Heather Bayer
Today we are exploring the massive, untapped opportunity of accessibility in vacation rentals. Did you know that 26% of the population has a disability and this number is growing. But despite this, less than 1% of the 1.5 million vacation rentals in the US are listed as accessible.

Heather Bayer
In this episode, I'm talking with Adam Norko from the Art of Hospitality Podcast and Lorraine Woodward, the founder of Becoming rentABLE, about how embracing accessibility can not only provide an exceptional guest experience, but also unlock significant revenue potential for your vacation rental business.

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 as ever, I am super delighted to be back with you once again. So we are in the throes of summer. I loved the expression that those people we work with down in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach call it "The Hundred Days of Crazy." I mean, they start in June, but in our business it used to be July and August, and by the time you got into the middle of July, you were sort of in a 'flow' state. You've gone through the first few weeks of the season and everything is sort of beginning to fall into place. Everybody knows what they're doing. They know what's happening on a Saturday at 04:00PM when a mass of people, sometimes as many as 150 families, were checking into properties at the same time. But by mid to towards the end of July, it was all falling into a really nice pattern.

Heather Bayer
But I wanted to turn it around and think about those vacationers who are going on holiday; they don't care. They have no inkling about what we do behind the scenes. And that person they talk to in the office is sitting there all nice and calm on the front. But underneath, you know, it's like that, like the swan, serene on the surface and madly paddling underneath. But our guests have no idea what is going on in the background. But we've also got to think about those guests, how they've planned their vacation, what their particular circumstances are, and how perhaps challenging it has been for them to create the perfect vacation for them.

Heather Bayer
I mean, we're there at the final stages, when they actually arrive, but so much has gone on before for them to create their perfect vacation. Just to give you an example, my step-granddaughter is severely autistic and she's non-verbal due to a chromosomal disorder. And taking her on vacation is a massive challenge. But that hasn't deterred the family from searching out vacation rental properties that are going to offer them the really specific amenities and features they need to make that a perfect holiday for all of them. And that's a challenge in itself. The disability is a challenge, but to actually find the right place is a tough job. And we often think about disability as a simple need for wheelchair access. Having an entry ramp, having wide doors, maybe ensuring there's a grab bar in the shower. But there's so much more to it than that. From understanding about mobility issues, to sight and hearing deficits, to the particular needs of the elderly and those with early dementia, perhaps the world of accessibility is really broad, very far reaching.

Heather Bayer
Today we are diving into an incredibly important and overlooked topic, and that is accessibility. Did you know that 26% of the US population has a disability? And this number is growing. Yet despite this, less than 1% of the 1.5 million vacation rentals in the US are listed as accessible. And you're going to hear a few more statistics during this episode that are really going to open your eyes. So joining us to discuss this massive untapped opportunity are two experts in this field, and that's Adam Norko and Lorraine Woodward. Both have been on the podcast before, and I'm going to put their previous episodes in the Show Notes so you can go and learn a little bit more about them. But Adam's a seasoned professional. He's been in the vacation rental industry a long time, and he's the host of the Art of Hospitality Podcast. Great podcast, if you haven't yet listened to that. Lorraine Woodward is a renowned disability and accessibility expert with years of experience advocating for better accommodation services for people with disabilities. She's a wheelchair user herself, but not only that, she has two sons who also have muscular dystrophy, so she knows the challenges. So together they bring a wealth of knowledge and practical insights on how accessibility can become a really marketable niche in the vacation rental industry. So in this episode, we're going to explore how vacation rental managers can seize, grab onto this opportunity to stand out in the market, meet the needs of this growing demographic, and ultimately drive more bookings.

Heather Bayer
Well, I'm overblown with excitement today to have two people on the show that have been here before. That's Adam Norko, who just reminded me when he was first on the show, that was back in 2014, we believe, and Lorraine Woodward, who we have talked to more recently. So I'll be putting the link to Lorraine's episode in the Show Notes, maybe not Adam's. I think maybe it's a little bit outdated now, but I'll have a listen to it beforehand, so maybe it'll go in.  Anyway, welcome Adam Norko and Lorraine Woodward.

Lorraine Woodward
Thank you.

Adam Norko
Thank you.

Heather Bayer
It's such a pleasure to have you both here and to talk today about accessibility. As I was just explaining to Lorraine, it's a topic that is dear to my heart. I have a step-granddaughter who is severely autistic and she's non-verbal due to a chromosomal disorder. And I know from talking to my stepdaughter that taking her on vacation is this huge challenge. And that comes from actually getting her out of the house and into the vehicle and then taking her to the airport and then getting into an airplane and then maybe 3 to 5 hours on an airplane with a child with severe autism who, you know, might shriek and shout and have meltdowns. So my stepdaughter has to cope with that. But on top of that, she's got to cope with hoping that the vacation rental she chose is going to be, is going to have the amenities, the features that she was promised in the long, long search she did for that spot. And to give her huge credit, she takes Freya on vacation along with her husband and her other daughter, two or three times a year, and they go to all sorts of different places, always somewhere different. I think if it was me. I'd be going to exactly the same place every time if I found somewhere.

Heather Bayer
But anyway, we are going to talk today about accessibility. But before we do that, I just want to bring the audience up-to-date on my guests, make sure they know who is sharing all this wonderful information today. Lorraine, I'd love to start with you. As I say, you've been on the show before. That will be in the link to that episode in the Show Notes, but just give us a very brief overview of why you are here and what you're doing for our community.

Lorraine Woodward
Well, first of all, it will be challenging because you said the word brief. As a mom with two adult boys with muscular dystrophy and myself using a wheelchair, traveling was difficult. And so I started looking at the problem. What is the problem? Why is it so challenging to find an accessible place that our family and others can stay at? So we created Becoming rentABLE. And we're a listing platform focused on accessibility. We look at short-term rental properties in the area of mobility, which for us has been expanded beyond a wheelchair to look at walkers and crutches and canes. And this year we introduced our cognitive program, which is again autism and dementia and anxiety and brain injury and what are the needs for families that are looking for a cognitive place to stay. And we are growing and excited to have properties in the United States and Canada.

Heather Bayer
That is fantastic. I saw you when I, not quite on stage but on the screen at the CanStays Conference in Banff. Accessibility was one of those things that was a really large topic in that conference. That conference, which was very different from any other conference I've ever been to, which really spoke to some of the real foundational issues that we deal with in this business that maybe are not the sexiest of topics. You know, we didn't talk about dynamic pricing and marketing and social media. We talked about accessibility and we talked about regulations and legislation. So it was amazing and it was really wonderful to see you on the screen giving your presentation. I really enjoyed that.

Heather Bayer
Adam, welcome. What were we talking about back in 2014?

Adam Norko
Well, thanks for having us. I appreciate it. I'll do my best to keep this brief as well. But what I will say is I did go back and listen to it, because you were on our podcast probably six months or so ago, and I went back and listened to the episode from 2014 and I still stand by it. So I was moving out of director of marketing for a company on the Outer Banks and into the vendor side with PointCentral. And you and I talked about marketing. We talked a lot about social media marketing, but we talked about the way that I approach marketing on the Outer Banks. And when I re-listened to it, I still believe everything that I said ten years ago, I would still approach marketing the same way. So if you can track it down, I still think it's worthwhile to listen to or at least link to. But I've been in the industry since 2008, so 16 plus years, variety of different roles, operations side with vacation rental management as well as on the vendor side. So Seaside Vacations is where I started out here in the Outer Banks.

Adam Norko
Then I moved over to PointCentral for a number of years as their director of sales and director of marketing, went to Breezeway for a few years, jumped over to inhabit as their VP of sales for their vacation division, spent some time after that on the operations side again with the vacation rental club, and then most recently shifted out of that role and found myself in a little bit of a niche where I started working with some vendors in the space that I really believed in. And this niche of growth consulting is what I would say the blend of sales and marketing, which is what my background in the industry has been, I would guess I might add technology to that. So if I look at those three, bringing those three things together is really where my focus is. And as I mentioned, I'm also the host of The Art of Hospitality [Podcast], where you were a guest of ours. And when I was shifting out of that last role, I started to think about the vendors that had been on the podcast and started thinking about the vendors that I believe in. And I reached out and just wanted to see if they had any interest in me trying to help them with growth.

Adam Norko
Growth is not easy in this industry. Going to market is not easy in this industry. Growth in this industry is pretty difficult. So luckily, I had a few that said yes, and Becoming rentABLE with Lorraine was one of them. And I've enjoyed the past couple months, started working with them, and I'll hold off on my side of that story, I think, until Heather can get a little bit deeper into the questions. But I think that there's one of the things that I started to realize is that first, accessibility is much more widespread than I was aware of. And I've got a personal background as well, just like Heather and Lorraine had mentioned. But it's much more widespread than I was even aware, even with my personal background.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head there when you say it's much more widespread. I mean, when Lorraine and I talked last time, she really opened my eyes to the fact that accessibility is so much more than we're going to put a ramp in, we're going to widen the door, and we're going to put a grab bar in the shower. And I think, for a lot of people, that's where they're starting from. But where this really came from is, Adam, you told me that you're writing an article, which is called The Vacation Rental Industry is Sleeping on a Huge First Mover Advantage, maybe a working title, but that really captured my attention, because I've always been an early adopter. Anything that comes out, I want to grab it and get into it before anybody else does. And I think when I saw that and I thought, Wow, yes, this is where people should be going. So let's start with just talking about the market opportunity for accessible vacation rentals, and we'll move on to talking about that diverse range of disabilities.

Heather Bayer
From my perspective, I'm a baby boomer. I am getting up into that stage where I'm thinking about, not quite thinking about accessibility for me, as when I book vacation rentals. But I no doubt will be in the future. You know, perhaps thinking about, are there 230 steps down to the beach? Which I know many of our properties used to have? Maybe not 230, but over 100 in some places. So whoever wants to take this, how significant is this? And I know you've got a lot of statistics for me.

Lorraine Woodward
Well, I'm going to start, Adam, just because it is mind boggling in so many regards. I mean, you mentioned baby boomers. It's close to me because I am too a baby boomer. But what is surprising, in just a few years, in 2030, we baby boomers are going to be entering that class known as seniors, and that, in the United States, will be growing by 30 million of us by 2030. And what that means is we're going to have 72 million seniors who have the money, who have the time, who have the desire to travel. But yet, is our short-term rental industry prepared for this influx of people? And it's amazing. The CDC just changed their stats on people with disabilities in the United States alone to 27%. So 62 million, over a quarter of our population, has been identified of having a disability. So imagine, you know, in any audience, if you can say, 25%, that's huge. I mean, if we look at it globally, around the world, it's 13% of our globe, a $1 trillion industry that has the money, the desire to, ready to travel. And so it is an untapped market.

Lorraine Woodward
And then, I mean, and those are considered permanent disabilities. So let's go with our temporary disabilities. Let's look at our hip surgeries, our knee surgeries. Okay? For the younger crowd, it may be carpal tunnel syndrome from playing games or, you know, skateboarding and falling. And that's known as a temporary disability. You know, it's time for that vacation. Travel with nine out of ten of us will have a temporary disability. Nine out of ten of us. And by the grace of God and we age, we all will have a disability as we start approaching our sixties. So it's very broad. It does affect us. We don't always want to think that it's going to affect us, and heaven forbid that we have another pandemic. And we look at that. So it's a great opportunity and boggles my mind that it is so great that yet this industry has been slow moving and recognizing this opportunity and the millions and billions of dollars left on the table.

Heather Bayer
Adam, what are your thoughts on this?

Adam Norko
Well, I think there's.... So to Lorraine's point, almost everyone, one out of nine, or, excuse me, nine out of ten people, have some sort of disability. Now, what I would suggest is that given the size of the vacationing groups that come into our homes, that means that almost 100% of the groups that are coming to our homes have some sort of accessibility need. And I would lengthen that or broaden the categories. I would suggest that when we think about mobility, it's not just a wheelchair, it's crutches, walkers, canes. I would then take that even further to say cognitive. And we've already mentioned cognitive a couple times on this. And cognitive is not just autism. Cognitive is dementia, it's aging, it's Alzheimer's. Then if you take that a couple steps further, you've got hearing impaired or vision impaired. All of that collectively is almost 100% being accessed into our units when these vacation groups come, because we have such broad groups of people coming and staying. Now, the challenge, I would say, in the industry is that while we might be that we have some of these needs coming into the properties, we've not vocalized that.

Adam Norko
We've not come out and said, hey, we're aware that there are people who have some sort of accessibility or disability needs coming through our property. So as a result, we've turned a blind eye to this. And I would liken this to safety. In fact, I think there's a strong component of safety within this accessibility side of things. And what I would suggest is that at some point, there's a tipping point where we can no longer plead ignorance as an industry. We can no longer say, oh, well, we just didn't know, or we put in the grab bar, or we put in the ramp, and we're probably good. At some point, and hopefully Lorraine and I are helping spread this awareness, at some point we need to acknowledge that this need is out there and that we're doing the right thing. And we can maybe get into the legal side of it and liability and some of those pieces as we get further into the discussion. But I think we've turned a blind eye, and I think we've consciously turned that blind eye for a number of reasons. But it's time for that to change, and it's time for that to change for a number of reasons.

Adam Norko
One, it's the right thing to do. Right? As a society we want to do the right things. As companies we want to do the right things. As people we want to do the right things. It's the right thing for us to make our homes accessible for the people that need it now. It's also great business. The market is slowed. The industry has slowed. We're going to hear more and more numbers as Q2 closes and as we get through the summer about the slowdown that's taking place. And it's significant. So now you take that from a business and a revenue perspective, and there's a huge opportunity to go after an untapped market, a market that is actually afraid of our industry. And I say that consciously, because I've had discussions around this and Lorraine reiterated it this week. It was someone, a representative from Airbnb, that we're talking about that's in a wheelchair, reiterated this week a podcast that we were on, Lorraine and I reiterated this. This is not hyperbole. The people that are in this disability and accessibility needs, the disability communities are afraid to stay in vacation rental properties. Are afraid to stay properties they book on OTAs because they do not believe that what they're going to get on the other side.

Adam Norko
Just like Heather alluded to at the beginning of this, it's not going to be what they expected it to be and that will change the way that they have a vacation. Now if you think about how great the anticipation is to going on vacation, we don't give that to the disability community. We give them the stress of not knowing that it's going to be a good vacation. And I think we need to change that as quickly as we can.

Heather Bayer
You mentioned in the article you talk about a recent guest on the Art of Hospitality Podcast who had an experience. Can you just share that?

Adam Norko
Yeah. So that was actually an episode that Lorraine was on with us and we had a father and he had proactively reached out. And this is where I connected with Lorraine as well, because I figured if I was going to have a father coming on the show that wanted to talk about vacation rentals, and his was cognitive as well. So again, if we continue to stretch this and start to think about where those needs are, it's definitely not just mobility. But this father reached out and wanted to talk about the challenges around booking a vacation rental and then going in and staying at a vacation rental. And there's challenges on a number of areas. The first challenge is on the reservation process. It's very difficult to find accessible homes and we can talk about the numbers around that, but there's less than 1% of homes in the United States of vacation rental homes are accessible. So it's very difficult to find homes that would qualify as accessible. And because of that, it makes it even more difficult for people to book with confidence.

Adam Norko
So this particular father has to find the time to not only do the search, but then pick up the phone and call. And his comment back was that he actually thought it was putting us out as an industry to ask us to pick up the phone and talk to him about the needs. So you've got all of these layers of complexity for someone who's trying to go on vacation. He's trying to find the right needs. He feels like he's putting us out as an industry because he wants to call and ask some specific questions. People on the other side don't have answers to those specific questions, because they haven't thought through what those needs are. Then he arrives on vacation and he's got to spend the first few hours moving things around and adjusting the vacation rental so that it can meet his needs, potentially even going out to stores to pick up some other supplies that he then needs to come back. And if we think about what we're trying to do as an industry, we want to talk about unreasonable hospitality and going above and beyond and being this really gracious, hospitable industry, that the scenario I just explained is the exact opposite of hospitality. It's not even close to unreasonable hospitality. So I think that with small changes, if we, and we can talk about how we can help with that, but if with small changes, if we can help on the listening side, so that we can identify what these needs are.

Adam Norko
Now, what I would also say as we get into that this is not a strict standard, and we can talk about why that is. This is more about matchmaking. This dad who went on vacation has some needs with his particular disability. Every disability is unique. So this is not, hey, for cognitive, you have all of these things and you're done. This is more about matchmaking. This dad needs these needs. We could put filters in and specify what the properties have for amenities, and we can match-make and get those needs. That's going to make the first layer much easier. Second layer is, if we really want to be great at hospitality, we need to be willing to talk to our guests. In fact, we need to be eager to talk to our guests. And we need to know about the properties that we're managing. We need to be able to provide those answers. And then on the other side of that, we need to update the properties. And this does not mean that it's going to be very expensive or very time consuming. We can do this in a low cost way that will still meet the needs of the guest. We need to update the properties so that we can meet the needs that we are now acknowledging that our industry has. We know that we have these needs. We now need to do the things just like we would with safety. We need to do the things that would meet the needs of our guests.

Heather Bayer
It seems to me that this is an area that is ripe for property managers to take on board, particularly those who are focused and dedicated to direct booking. Because it's tough for anybody who's out there looking for a property for their family when they've got special needs and all they're faced with is an Airbnb listing or a Vrbo listing or a Booking.com listing where, as you say, they need to get in there and talk to somebody and feel reassured that they're parting with their money and they're not going to get to the property and have to do all these things, move the furniture around. But they are dealing with a company that is focused on them and their needs. So it just seems to me that this is really ripe for property managers to take on board.

Lorraine Woodward
I agree with you. I mean, I think it is right. And I think I'm going to toot our own horn here. You know, the great thing is that we do have Becoming rentABLE. We are that resource of information. We did expand and set standards of what accessible mobility looks like, again, beyond the wheelchair. So what are those filters? Vrbo has two filters, Airbnb has 13, and it's not this checklist, but it is about choices. What do we need? So in mobility, we identified 43 choices. So again, as Adam identified the matchmaking, you identify what you have and you may not think as a property manager, a concrete driveway is an amenity that is looked for and important for somebody with mobility issues. And a lot of times you go, well, I can look at the URL and see what they have. And okay, they're good, they're accessible. But let's validate it. Let's not, you know, let's make sure that what they say they have, they have. So that parent does go, that family does go to a short-term rental and that they have with confidence that they can go there.

Lorraine Woodward
And then we look at the cognitive issue. Those are not visible. What are they? And so we've identified, we've done their homework. We've done the research, spent two years of looking at the cognitive needs, and now it's collecting that information and saying, all right, property managers, we'll take a look at your 50 properties and we'll give you a recommendation. You know, here's what we found, out of 50 we found 13 that are really great, qualifiable, accessible properties that you can now look and put on your website and expand that reach. And that's how we're going to create change. It is a great opportunity for property managers to look at and expand their network because we're here, and I jokingly say that, but, you know, we are here. That is what we're doing, you know, and who we want to reach so that we can create this change.

Heather Bayer
So what's the best way of property managers putting this forward to their homeowners? Because that's where it starts with the homeowners, then the property managers who can then come through you at Becoming rentABLE to make sure that these properties are going to meet the needs of certain people. So how do they get it across to their property owners that these changes perhaps they need to make, are beneficial to them?

Lorraine Woodward
Well, you know, it's timely that you ask that question because just today we are releasing a series of interviews we had with a property management company, a booking platform, Natural Retreats. And we did. We're doing that. We're releasing five things to look at and how you can identify accessibility of what they went through to go through this process. We provide.... It's all about education. It's sharing that information. So what we try to do is look at, what are those questions? How do we get that information into those property host's hands? So we'll create it. We'll work with a company and create that education material to go, Wait a minute, I had no idea that that's what equals an accessible property. I thought we had to have 40 inch doors. We only have 32 inch doors. And that's okay. Bathtubs were a big issue for a while. Oh, you only can have roll-in showers? Well, after the last few years and talking with a lot of paraplegics, I'm finding out what they love is a bathroom. I mean, a bathtub. You know, who doesn't want a good soaker? And it's sometimes easier for some folks.

Lorraine Woodward
Again, it's about choices and understanding what those choices equal. How does that become accessible when you have a bathtub? Because you're thinking again, the mobility, a wheelchair. And yes, wheelchair users can transfer. I can't, so for me, I couldn't use a bathtub. It's not something that I'm looking for. But I have a friend who's a paraplegic, and that's all she takes is a bath. In fact, one of our ambassadors from Cape Town, South Africa, was in town, and Alwyn stayed at our house. And it's like, well, we have a roll-in shower or a bath. And he's like, I want a bath. And it's like, really? He goes, I love baths. I feel like I get good and clean and he has a transfer board, and every day he took a bath. And again, there's this idea that a bathtub is not accessible. And yesterday, we do these walkthrough Wednesdays, where we show an accessible property, and this particular house had five steps to go in it, and you're going, all right, that's not going to work. Well, guess what? It does work because they have a chair lift, and then they have another step into the house and they put a ramp there.

Lorraine Woodward
They converted a bathtub to a step in bathtub that you can close the door and fill the bathtub up and it's a working bathtub, or you can open the door and make it a step in. And so again, it's by showing, it's by sharing this information and providing our property managers this information that they can share with their host. And Adam, I know that you have a lot more to say about that.

Adam Norko
I do. I need to jump in because I love Lorraine's positivity and soft approach, but I need to take a little bit more of a heavy-handed approach with this question, and there's a number of reasons for that. But Heather, you mentioned it's an opportunity, and this industry is faced with opportunities all the time, and it doesn't necessarily capitalize on those opportunities as quickly as you, as a first adopter, or I might want them to. And, you know, keyless access and PointCcentral was one of those, or Breezeway was one of those. Both of those big opportunities. The industry going to move in this direction? Well, why does it take years for the industry to move in that direction? Accessibility, I think, is one of those topics that should not take years in the right direction. I agree that there is an educational component to this, and we, at Becoming rentABLE can provide a lot of that education. We're doing it on the OTA side. We're working with Expedia and helping them with the education around some of their stuff. We're doing it with some of our clients. Lorraine mentioned Natural Retreats. We're more than happy to do that with the industry.

Adam Norko
We've got articles that we'll write for VRMA, but education takes time, and especially taking education from the property management level down to the homeowner level also takes a lot of time. We've seen it for a long time. It's very difficult to get homeowners to act. So what I would suggest is there's a couple people, a couple parties I would suggest are involved in this process. One is the vacation rental company, and the other one is going to be those homeowners. Now, the education down to the homeowners is valuable and is needed. And I would say that we would almost want to do that on a regular basis in newsletters or wherever we're communicating with homeowners, because one, we know it takes a lot of touches for homeowners to pay attention and listen. But two, we know that there is a large amount of people that are touched by disabilities within their lives. We already touched on the amount of people, whether it's temporary or permanent, as well as the three people on this call all have some sort of special needs that are involved in their life. So if we can touch the homeowners, get their attention and have them understand this need, I think that anyone who has been touched by special needs or disability in life will act much quicker.

Adam Norko
So I think that's one camp, let's educate the other side of this. On the property management side, I think that we have an opportunity from a business perspective, as revenue slows, as ADR slow, as nights booked slow, that we should think about this as a new opportunity. The challenge with that is that there's a cost associated with it right there takes some time to go out and figure out which homes are accessible. There's a cost associated with Becoming rentABLE. But I want to stress that there's two components to what we do. We can do the online audit, so we can go out and we can look at all your properties and we can say, yes, this is accessible, this is not. Answer some questions and we'll know if this one. Now, it's valuable to have a third party certify this, because then we're the ones who can take some of the questions as someone who might have accessibility needs comes to you, or you can at least say, look, these are the standards that we met. But the other component about what we do is a listing site, because the question will come up, okay, I made this property accessible.

Adam Norko
Now, how do I get attention from a disability community? Well, we have that attention. We have a listing site that is specifically geared towards the disability community. We've got almost 1500 homes already on that across the United States. We will continue to drive that SEO, drive that traffic into our listing site, specific for that. So there is a cost component to it. And I think that's why you get some managers who are resistant to this or want to push it off to the homeowner. And I would suggest two things. One, we have more accessible homes in this industry than we are aware of. And if you give us a chance to audit your inventory, we will find accessible homes that either you don't know about or you're not talking about. We will verify those, we will put them on the listing site, and we will start to drive revenue into those properties. The other component around that, so we'll take the work off you and we'll help you get those listed and out there. The other component is that you've got to answer to these homeowners in some way as these reservations fall, as their revenue falls.

Adam Norko
You've got to think about what you're doing, and maybe that's not for every homeowner. Maybe you're not willing to shell out some extra effort or extra money for every home in your inventory. But if you've got highly valuable homeowners that you want to open to a new demographic that they're not touching, this is the way to do that. And sometimes that's a way to save homeowners. So I would suggest that we should do this on both sides. We should educate the homeowners. We should ask if they want to be involved. I guarantee there's a percentage in your homeowners that want to be involved in this. And then we should also go to those highly valuable homes and we should figure out which ones can be accessible, and we should do that as quickly as possible. The last point I'll make is I think this is a safety and a legal component. As we continue to progress, and I think right now the industry is looking at it from the legal and liability standpoint as, if I ignore it then I won't be liable. As we continue to express what's going on and we continue to educate the industry about what's out there, that argument of I didn't know what was going on is going to go away, and that my goal is to drive that as fast as possible.

Adam Norko
I want this industry to accept the fact that there are accessible needs, there are people with disabilities going in your homes, and right now, you're ignoring it. And at that point, once we get there and something happens and there is legal liability associated with it, there isn't going to be the ability to, because we're going to let everybody know, hey, you should have been doing the right things. Your team should have been educated. You should have been directing these people to the right properties that meet their needs. And I think that's the way the industry evolves. That's the way we become more hospitable, maybe even unreasonably hospitable, because we're looking at what the needs are for the guests and we're helping them find those needs.

Heather Bayer
I love what you say about unreasonable hospitality. Forget about it. As an industry, we need to master reasonable hospitality first. I love that. It's interesting what Justin Ford is doing with safety and certification along there and what Vanessa de Souza Lage is doing with sustainability and Sustonica. Again, a certification. But these are trust signals, aren't they? Every time, you know, If you've got a safety certificate, if you've got a sustainability certificate, if you've perhaps gone through IPRAC and got a trust certificate. So the next one is some form of badge that says, we have been, you know, we're part of Becoming rentABLE. I can see that. That's where the next movement is. It's not enough just to say, I've got an inventory of properties, here you are, because the trust issue is going to become major, and that's what I'm thinking over the next decade. And that trust signal that this property has been checked by Becoming rentABLE. And what is said in the listing is what you're going to find is going to become more and more important.

Heather Bayer
Let's just talk about liability for a moment. I talk to Justin Ford a lot about safety and liability issues. I understand that the ADA, the American Disabilities Act, doesn't really apply to vacation rentals. So what should managers know about compliance and general liability?

Lorraine Woodward
Interesting, as I have had the opportunity to speak with a lot of property managers and ask them the questions. Number one fear is we're going to get sued. And it's like, well, when you.... Are you afraid that you're going to get sued by the renter that comes in with a case of bourbon? You know, did you check that and look at, you know, their alcohol consumption. Do you consider those options? But yet you look at disability, and the first thought and idea is, oh, we could get sued and then we see the acronym ADA spread out. Oh, we have an ADA accessible this, an ADA accessible kitchen, a bathroom. It does not apply. There is not a thing. And so what has happened is this acronym is used, and it's used inappropriately, and because it's used so often, and you go and ask, well, what does that mean? Well, I don't know, it's a grab bar, so it's got to be ADA. So how does the ADA apply to the short-term rental industry? The ADA was written 34 years ago, and that was way before this industry is what it is today. I don't even know if it was a thought 34 years ago.

Lorraine Woodward
It was updated again in 2010. So here we are. That's the last update. And when the ADA was written in regard to lodging, they really looked at inns, they looked at hotels, and the short-term rental market was really not considered. But there's a gray area in the ADA that I don't know what it means. Fortunately, we are putting together a signature piece that has been in the works for almost two years now that will answer those questions. But bottom line, there are six things the ADA says in a short-term rental that if you apply to these six, and it has to be all six, so if you have five out of the six, it doesn't happen. And there are things like, do you have management or reservation services? So, like a hotel, you go in, you go to a reservation desk. Well, I don't know many short-term rental properties that have that reservation component. And you have to, again, have that. Do you have linen service on site every day? Do you have that? Again, these are things that people go, well, we have a linen service, and it's like, so does that apply to a short-term rental? Because it does apply to a hotel. No, it doesn't. So again, you have to have all of these things.

Lorraine Woodward
So when you look at it, the only thing that the ADA 100% says that you have to do is accept a renter with a service dog. And there's a big question about what is a service dog. A service dog is a trained dog to help the individual with a disability to be able to be independent. It is not an emotional support dog. A service dog will have registered papers. It will have, and that's what a property manager, a host, needs to see. It's like we don't accept animals in my short-term rental properties, I identify that I don't accept animals except service dogs because of the allergens of so many of our renters, 95% of our renters are family members with disabilities. But the ADA by law says that we do have to accept that. And there's a big question about what does that look like? And the big difference is it is training. It's not an emotional support dog or animal, because a miniature horse is a service animal. You know, a bunny can be a service animal.

Lorraine Woodward
There's a litany of animals that are gleaned to be certified or, you know, registered as. And so there's a big question about ADA, but the biggest fear is, we're going to get sued. And, you know, there's not very many lawsuits... There's been attempts of legalities, and in each one they have not won because they do not meet the requirements of all six areas of focus. And so we've got to eliminate this fear that you're going to get sued and your business is going to go under. But yet we don't look at other areas where we see a lot of damage and millions of dollars being output for those lawsuits and in disability, we're not seeing that.

Heather Bayer
That's a lot of clarity, thank you for that.

Heather Bayer
Adam. I want to sort of step right back to where we started, really, about this first mover advantage. What does that actually mean? I mean, I think we've talked about this. People are sleeping on this opportunity. They don't see it as an opportunity. And maybe in their heads they're thinking, oh, can I really make money out of people who are disabled? And I'm sure that's crossed some people's minds. You know, how can you look at income and making more on the backs of people who need these services to be fully independent? So can you sort of address that?

Adam Norko
Yeah, I'll be happy to. So, first of all, I would suggest that special needs and people with special needs are part of what makes us as a society whole. So we shouldn't put them in this special category in the sense that they aren't part of our business, or they're not looking to spend with me. This is not trying to take advantage of anyone. This is the exact opposite of that. This is trying to meet the needs of people who have some needs that are outside of the norm. So I don't think that I would put that argument aside entirely. I would say that we're doing this because it's the right thing to do for people that have these needs. Now, what I would suggest on the first mover advantage and the fact that we're sleeping on it, is one I don't think we as an industry, probably not only just vacation rentals, but as hospitality as an industry as a whole. I don't think we recognize the large numbers that Lorraine shared previously. Right. If you've got 25% plus, so more than a quarter of our people that are coming into hospitality have some sort of disability, then if you extend that and include temporary, you're talking nine out of ten.

Adam Norko
I mean, that's everybody. Everybody has some sort of need around accessibility. So I think that, first of all, we're not recognizing the great potential of a demographic that we're not touching, so that we probably underestimate what the revenue potential is. And then you go back to the regulations in the ADA and the liability, and I think that because we've underestimated what the demographic potential is, we've then ignored it and pushed it to the side, thinking that maybe it's a little bit easier to focus on typical guests. And I'll use an example. I was talking to a vacation rental manager who's been in the industry for a very long time, and his perspective back to me was, if I have an event home and I have a choice between a wedding group and a typical guest, I'm probably going to go with the typical guest, just because I know it's not going to have nearly as much needs. And okay, I get it, wedding groups have a lot of extra needs. But what I would  suggest with that is that every one of our groups has some sort of potential to have these needs and we're just ignoring them.

Adam Norko
So because we've been ignoring them, I think we've fallen on the side of ADA and liability that, if we don't talk about it, then we're going to be fine and we don't have to worry about the legality. Now, what my perspective is, is that just like safety, the more we talk about it as an industry, the less you're going to be able to use that argument. And I had Darren from Proper Insurance on our podcast this week, and he used a legal term, or one that lawyers like to throw around in courts as 'reasonable person', what would a reasonable person do in this particular situation? And that has a huge component of safety. Right?  Handrails. If you see you're missing a handrail or if your railings are loose, a reasonable person would fix that. Same is going to apply with accessibility and special needs community. If a reasonable person is aware that we have people with special needs coming into our properties, and a reasonable person recognizes that there are small things they can do to make it safer and make it a more comfortable stay. Since we're in hospitality, then it would be argued that a reasonable person will do the right things for that particular demographic.

Adam Norko
Now, once we do those right things, we then have access to that large demographic that has the disposable income to spend. But once we cross that line, and it's not a clear line, but once we cross that line of ignorance, where you can no longer plead ignorance and say, hey, I just didn't talk about it, I think that's a significant tipping point in the industry where we've then got to accept this. And at the beginning, as we talked about education with homeowners versus property managers, right now we're in that education phase where we can say, hey, we've got time to educate. At some point we don't. And I think that we're coming to that tip of the tipping point in safety where it's not going to be okay for us to say a homeowner didn't want to fix something. It's going to be our responsibility because we knew it needed to be done. And we're in the management industry where we needed to fix it. I think the same thing is going to happen with accessibility.

Adam Norko
We're just a little bit behind safety where it's going to be. We know that there are clients that are coming into this property that have accessible needs. We need to talk about what those accessible needs are, and we need to talk about the amenities at this property. And then we need to educate our teams, because if this is not the right property for that particular group, we need to be upfront and say that. And then we need to direct them towards a property that would be the right fit.

Lorraine Woodward
Well, and to add on to that, Adam, too, about needs. The benefits of accessibility are far reaching than people with disabilities who wants to carry their coolers and their luggage up a flight of steps versus that elevator, or are going down a Mobi-Mat on the sand with your cooler. It's a lot easier when you are able to roll your wheelchair or that cooler on the sand. So that what we're looking at as far as amenities and information is, yes, it does benefit the person with a disability, but you know what? It also benefits the guest.

Adam Norko
I think that's a great point. I'll give you two more examples that I think are super low key, low cost, cognitive side of things. Blackout curtains have a huge benefit for someone with a sensory disorder, autism, dementia, those type of things. But we all like to have a dark room when we're sleeping on vacation. A chain lock at the top of a door, that's an imperative for someone like your granddaughter, Heather. My son, same scenario, severe autism, and if I don't have that chain lock on the door, well, then we're panicked for the full week that we're on vacation about where my son is. So those two small things are going to be beneficial for anybody. If you've got a toddler, I'm sure you don't mind having that chain lock up there too, so that they're not walking out of the house when you don't know it. So I think you're spot on, Lorraine. The changes that we're asking to be made in this industry are not changes that we wouldn't want to do anyway. They're going to benefit everybody. It's just a matter of doing the changes and then talking about them so that the industry understands.

Heather Bayer
So we've got about five minutes left and I hadn't even started talking about marketing, so I'm going to get Adam talking really, really fast. What strategies can managers use to really effectively market these changes they're making to travelers who've got disabilities?

Adam Norko
All right, well, the first one, I think, is Becoming rentABLE because we're the only niche that has a listing site that is specific for the disability community. We're also the group that will certify. In addition to that, we are happy to be a part of educating, so that education could be on social media, it could be educating the employees, it could be educating the homeowners through newsletters, whatever is needed. From an education perspective, we're happy. We've already got it created, we're happy to share it, we're happy to be a part of that. But then again, I would go back to social media from a marketing perspective if I wanted to take this further, and I would start to talk about everything you're doing as a company and start to highlight those needs. And this is an area where I also think there's probably benefits of using some influencers that are online, that are out there talking about these things and start to encourage the disability community to come into our homes and start to showcase it and start to tell our story. Hey, we are here. We want to do this. But the one point I'll make, Heather, that I didn't make about the demographics, and I think this is a component around the marketing, is we have this misguided belief.

Adam Norko
I think it's maybe intuitive for all of us that hotels can offer the accessibility to this industry and they just can't. There's not nearly enough accessible rooms at hotels. They do fall under the ADA and there are specific guidelines around what they need to do. And it's a very small percentage, it's a sliding scale based on the number of rooms at a hotel and it's a very small percentage that have accessible rooms. So this isn't as if, oh, don't worry about it. They can just stay at hotels when they want to come to the Outer Banks. That's not even an option. There's not enough hotels. There's not enough hotel rooms. If someone with an accessible need needs to come to the Outer Banks, we need to embrace that. So I think from a marketing perspective, get to Becoming rentABLE. Let us audit, let us determine which homes, let us put them on the listing site, let us help educate. Let us be a part of that online marketing. Let us be a part of social and then tell your own story. Have your homeowners tell the story. I think user generated content in something like this is a huge opportunity to get the word out.

Heather Bayer
Fantastic. How do they reach Becoming rentABLE?

Lorraine Woodward
Visit our website, www.becomingrentable.com, you can find us on LinkedIn, on Instagram and Facebook, TikTok.

Adam Norko
If they want to get in touch with Lorraine and I, I think LinkedIn is a good place to start as well.

Heather Bayer
Okay. Thank you so much. There's so much more we could talk about here, but we have just about run out of time now. I just want to thank you so much for bringing this out more prominently to everybody. It's a message that needs to be made broader. Those of us who are involved with people with accessibility needs know this. There's a lot more people out there who perhaps haven't had that experience, who need to be exposed to the fact that this is a niche that they can easily get into. So final thought from both of you.

Lorraine Woodward
I'm going to say, in regard to the niche, you know, I really look at it is where are you in life and what are your needs today in life? Because the fact of the matter is, at some point in our life, we are going to need features that have been identified as accessible. And so by including these features, we'll broaden that base of opportunity for our property managers and host.

Adam Norko
I would reiterate the first mover advantage. And I don't just say that from an industry perspective, I say that from a market perspective, individual vacation rental markets from the perspective of individual managers, Mesa, Arizona, for instance, is considering themselves as this big, accessible city for travelers. We could do that for every one of our vacation rental markets. The first company in a particular market that starts to embrace this, they're going to have the first mover advantage. So I would say take action. Don't wait on this. Don't let this be something that we're talking about five years from now, trying to get the industry to move, now is the time to move. The revenue is here. It's a huge demographic. Everything's down this year. We're happy to play a part in certifying and marketing and educating. The tools are here. We just need to embrace them and move.

Heather Bayer
Thank you both so much. All the information on connecting with Lorraine and with Adam will be on the Show Notes, as will be the link to Becoming rentABLE. Thanks so much for joining me.

Lorraine Woodward
Thank you.

Adam Norko
We just nailed 50 [minutes] right on.

Heather Bayer
What a great conversation with Adam and Lorraine. When we came off the conversation, we continued with ideas, different ideas of what people could do to not necessarily retrofit their homes, but to make them more accessible at relatively small or even no cost. So please get in touch with Becoming rentABLE. It's not costing you anything to reach out, talk to them, and find out how you can take advantage of this first mover advantage. I love this idea. You know, it's that whole getting there before everybody else does. If I was still with CottageLink Rental Management, I think that is something I would be doing. I would be putting all those properties through the Becoming rentABLE audit and finding out from them which could be determined as accessible. Remembering, of course, that as we said at the beginning, accessible doesn't have to mean all the bells and whistles for people with a wheelchair. It could be just something as simple as Adam said, making sure it's got blackout curtains. You know, our properties were all very peaceful places, but there was sensory overload. If you were in a room where you were hit with the morning sunshine and you couldn't put your child into a room and be sure there was no additional sensory overload.

Heather Bayer
So lots of things. Please get in touch with Lorraine or Adam at Becoming rentABLE. All the information is on the Show Notes. Tell them that you heard about them on the podcast, and I hope that this works for you as well as for the many guests who have special needs. So thanks again for listening. Always a wonderful pleasure to be with you. Can't wait to be back with you again next week, so enjoy the rest of your day.

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.

‍