes. Last year, I had this great experience with this tiny little laptop repair shop in Gulf Shores. And so gave the card. And that feels so much better than going to the geek in Best Buy.

Kerri Gibson
It does. And it feels like just the fact that you're able to help someone feels good, too. And then it multiplies when you're able to help someone else that you have relationship with, for sure. I think one of the things for finding partnerships is important. You need to establish a relationship or credibility with them in the beginning, because you're asking people to tie their brand to your brand, right? So I think it's important first to build some level of relationship with them. Like I said, going in, talking to them, introducing yourself, maybe even talking about your business, being a customer, engaging with them online, all the different ways you can engage, commenting, sharing their posts, anything that you can do is just... I would never advocate for just walking in and saying, Hey, we're two small businesses here, let's join together. But something that comes organically and that they know you as a person and they like you as a person, because it's a big leap of faith when someone says, Yes, I'm going to attach my business brand to yours, because Chalets Hygge is my baby. And if I recommend something to someone, I want to be assured that they're going to get the same level of welcome that they would get from me.

Kerri Gibson
I don't want them to come and say, Oh, you recommened me there? And that was awful. We were uncomfortable the whole time. The food wasn't good. The waitress was cold. So yeah, developing those relationships, I think, is super, super important before you start asking for partnerships. Just grow organically as you get to know each other.

Heather Bayer
And I think that getting to know them is just so important. It just got me thinking about the people who buy properties remotely and who barely know the area. And their recommendations come from perhaps their internet searches rather than that deep knowledge that you have of the local area. It is so important. If you don't live somewhere, then you have to know somebody who does and learn about the community and who's in it and who does the good stuff.

Kerri Gibson
Exactly, 100%. And that's why I say we'll always grow sustainably and intentionally, because that's the level of involvement we want to have with our community and with our guests..... I forgot what I was going to say, something based off of what you said, but I lost my train of thought.

Heather Bayer
Well, you talked several times about growing sustainably and taking a sustainable approach. And that just gets me thinking about Vanessa de Souza Lage and Sustonica and what she's doing with that. Because when people think about sustainability, they often think, okay, we're going to have the right light bulbs, and we're going to do the recycling. But forget the community aspect of sustainability. And that's part of the Sustonica criteria, is that you can achieve the Sustonica certificate part way, because if you recommend local providers on your website, it's something as simple as that. You can start your sustainability journey by creating the community connections. And I love that. It's really thinking outside of what everybody conventionally thinks sustainability is about.

Kerri Gibson
Getting the Sustonica approval is also on my list for 2024. It's something I have wanted to do for a while, and that trigger reminded me of what I was going to say. Every partner, everybody that we put on our website or in our guest book has what we call the Chalets Hygge thumbs-up. We've done it, we've experienced it, and we didn't just do a Google search and say, Hey, here's a list of top five restaurants. But we actually have gone and we've experienced it and we're able to say, this activity, this restaurant is best for this event, this type of guest. So we can actually guide them. This is more of a family activity. This is a couples' activity. This is a restaurant to celebrate an event. This is a, Hey, just drop in, we want something to grab and go. So, yeah, we make sure that everything that we recommend and talk about, we've actually experienced.

Heather Bayer
I know from our stay with you, we went out for a meal, we had a lunch in a small restaurant, and then we had pizzas to go. And all of those, all recommended by you and all absolutely excellent. And it actually felt to us like we were becoming part of the community, even in that tiny space of time we were there.

Kerri Gibson
Yes, and you were. You really were.

Heather Bayer
So can you share a story that perhaps you got from a guest that resulted from a local partnership?

Kerri Gibson
Oh my. I would say with almost every guest, there's a success story there, because everybody's looking for some type of recommendation, whether it's a grocery store, whether it's food, whether it's where's the best hiking trail for kids, for dogs. It's rare that we don't get some kind of a question. So almost with every... Because it's not just like food and boutiques we partner with. We also partner with places for people to go, like go do hiking and things like that as well, or actual activities. And so I think with almost every single guest we have, we have that level of success of happiness that comes from it. And you can see it when our guests will often go to these things, and then they tag them in their social media as well. They'll tag, Hey, went to the Café Dora. Recommended by @chaletshygge, best oat milk latte ever. Things like that.

Kerri Gibson
As far as a really, really big one, I don't know that we've had... Okay, here's one, I just had to think. We had a family come visit us. They actually found us through a social media campaign we had done, and she booked right away, and she was so excited. But they had never been to The Eastern Townships at all. And they live in a region that's about six hours away in Northern Québec. And so she was just full of questions. I would constantly get texts from her and whatnot. Hey, she's very specific. They're coming with their dog, their seven-year-old, her husband, they have never been here. It was a surprise trip for their anniversary, so I was actually, over time, able to help her build out this full itinerary that included stuff for her, her partner, and their kid. And at the end, we even went up and had a glass of wine with them. We do that often, we get invited.

Kerri Gibson
But at the end, the cutest thing, their seven-year-old was just telling us all about his visit to the zoo. That he had never seen any of these animals in real life. And they didn't think they were going to be able to go to the zoo because they had their dog with them, and so I was able to work with and help her find a dog-sitter while they were gone to the zoo, so her son could still experience it. That was probably one of the biggest joys I had was hearing that seven-year-old just recount all of these animals that he had gotten to see. Yeah, just working through our different partnerships and contacts, we were able to solve the challenges that they had. Instead of saying, That's tough, you've got a dog. I don't know what to do. We were able to actually work through our contacts and find a solution for her.

Heather Bayer
That's wonderful. Yes, hearing from guests, not just in a review, but actually the face-to-face experience. Because you are there, you're on almost on site, you can visit with your guests, which is, I think, just a wonderful thing to be able to do.

Heather Bayer
I want to move on to talking about the collaboration you have with your local tourism department, because while we were there, you had the visit from... Now, what was her name? I'd forgotten What's her name?

Kerri Gibson
Shani. We had Shani and Camille.

Heather Bayer
Yes. They came. We met them. I actually did a little bit of an interview with Shani, and that will be.... when Mike does this video, this case study, which he's working on, he is working on. It's going to be very special, so that's why it's taking some time. I got to interview her as well and ask her about the collaboration with you, which was really cool. But how does this collaboration work for you? Because I think a lot of people don't do this. They forget that local tourism departments are out there promoting the local area. And part of bringing people into a location is the accommodation. So if you're providing something special, then it's really important to reach out to that tourism department and see how you can work together. So tell us about how you work with Shani and her team.

Kerri Gibson
Certainly. So we're a member of three tourism boards. But the one we work most closely with is Tourism Eastern Townships. So we also have a city one, the regional one, Tourism Townships, and then the provincial one. But we work most closely with Eastern Townships just because that's how it's where the relationships have formed. But some of them are paid and some of them are free. So always checking into that. But I know people hesitate to pay, but always remember, exactly like you said, they're using their funds, to continue to promote the tourism to bring people in. So the more successful they are, the more successful the whole entire tourism ecosystem is. But it's not just being a member, it's showing up, not just being on their roster, but we show up at every online in-person meeting, either myself or Philippe. So in-person, but we also show up online. We engage with their posts, we repost their posts. More importantly, we tag them in our posts because they're continually looking for content, like in our relevant posts. And then they re-share those as well. So I would say the most valuable is showing up in person as much as you can, because that's where the relationships are formed, and it no longer becomes exactly what you said earlier, impersonal, but it's now personal.

Kerri Gibson
And they have a face to relate to the brand. And when they feel that attachment to you, when they're out there, they're trying to decide what pieces, what members to pull into a marketing campaign or to offer to a part of something or to offer an extra space on their flyers board, you're always top of mind. So not only have I gotten great friendships, you met Shani and Camille, they're wonderful people, right? So just meeting them, I've gotten to know. But now when they have an opportunity come up, I'm at the top of their list to call and say, Hey, can you host Paul Ferguson from the Toronto Sun, which is the second biggest newspaper in Canada? He's coming in a month. It's a a little bit last minute, normally something that a big press tour is planned out months in advance, but it's next month, last minute. Do you happen to have anything available? And immediately, it's in August, September, which is high season, and most people would be like, That's high season, right? Sometimes they have dollars to give you money out of their budget. Sometimes they don't. But the long game that I'm playing is, what does that bring me from a marketing perspective?

Kerri Gibson
So I did end up hosting them for six nights because, number one, it helped them because they were going to have to turn down the tour if I didn't. Number two, when I look at it, it gives me all kinds of exposure. So he came, he stayed. We actually met him and his whole family. Very nice. So now he knows us by name. But he went back and he wrote an article about everything to do in The Townships with your base camp for staying in The Eastern Townships needs to be Chalets Hygge with Kerri and Philippe. He named us in there because we had met him. That article ended up getting syndicated into 11 other newspapers across Canada. So that is marketing dollars and reach we would have never had as a hyperlocal small brand, that we were able to get our name out there, get awareness. And that was just by collaborating with the tourism boards that they thought of us for these different opportunities.

Kerri Gibson
But we've also hosted influencers. We've hosted tourism people from Québec and France, [they] have a strong exchange. They'll bring in each other's. And so when the ambassadors from France, when they go back, they're going back having stayed in our places. So the plethora of opportunities that come up is just enormous. And like I said, sometimes they have budget, sometimes they don't, but it all comes into play. What's your ultimate goal in doing this? I can tell you the press release, the press notification we got from that in the syndication far exceeds any six nights of revenue we would have obtained.

Heather Bayer
I think that is amazing. Years ago, in fact, it was back in the UK, when we had a company called Clearwater Holidays, and we marketing properties in Ontario and in Western Québec to the British market. We actually worked with a PR company at the time, and we hosted a couple of journalists, and yeah, the payback was just enormous.

Kerri Gibson
Enormous. Because these days it lives online for forever.

Heather Bayer
Well, this is it. It's the syndication as well. You've just got to get past thinking, well, it's just one journalist from one newspaper, because it gets syndicated and you'll see it in, as you said, a dozen different publications and online. The value in that is massive.

Kerri Gibson
It's massive.

Heather Bayer
And you've got that connection through your collaboration with the tourism department, which I think... Back in the '90s, we were hiring PR companies, but now it's... As you said, you may have to pay them, but it's not a great deal. If you're paying an annual membership fee. Now, Tyann Marsink talks about this with her companies in Missouri, that the best thing she did was join the local chamber of commerce, because that has the tourism department adjoining it. She said that with those relationships, exactly as you said, you're front of mind when they need to talk to somebody, they need maybe something short notice, or they feel comfortable enough to send a renowned person, an important journalist. They want to put them in a place where they know they're going to be comfortable and going to be happy, and they're going to think of you.

Kerri Gibson
Yes. Every time they reach out, I'm honored because we have so many beautiful accommodations here. But they tell me, Kerri, it's not just about the beautiful accommodation. It's the whole entire experience we know that they're going to have when they come stay with you.

Heather Bayer
I'm going to break into the interview for just a few moments to hear about our sponsor, Minut. We'll be right back with more great conversation shortly.

Heather Bayer
So welcome back, Nathan. I've been really interested over the past week's hearing from you about Minut and how it works. Today, I'd like to hear about the automatic communication feature and how this helps to avoid potential issues.

Nathan Smith
Yeah. So our automatic communication feature actually allows you to set up a series of text and/or automatic calls to guests when there's a noise event. So for instance, if you've set an alert to come after 10 minutes of noise over a certain threshold, you can now set up a text message to go automatically at that same time that you would be alerted. If the guest continues to be noisy, 10 minutes later, we would send another alert out. Oftentimes, people will send both a text and an auto call. Then 10 minutes later, if they were still noisy, we would send yet another alert. In each of those three instances, you choose, do I want to send a text, a call, do I want to add flash and sound on the actual device itself, or do I want to do any combination of those three things? In the cases of the text and calls, you actually get to choose what's being sent. So of course, we'll give you a template, but you can edit that template to your heart's content, meaning that the messages along that chain can be different each time. So maybe you start kind but firm, and they get more firm as the noise continues.

Nathan Smith
Now, to take it a step further, you can actually connect with your property manager's management system. We would integrate with them, bring in the data about the guests, their check-in, check-out date and time, and their phone number, and we can automate those text messages to go to the guests. So you set it up once and forget it.

Heather Bayer
That sounds great. Thanks, Nathan.

Heather Bayer
Tell us about your influencers, because I hear a lot from people say, I'm forever getting these emails from somebody to say, Can I come and stay at your place for free? And I'm going to mention you in every Instagram post I do for the next 10 years.

Kerri Gibson
Yeah. This is one that's really controversial. There are so many people that are against influencer marketing, and I understand why. I think that my relationship, my perspective on influencer marketing, has changed since 2020. At first, I always turned down everything. Or just didn't respond because, yes, you can get... So you put a halfway decent-looking something on Instagram, and all of a sudden, everybody's looking for a free stay. So 2018, I think, is when I started my socials and it started. But it wasn't until 2020 that I finally collaborated with an influencer. And the business of influencers has changed. It is now just no longer necessarily someone looking for a free stay. But these are people, this is their actual job. And so it's the new way to market. We're no longer doing paid advertising in general, in the yellow pages or in a newspaper or on the radio or TV, the local TVs. We're not doing that anymore. And this is the marketing platform. So once you shift your thinking towards that, it'll also shift what influencers you want to collaborate with.

Kerri Gibson
So I finally went in on my first influencer in December of 2020 because they pursued me for for a while. And when they came to me, when I finally said, Okay, fine, we will do a Zoom, and we got on a Zoom, and they presented to me a whole entire presentation of why their brand aligned with our brand, what they could do for us, and what the expected results were. They came to us with a pitch deck proposal, not 2 hours. It was 20 minutes long. But they clearly showed some of their best work, the results of some of what they'd done, and they had their media kit ready. So when picking an influencer to work with, if it works for your market, maybe you're, I don't know, a college football market, and you don't really need an influencer or something, but we're a four-season drive-to destination. So influencer marketing is actually huge for us. So there were two reasons to work with an influencer. One is to reach their base, their market base, or their followers. And the second is for access to their content.

Kerri Gibson
So for example, I'm a terrible visual content creator. Terrible. You can give me the most beautiful view in the world, and it will look like Sasquatch took the picture of it. A big thumb in it, fuzzy, blah, blah, blah. I know I'm terrible with it. So when I'm collaborating, I want someone, you look at my Instagram. I have a beautiful Instagram, and I can say that because I didn't create it. I simply picked the pictures and posted them. Other people created those beautiful visuals for me. But those are the two reasons that you will want to work with an influencer. So when you're picking influencers to work with, this is where you need to know your avatar and your market, because you want to make sure that you pick influencers that are, number one, speaking to your avatar.

Kerri Gibson
So for example, I want to work with people that are outdoor activity influencers, that are hikers, that are doing things with their dogs outdoors. I don't want to work with fashion influencers, right? I follow plenty of them because I want to know what ideas...., but that's not what I want in my marketing. You can also be open to adjacencies. Like, one of the best collaborations I ever did was with a local food blogger called Blog de Boeuf. She approached me and I said... she had her media kit and everything...., and I said, I don't know how this fits in, but after doing some thinking and brainstorming, we actually came up with a collaboration where she created custom menus based on the Chalets using local food producers.

Kerri Gibson
So the collaboration was she came, she documented her visiting all of these different businesses on stories. Then she brought them to the Chalets, documented making them in the chalet, and then at the final product, and then the menus were made for release on our website. So while it wasn't one that I necessarily had fitting into my avatar, it was one that was an adjacent. Actually, that one got us a lot of media attention as well, because all the tourism boards started seeing us doing this. And so it was one of our more successful collaborations.

Kerri Gibson
But you need to make sure that you know your persona, you know who you do and you don't want to work with, but at the same time be open. The next thing is that they should have a media kit ready for you. So they should be able to share with you very easily the demographics all the way from location, to age, to gender. So you can help to tell if that fits in. For me, I don't care if you have 50,000 followers if they're all in Southeast Asia. The chances of those people coming here are slim to none. So I need to know the location. Or if you have 50,000 users that are all in the bracket of 18 to 25, that's not our typical persona either. So that's something I should pass on. So they should come to you with a media kit. You know who you want. They have a media kit, and then they have a contract.

Kerri Gibson
Just So you're very, very clear on what it is that they're going to do. It can be a very simple contract. But one of the things I learned in working with influencers, one of my big lessons is you don't own the content they create for you. They do. They are simply licensing you to use it. And that's creative trademarks or copyrights. I knew nothing about that. So if you're not super clear on where you're allowed to use this content you're getting from them, it can bite you, especially on someone who disses their business and they really know. So you need to make sure it's specified. You can use it on social, you can use it on your website. And if you do any ads, it can be used in ads, because often with ads, there's additional royalties that you have to pay.

Heather Bayer
That's interesting. I wouldn't have thought about that.

Kerri Gibson
Me either.

Heather Bayer
So what else would you put in a contract? When you have somebody coming, so you're giving them accommodation for free for a certain period of time, do you put a limitation on how many people they can bring with them?

Kerri Gibson
All of that, exactly, and the contract doesn't need to be, I mean, with Chat GPT now, they can easily write this for you. And it doesn't have to be something complicated, like a one-pager that says, Chalets Hygge with one of our big collaborators at We Did It Our Way, terms of agreement. We will supply to them accommodations at this chalet from this date to this date with this number of people or a pet or whatever it may be. In return, they will create and provide to us five fully-edited photos and one reel. Any additional product that they provide that we want to... We could purchase additional photos for $50 each. It clearly spells out if you want to do..... Chalets Hygge will have the right to use these photos on print and their social on their website and any videos that they may create...., like when we do reels or things that we post on there..... But if they use it for advertising, the following applies. There is for print advertising a $250 fee. If it's going to be digital advertising, it's $2.50 per day that they use it. Those are the big three things you need to have in there, just so it's very clear on what you do and don't have rights, and you don't end up with a 'cease and desist' or just something that's uncomfortable for everybody.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, you don't want a bad relationships out of it.

Kerri Gibson
No, not at all. Especially the influencer world, it's a small world. It really is. They all know each other, and they all talk to each other, and most of them are friends. And so if they have a bad experience with you, then all of the good... If they're a good influencer and it's you that provided the bad experience, then you're going to be blackballed by the good influencers that you actually want to work with.

Heather Bayer
Oh, that's a really good point. How do you measure the success of all this? We talked about collaborating with the tourism department, about influencers, about partnerships. How do you figure out what really works and where the guests are coming from and the cost, perhaps, of doing all this?

Kerri Gibson
Well, there's a lot of transparency on this one. We're really just starting to reach a level of maturity in doing this. It is so hard, Heather. It is so hard. You can chase your tail on trying to get marketing KPIs from all of these platforms, because they're not clear, like with being online. So you might get an influencer that you have come to stay, or whatever; let's just use an influencer. You get an influencer to come, you pick up on their following, let's say, 100 followers from them, which I would say is good. And they stick around, right? I tend to measure by on influencers. Just generally, I had numbers of 3,000 when they started. I had 3,100 two weeks after they left, right, because you have some that come in and drop off. So I just give them an overall net of 100, knowing some came from others and blah, blah, blah. But what you don't know is, of those followers, they might follow you for a year before they finally get the opportunity to book, and you have no way to tie it back to them. No way whatsoever.

Kerri Gibson
So that's one of the frustrating things about it, so some of it's really a wing and a prayer. One of the ways I measure our success, I say we're successful on Instagram, is because we have a ton of engagement. People are commenting, people send us DMs. So I know we're giving content that speaks to people. Our following is not... We haven't gone viral, which is just fine for me, because I know we've curated a group of followers that is our avatar, who we're speaking to, and I can tell by our engagement, and people. When guests do come, if they tag us on Instagram on their reels, I know that they likely had been following us on Instagram, or that's where they found us at. The other one is, especially with the introduction of GA4 [Google Analytics 4], it was beating your head against a brick wall trying to learn all this. We finally invested in.... We hired an independent contractor off of Upwork, who has developed a spreadsheet that is delivered to us daily, so we don't have to spend any time digging through for this that tells us how many visitors we had to our website the day before, what sources they came from, and it compares that to the last seven days, also to since the beginning of time.

Kerri Gibson
So it's ranked by week and by - we have two different charts, but - highest traffic driver for the week, highest traffic driver ever. And then we have a closed report, and he's able to tell from when it comes in since GA4, since GA4 started tracking, or that we can't tell. But where the first point of entry is and when they book. So now, because it takes five to six touches before someone discovers us until they actually book. So they may have come in from, let's say, an article, a Toronto Sun article that was online. They saw us, Oh, interesting. And then they follow us on Instagram, and maybe they click on a few links and bios, go to our website again. And then by the time they finally book, they just type in directly, www.chaletshygge.com, and so it looks like they just found us organically, but they did not. He's able to say, Okay, this guest, we were able to tie them back to their first entry ever was through this article, through the Toronto Sun article. So that's what led to the close. Again, that's just since the inception of GA4.

Kerri Gibson
There were some shocking revelations in there on what's driving traffic on our website. So for example, there was an article [writer] that we hosted two years ago for Tourism Canada, not this summer, but the summer before, on dog-friendly accommodations in Québec, high-end dog-friendly accommodations. So they came to our place, and they put an initial article on it, Top 10 Places to Stay in a Chalet With Your Dog. Well, they gave that light article new life, the following year, this year in 2023. All of a sudden, we start getting pinged over and over with all of these because we didn't know what website, but we knew they were coming in from somewhere and we were trying to figure it out ourselves. Turns out they had revamped the article, moved us up to the number one spot, and it's still in our top 10 drivers today. And that article was written 18-20 months ago. But we would have never known that without this level of reporting. So now we're like, okay, so we need to pay more attention to articles, or to journalists, or someone dog-friendly that wants to come because that's driving activity.

Kerri Gibson
There was also a blogger, an influencer. They came two or three years ago, and they wrote a blog on The Eastern Townships. It's still number four. I had no idea that they were still driving traffic to our website. So that's what I'm saying. Until we invested in having this, we came up with our requirements, hired someone who is a GA4 expert, and they built it for us. It was an investment of $2,000. But do you know how much I'm going to save now  not investing in other marketing channels. But I know that actually sounds big and cumbersome and hiring someone to do this for you. I've been doing this for three years, right? So I have learned. You have feelings and you have indicators to tell you what works and what doesn't. TikTok doesn't work for me at all. I know that. I could tell. Instagram works for me, YouTube works for me. I could tell that Google Ads was working for me because Google was a huge driver to our website. I couldn't tell you the exact numbers, but our direct bookings were going up, our touches from Google were going up, but I couldn't make the exact correlations between them. So all this was a build-up for three years for us to understand.

Kerri Gibson
And then we finally had enough data to start putting it all together. So I would encourage people to just start, because I think the secret to our direct booking success is our multifaceted marketing platform and learning which tactics did and don't work for us, and then doubling down on those, putting all our effort in there. So we're clear on who our avatar is. We're clear on what our brand communication pillars are. We're clear now on which platforms that we want to have. And we're also opening to investigating others, like thinking outside of the box. So you only learn those things by getting out and starting and doing it and finding out what resonates and what doesn't. That's the only way.

Heather Bayer
And this is bringing you great success. So you're not stopping here. I mean, right at the very beginning, you talked about vision and where this is going, but you're not planning on getting huge. But what are you excited about going forward, Kerri?

Kerri Gibson
Oh, God. There's so much I'm excited about. Number one is the market's been really tough the past couple of years here since COVID, really tough, what a lot of people are facing. And here, prices aren't going down. It continues to be an area that people want to..., like I said, people are moving from the cities to here. This is an area where we're getting a lot of people moving out of Montréal, Québec City, even Toronto, and moving into this region. So real estate prices aren't going to go down here. Regulation definitely isn't going to be letting up anytime soon. So knowing that pricing is an effort for us and that regulation is going to continue to be a challenge, and I am not a regulatory risk taker at all. I'm a CPA by trade. My whole career was built on understanding of regulation. I do not break laws at all or push the button. It's black or it's white. I like to operate in black and white. But I think that we finally are recognizing that our traditional model of buying a chalet and renovating it and flipping it, those days are going to be more difficult, so we do have to pivot.

Kerri Gibson
We're exploring a few options now, whether that's buying something bigger, like a hotel, like a boutique hotel, or if it's buying a piece of land and building a unique experience. We're not done investing. We know that. So while we finish out the business cases on what comes next, solidifying our technology platform. And like I said, I'm really getting my arms right now around next level SEO, paid ads in GA4, because as we do expand, I need to be able to slide whatever that is into our tech stack. I don't want to reinvent the wheel every single time. I want to be like, Okay, now we've just got this additional asset that we need to talk about, I know there may need to be some tweaks, but the tech stack is huge for us going forward. I'm also a techie too; I love technology. So working on really solidifying that. But then we've got our Excel spreadsheets out, and we're running all the numbers on purchases and renovations. And there's a lot of change going on in the tourism market. A lot of mom and pops that have been through COVID want out now. So I was reading that in Canada, something like 60% of the mom and pop tourism businesses will be up for sale in the next two years.

Heather Bayer
That's amazing.

Kerri Gibson
Isn't it?

Heather Bayer
Yeah.

Kerri Gibson
Yeah, it is. And so we know we want to stay local, because it's important to us to be a part of the community. We're not international investors unless it's a place we want to spend time in as well and we could be part-time local. So we're waiting to see where the opportunity presents itself, building the business cases in the meanwhile, so that when the opportunity does come up, we don't start at that point. We're all ready like, Okay, this fits into this business case, let's run the numbers so that we can move faster on making an investment.

Heather Bayer
Well, we're going to be following you over the next years, and can't wait for our next visit to The Eastern Townships and to Chalets Hygge.

Kerri Gibson
Please come.

Heather Bayer
Next time, the whole family is coming, and the dog.

Kerri Gibson
Perfect.

Heather Bayer
We're going to try out the hikes next time.

Kerri Gibson
I've got a great dog-friendly itinerary for you.

Heather Bayer
Kerri, it's been absolutely fantastic talking to you. Again, we could go on, which means we will probably have to come back and do this all over again in six or eight months time. By that time, we will have the case study done, and maybe that's when we do it, when we've got the video and everything has been knitted together to create this wonderful case study that we did on Chalets Hygge, and we present that to the world, and then you come along and talk about it.

Kerri Gibson
I would be delighted to. Thank you, Heather. It's really an honor for me to spend time with you. So thank you for inviting me on again. And for coming to visit. I need you to come back.

Heather Bayer
Yes. Just try stopping us.

Kerri Gibson
Thank you. I'm not going to.

Heather Bayer
Thank you so much, Kerri Gibson. What a pleasure to hear from Kerri and hear what's happened over the past year. Just amazing what she is doing with community involvement, partnerships, influencers, etc. That's a real masterclass in fact, a part of marketing that we don't often talk about. I hope you have some good takeaways from that. I'd love to hear it if you put some of them into practice. And it is simply just getting in touch with your local tourism department and finding out if they have a membership, or if you just do some cross promotions and see how it goes. I'd love to hear from you if you're doing something with your local tourism organization and it's working for you.

Heather Bayer
So that's it for another week. As I've mentioned a couple of times, we're getting close to our SSTIR Crazy Month, which is the month of February, where we're going to be talking about SSTIR, which is two Ss in fact, which is Safety, Sustainability, Trust, Insurance, and Regulations. Each week, we've got five weeks actually in the month of February, we will be covering each of those topics in each of the weeks and bringing the podcast to you, but also some live panels, some blog posts, and some other surprises along the way. You will be hearing more about that over the next couple of weeks.

Heather Bayer
Please go to our Facebook Group, which is The Business of Short-Term Rental and Property Management. If you're not on there, I would very much encourage you to sign up or subscribe, whatever you do with a Facebook Group. And that's where we'll be holding our live panels and where you can find out more about what's going on in SSTIR Crazy Month.

Heather Bayer
So that's it for another week. Really enjoying this New Year. I feel that we're beginning to do things differently, and you'll be seeing the fruits of those labors over the next couple of months. So stay with us. Thank you for listening this time and I'll be with you again next week.

Mike Bayer
We hope you enjoyed this episode brought to you by Minut. Don't forget to check the link in the description of this episode to meet Minut and discover the best smart device you will ever integrate into your short term rental business to help protect your investment and keep your neighbors happy.

Heather Bayer
It's been a pleasure as ever being with you. If there's anything you'd like to comment on, then join the conversation on the Show Notes for the episode at vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you and I look forward to being with you again next week.