Mike Bayer
Welcome back to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. Before we dive into today's show, I want to take a moment to remind you again about the Vacation Rental Management Growth Accelerator Coaching Program. Yes, it's already started, but the good news is, it's not too late to join us. Last week we had the incredible Matt Landau as our first guest speaker, and I can tell you the conversations were deep, thoughtful, and allowed everyone to take an introspective look at their rental business to ensure where they are is where they want to be. This can be scary stuff, but if you're a property manager looking to feel confident and know that your business is the best it can be, this program will get you there.

Mike Bayer
We're covering everything from owner acquisition and retention to creating unforgettable guest experiences and to building high-performing teams. You'll learn from the industry's best and get access to all previous sessions' recordings, so you won't miss a thing. Whether you're feeling stuck or just ready to grow, it's the perfect time to jump in. The strategies we're sharing will help you navigate challenges and prepare for an even more successful future.

Mike Bayer
Click the link in the description of this episode on your smart device or head over to vacationrentalformula.com to secure your spot and catch up on the incredible insights from our guest experts. Trust me, you don't want to miss this opportunity. Now, let's get started with today's episode on one of my favorite topics, rental safety. So here's your host and coach, Heather Bayer.

Heather Bayer
People die or are injured every year in vacation rentals, whether it's through fire or swimming pool accidents or trip and fall events. Most of these are entirely preventable. Yet it's not deemed important enough to take safety as seriously as adding fancy new amenities or showcasing wall murals.

Heather Bayer
In today's episode, I'm joined by Justin Ford, international vacation rental safety expert. And we're going to be talking about all things safety, from some of the awful things that have happened in vacation rentals over the last year, to the things that you can do practically to prevent them from happening in yours.

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 as Fall begins to happen in Ontario. Quite crazy, it just sort of happens overnight. We had these hot, hot nights, the hot, hot days, and then all of a sudden there was a frost warning, and we're putting fires on and turning off the AC. That's the way it happens here.

Heather Bayer
But it always takes me back to when I was running a property management company, and I've talked about this before, we get to the end of the season and Fall happens, and that's when we do stuff. That's when we go back through the long, hot summer and review some of the things that happened in properties and begin to put plans in place for the next year. And for the longest time, when we were running our property management company, I don't think we paid anywhere near enough attention to safety.

Heather Bayer
It did actually take a lawsuit for us to finally take it really, really seriously, because once you go through all those motions of being accused of something, even when it was, as it turned out, frivolous, but you go through all those things that happen from the moment somebody knocks on your door and gives you an envelope and says You've been served, to the moment that eventually you hear from the legal people to say, Okay, it's all been settled and you don't have to worry about it anymore. You don't have to worry about it anymore? You never stop. Which was a good thing because it was always front of my mind every time we took on a new property. It could be the most beautiful property in the world, but if it wasn't safe, it wasn't for us.

Heather Bayer
And that's what we're going to be talking about today. We're talking about safety. And I've been watching what Justin Ford has been posting on his LinkedIn feed over the past couple of months. Every time there's been a major incident, and when you think that every time there's a major incident, there's probably hundreds of smaller incidents. But he was posting stories of swimming pool drownings and fires and other situations that, as he said, were entirely preventable. And he recently shared details of a harrowing situation, a harrowing fire that occurred at a vacation rental in New York State. And it was a couple of years ago. But the owners are now currently facing sentencing after pleading guilty to 29 misdemeanors. And the source of this fire was a DIY outdoor kitchen construction, which had been built without permits, but it was compounded by multiple failures of smoke detection and carbon monoxide detectors.

Heather Bayer
And while the listing on OTA sites showed that all of these were in place, as indeed they were, they weren't working. And subsequently, two people died, and a family has been devastated forever by something that was entirely preventable. And this is just one of countless situations that happen every year that could have been avoided by a simple safety audit. In this case, the audit would have uncovered the dangers posed by the outdoor kitchen, and it would have uncovered the fact that the safety devices, the smoke alarms, the carbon monoxide detectors, were not correctly installed and connected. Such a small cost to save lives. Yet a large proportion of rental property owners don't consider it important enough to even carry out a regular safety inspection.

Heather Bayer
So today I'm joined by Justin Ford to talk about the wider issues of safety in our business and why it shouldn't be set aside as something that should be done when we have some time rather than something carved into calendars and schedules and embedded into the routines of anyone responsible for a rental property. So we are going to talk about some of the harrowing things that have happened in the last year. And also how regular audits could have prevented them and what you all can do potentially to save lives, and a lot more as well. So tune in. Let's go straight on over to my interview with Justin.

Heather Bayer
So I'm super excited to have back with me, once again, Justin Ford from Breezeway to talk about safety. Justin, you've been on the show a number of times, but to me, this subject never ever gets old. But I think maybe I'm a little bit of an outlier.

Justin Ford
I can't imagine many people say that they wish they didn't have job security. I'm one of those people. It'd be really nice if people would stop getting injured and hurt. I wouldn't have anything to do and I'd find a new line of work.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, exactly. I think there's a mission here to get people more engaged in this whole conversation about safety. I just want to go back to the room in Banff in Alberta at the CanStays Alliance Conference earlier this year, and there was a really deep silence in that room when you were doing a two-hour workshop and you kicked off with your story about your role in an incident years ago that set you on the path of where you are today, which is the industry's leading safety expert. And I had not heard that story before, or maybe I had, but not in such depth. I know you can't go into that same depth in the time we've got today, but can you share a bit of that story with us?

Justin Ford
Yeah, I usually keep that story for the in-person events, because I want to make sure people are there with that. But I think it can be reflected in a shorter way that I was doing what most property managers in the US and Canada and around the globe are doing. We're focused on getting the money in, making sure these properties are rented, adding inventory, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, trying to make sure your staff is there, and at the end of the day, hoping that everything goes smooth. But the last thing I was thinking about was safety.

Justin Ford
I had a rude slap in the face when one of the guests at one of our properties was severely injured in a hammock. Unfortunately, I was the one who set up the hammock, and I hadn't paid attention. It was a rusty hammock. It was one of those cases where I think everybody's been in this situation where someone tells you to go do something, and so you just robotically, methodically go through it and go, Oh, they told me to go set up the hammock, so I'm going to do that. What I hadn't caught was that there were two hammocks. One was brand new and one was old and rusty.

Justin Ford
Well, I thought, it's a big house. I'm going to set them both up. I didn't go, Wait a minute. Maybe the new one is here to replace the old one. They didn't say that. No, that wasn't even on my mind. It was get in, get out, I got to go, I got a lot to do. Unfortunately, a guest suffered a severe head injury from the hammock breaking and is disabled for the rest of her life. It's something I think about every day. Anybody who knows me knows I'm very passionate about what I do. I think about Margaret every day, and it drives the passion of what I do.

Heather Bayer
I think it's important that people do know that you are coming from that place of real experience.

Justin Ford
I feel like I'm a relatively intelligent guy. I took a little longer to learn how to tie my shoes in kindergarten than probably most people did. I'm not very good at math, but I feel like common sense-wise, I'm pretty good. When that incident happened to me, I went, Wait a minute. I should have known this. I'm a firefighter. I served in the Coast Guard. How did I not think about this? That's when I looked around and went, Wait, what resources are out there for people who haven't had this happen yet? When I realized there weren't any resources, that's what started me down this path. Because if I didn't figure this out, and I think I know what I'm doing, how is everybody else supposed to figure this out?

Heather Bayer
Justin, how long ago was that?

Justin Ford
2013.

Heather Bayer
Okay.

Justin Ford
Just over 10 years ago. Yeah.

Heather Bayer
And in that time, you've moved forward, you've created this space for safety that you encourage everybody to come in to learn more about and to take actions with. And now, just give us a recap of what you're doing now with Breezeway.

Justin Ford
I feel like I'm over the top of the mountain, but almost the past 10 years, I've just had a really heavy sack on my back with a lot of cool things in it, and everybody's just gone, Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool, he's talking about safety, somebody's got to do it. I've been dragging that up the hill with a bulldozer, and I'm just hitting over that crest.

Justin Ford
So the origin idea of what I do now came from that incident, but also came from building a checklist. I was part of an organization in Maine of professional managers, and they said, Hey, you're the firefighter. You had an incident happen. Why don't you make a checklist? Then realizing that that checklist had the ability to be monetized in the sense that people, if they achieve that, could get some sort of certification They could do that without having someone come visit their house. They could do it through their smart device. I built a company called Dwell Safe [Inc], and I'm proud to say, to this day, I'm coming up on my five-year anniversary with Breezeway. I'm still the only company that Breezeway acquired. Five years ago, Breezeway acquired Dwell Safe, and I became the Director of Safety and Certification Programs.

Justin Ford
We never imagined it would be where it's at today. We're the global leader in it, Breezeway owns that space with safety. We have tens of thousands of people now who use our software that are doing these safety inspections all the time now, which is professionalizing this industry, and that's really the bottom line of what we've been able to achieve. It's professionalization. If you're going to be an operator in this space, there's no other answer but to be professional. If you don't do all the checks, though, you can be the best cleaner and you can have the coolest trucks and you could have a really sweet logo and a nice office. But if you're not making sure your guests are safe, you're not professional yet.

Heather Bayer
I did the course a number of years ago when I was a property manager, and it really 100% changed the way I approached every connection with an owner and a home from the moment I set foot in that home to do the initial inspection. I used to go in and say, Hey, this is such a nice house, and you've got everything right. You've got the nice-sized beds, and you've got the lovely kitchen equipment, and the garden furniture, etc. I paid absolutely zero attention to anything, bar maybe the most glaring things which in my world were decks and docks, and I wanted to make sure that they all met code. That was it. And then I did the safety course and realized that just... I mean, touching the surface is perhaps saying something really nice about what I was doing, because I don't think I was even touching the surface of safety in my visits to properties.

Justin Ford
Now, I remember a number of years ago when you were still a property manager, and I actually saw this yesterday, it's something that you did, and probably I've seen it. I'm going to hopefully not exaggerate here too much, maybe 500 or 600 times since, where you were going to properties once you have that safety outlook and you were looking at them going, Hey, I'd love to list your property, but you've got to fix your deck, you've got to do this. Then the homeowners were like, Wait a minute, we just asked you to come list our property. We didn't ask for a safety review. Then you learned later when other companies went and looked and just said, Hey, nice pillows and you need a bigger TV, those homeowners were like, Well, wait a minute, you're not concerned about our deck? They called you back, and it became an owner acquisition tool.

Justin Ford
It was so fun yesterday meeting with a property manager going, Oh, my gosh, we signed on three new homes since we started the safety program because we pointed 'this' out, and I always think of you, because you were the first that saw that.

Heather Bayer
Yes. It happened over and over again. It became a selling feature. We take safety seriously. Quite honestly, if your home does not meet our safety standards, we're not going to take you on. We found that people were, What do we have to, What do we have to do to get onto your program? Anyhow- It's- Oh, go on.

Justin Ford
I just want to emphasize, safety aside, I always ask property managers about that. To me, it's a determination of the professionalism of a company. When I ask them, I'm like, How do you ask a property or a homeowner if they would meet the criteria to list with you? They're like, What are you talking about? I'm like, Well, you're doing that, right? Because If you're not in a position as a professional manager where you're saying things like, Sure, we'd consider listing your property, let's go take a look. You are still not there yet. That's like the turning point when you have the homeowner thinking, Wait a minute, you might not list my home? Well, let's go look because I want to be in your program. That's a big transitional point for any manager.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, it's sort of like creating a scarcity type of thing. You're saying that, Yeah, hold on. We're not jumping at you, trying to get your property on board. You've got to meet these standards to get there.

Heather Bayer
So let's go back over the summer. And I know you post a lot on LinkedIn, and  to keep it front of mind that things happen and horrible things happen. And one of the reasons I wanted to get you on today was you posted about the Noyac fire a couple of years ago.

Justin Ford
Yeah, it was Long Island.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, where two young women died of a family of three children. Two of them died in a fire at a vacation rental that was just so preventable. Can you just give just recap on that for us?

Justin Ford
Yeah. Now, I think the best way to explain it is the full picture that we now know. You had a family. I've actually talked to the dad of those two girls before. He and I had about a 10-minute conversation last summer. He's a retired federal judge. He's dying of cancer. It's my understanding, actually, he's down to the wire now. But he had always dreamed of going back to where he would go summering as a kid. It was a last minute booking, so there wasn't a lot of houses available. This house appeared on one of the popular listing sites. He booked it and brought his family, knowing that he had just been told that he was terminal with cancer.

Justin Ford
They went out the first night and decided that they wanted to grill on this outdoor charcoal grill. They thought it was a pretty cool setup. They were going to cook some steaks. They just couldn't get it to work. It kept just not staying lit, and it was very frustrating. They gave up and they went inside to the house and cooked the steaks in the oven, had some glasses of wine, enjoyed their evening, and went to bed.

Justin Ford
They woke up around 2:00 in the morning to the sound of breaking glass and realizing the house was essentially an inferno. They did not wake up to smoke alarms. He and his wife were in a first-floor bedroom, and they escaped, and they just started screaming and yelling. They couldn't get back into the house. That's how much of an inferno it was at that point. Their son upstairs did hear some of the breaking glass. He heard his dad yelling, woke to the fire. He jumped out one of the windows, but unfortunately, his two daughters did not get up. They were found later in their bed. When the fire marshal, the fire department came, they start doing their investigation, Did you hear smoke alarms? No. We never heard any smoke alarms going off. As part of the investigation, they learned several things. One, there were no batteries in the smoke alarms. Another was that the homeowner had built this outdoor charcoal grilling station, but the way he installed the countertop, it blocked the airflow. So the charcoal grill wasn't getting air, which is why it kept going out. But unfortunately, most likely it continued to still burn even though they thought it was out, and that's what spread into and caught the house on fire.

Justin Ford
As they continued through the house, they found 58 building code violations in the property. They hadn't inspected it. So it's been a two-year process for them. They wanted these property owners to know that you can't do that. It was his dying wish that something like this never happens to another family staying in a vacation rental again.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. Unfortunately, that message still isn't getting out, is it?

Justin Ford
No. I call it handy homeowner syndrome. I see it all the time. Even back where I live in mid-coast Maine, I'll go into Home Depot and I see people who I know are offering an Airbnb or whatever, and they're buying an electrical box for their hot water heater they're going to install themselves. I'm like, Yeah, you still rent that house? They're not a licensed electrician. They just watched a YouTube video and they're setting these properties up. It happens all the time, even sometimes when the professionals do it.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. Of course, this was not an isolated incident. There's been other incidents this year.

Justin Ford
There's been some tough ones in there. Every single one of them is a learning one. It's not like it's like, Wow, that was a freak. I mean, there's some freak accidents that have happened. There was a death at a vacation rental at the beginning of the summer where a girl was impaled with a badminton racket when her brother threw it and people said, Well, it's a freak accident. Well, I was part of the insurance investigation on that one, because the insurance company is someone who supports what we do. It was really interesting to learn the badminton racket that broke that was used for this was actually left by a guest from the previous year. What's the lesson there? Yes, freak accident. But just because a guest leaves it behind doesn't mean you can use it for the next guest. You've got to check and inspect kayaks, inflatable things, badminton rackets, all that stuff, chairs. You can't just assume.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. I'm seeing... I know you are because you comment on it. Well, you were commenting on it a lot on LinkedIn, not so much recently, but this greater emphasis on these amenities, on hot tubs, on pool areas, pickleball courts. I'm a pickleball enthusiast. I play pickleball three times a week. I've signed waivers. I've signed my life away to actually use this pickleball court, because accidents happen. I go to a pickleball court that was built just three years ago by the municipality, and it is dangerous. It's already dangerous. Because it just wasn't built as well as it should have been. And I know they're going to be redoing it, resurfacing it, in the next couple of months. But this is what happens... people build these things, perhaps at lower cost, without really thinking about what their liability is. So are owners and managers giving sufficient attention to safety features when they're building and getting into this amenity craze?

Justin Ford
I liken it.... I've said this a few times presenting in a conference, and I'll just say it again here. I liken it to seatbelts. If you take, for example, the US state of Ohio. Ohio has the lowest use of seatbelts in the country. It's a state law, you're supposed to wear a seatbelt. Still, only 82% of people who drive a car in Ohio wear a seatbelt. They did a survey and went, What's the matter with the other 18% of people? They have two beliefs. One is that the airbags are going to protect them, or, they are well insured. If they get in an accident, everything will be covered. I think that translates over to what I see for the approach of safety. There are definitely a growing percentage of people who understand safety is the most important thing. There was a survey that just came out that was shared with me the other day that showed that 62% of people who've never stayed in a vacation rental, the reason they haven't, number one reason they haven't, is out of safety concerns.

Justin Ford
Imagine that. Over half of the people in the world who said, I'm not staying in a vacation rental and I'm not because it's not safe. If we make these safe, they're coming. But anyway, the point I'm trying to make is I keep running into all these operators who think that, Well, we're insured, or they signed a waiver, and you know what? If something happens, we'll deal with it then. You can't have that attitude. You got to be like the 82% that are putting their seat belt on. It's just the right thing to do.

Heather Bayer
What do you think about these great arrays of outdoor stuff? I've seen a couple recently where the big swimming pool, there is no fence because I'm assuming that they think that fences don't make it look attractive.

Justin Ford
All of the different things I think don't make it attractive. My favorite one is bikes. The very first safety incident I ever got involved with was with another property management company in Maine, and the homeowner left old bikes out. They're like, These are our old bikes, let's let the guests use them. Of course, one of the guests was injured on it. It was a $300,000 claim. To this day, I still see it. I'm in Arizona. I saw it yesterday. I'm like, What are those bikes doing? They're like, Oh, yeah, those are the old bikes. We left them here. I'm like, Stop. If you go to a bike rental company and you walk in there, like you said, you're going to sign your life away. It's two pages of forms. They do a 17-point inspection. They check the brakes, they check the handlebars, they make sure the seat's not going to loose. They look at all that stuff, and yet you're just leaving your bike out, not doing any inspection and going, Have at it. It's going to get you. It's going to get you.

Heather Bayer
The other one, and once again, it was a post I saw, and it was talking about baby equipment and child equipment. You've got to have everything. You've got families coming, you've got to have absolutely everything. I had a high chair recently and a Pack 'n Play, both of them almost new. I took them to the Salvation Army, they would not accept them. The Salvation Army will not accept them as free because of the liability of it. Yet people are putting these things in properties and they're going back-to-back rentals, and then I cannot imagine that they're being inspected. And if they are, who are they being inspected by?

Justin Ford
I'm very passionate about baby equipment, and I know of several.... there's a lawsuit right now in Salt Lake City over a Pack 'n Play I got a call about. But I hear about these things, and I don't push back much on these because I have so many messages to do. I am shocked by the amount of pushback I get that people go, No, we're still going to do baby gear. Yeah, whatever, Justin. Yeah, sure. It blows my mind. Here's the deal, and here's the answer to this one. This is how passionately I feel when it comes to baby gear. A Pack 'n Play is $80. You've got to guest, It goes, Is there a Pack 'n Play there? And you go, Yeah. There is no Pack 'n Play. Excuse me. We don't have Pack 'n Plays on our properties. And the guest goes, Oh, well, we're not going to book with you. Send them an $80 gift card from Amazon. Tell them to buy the Pack 'n Play. Get it to the property. When it arrives, it's now theirs. And if they leave it behind, go donate it, if you can, to the Salvation Army, and take the tax write-off. It's that critical that they have a brand new one and it's not owned by you.

Justin Ford
That's how serious I push that point across. Pay the $80 for them to have a new one. Do not do that because I do run into properties, I was in Colorado this past spring. You're going, Who's used this Pack 'n Play? No one knew. We opened it. It was broken in three places. And they're like, Oh, my gosh. Yeah, we didn't know. I'm like, Exactly. You can't leave these in there.

Heather Bayer
In retrospect, we did it. I had seven properties at one time, and I prided myself on having absolutely everything, and having the high chairs, and having the Pack 'n Plays. I didn't inspect them between....

Justin Ford
You and I are members of the lucky crop. I grew up in my dad's Volkswagen Beetle, and I used to hang on to the little grip bar over the thing. I never got hurt. I got lucky. But we had our chances and we came close. Now we have to realize that our day could come.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I remember the old saloon cars that had in the back, there was a shelf in the back. And we used to lie in the shelf on long journeys. We'd sleep there.

Justin Ford
Exactly.

Heather Bayer
But yes, we're still here today, fortunately, thankfully.

Justin Ford
Could you imagine today having your husband put you in your RV trailer when you're going to down to Florida for the wintertime? I mean, no one would ever do that.

Heather Bayer
Yes, well, they do. I know. They do.

Justin Ford
I don't think they like their wives very Yeah, I know.

Heather Bayer
With ours, when it closes up, there's no way you can go in there anyway. But I wouldn't do that. People put their dogs in there. Just crazy. But okay, let's look at it From a practical standpoint, how can this change? And I know that that is huge, but how can managers cultivate more of a safety-first mindset, particularly with their teams, with their business development people who go out to take on the property in the first place? With their housekeeping teams, because they're the ones that are going to pick up on issues that may arise between guest stays, and with their maintenance people as well, so that when they're going out to do something, that they've got their eyes open to other potential issues. How do they cultivate that?

Justin Ford
It starts with having an acceptance and a state of mind. Someone told you 2 + 2 = 4, you've gone with that. A driver's ed instructor told you 10 and 2 on the [steering] wheel, I don't know if they do that anymore, turn your blinker on 200 feet. You've got to go to the state of mind. You have the ultimate trust. When I flew down to Arizona, I did what I always do when I get on a plane, I look at the pilot. He walked into the cockpit and closed the door. I assume the FAA is giving him a license. I assume since Delta gave him a uniform, he must be the pilot. That's trust. But it's different because we don't know who, going back to that terrible case in New York, we don't know who owns this house, we don't know who wired it, we don't know who put the batteries in, we don't know who did the smoke alarms. When we go into a rental property and we close our eyes to go to sleep, we've just given the ultimate trust to that person that they have considered everything. The first and fundamental thing that any property manager needs to do is understand they have the most ultimate trust that anybody could ever give them, and that's powerful, and they need to do something with that.

Justin Ford
So where do they start from there? I've been talking about this one lately. You would never stay in a hotel that failed a safety inspection. You show up at Marriott and they go, Sorry, we just failed the safety inspection, but your room's ready. Would you go stay there? Absolutely not. So you expect people to go stay in a property that's never even had a safety inspection? You don't even know where it stands. When you take those fundamental things in, then you can get started in going, All right, wait a minute. I do have a responsibility here. My guests trust me. That's pretty freaking cool that they trust me. I better meet that trust.

Heather Bayer
So how do they get that message across? How do they share that and get everybody to buy in? I know when you go to companies, you're not just talking to the leadership, you're talking to everybody. What about those who aren't getting Justin Ford in to do this for them?

Justin Ford
Yeah, I know. You're making me think right now of Rachel Alday with Abode in Park City. Beautiful property management company. Actually, Rachel and her husband, Rob, they didn't hire me to come in. Their team said, We want Justin to come in. That was pretty amazing when you had the team, the employees that were there that said, Hey, we want the safety guy to come in. But when you don't have that, you have to go in and you have to say, There's things that we need to do. I'm clearly not an expert at this, but I need to be because this is my occupation, this is my job. There's a safety checklist. It's out there. Breezeway hasn't copyrighted the safety checklist that we've built. It's the only one that's out there that's as complete as it is, but we're happy to let you have at it. You don't have to be a Breezeway customer. It'd be nice if you were, but you don't have to be. Take that checklist and do it. You've got to do it. Know where you stand. You need to understand what's critical. Death could happen if I don't do this.

Justin Ford
Then you need to understand what injury prevention is. And that's so overwhelming to a lot of managers that they don't do it. What I always tell people is you've got to break it up. First, just make sure no one's going to die on your property, and that's really simple. Smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, fire extinguishers, pool safety features, hot tub safety features. Once you get that outlined and you get that down, at least you can feel comfortable about that. Then you can start working, Yeah, we need a railing here, and Yeah, we should make sure the bikes aren't out, that type type of stuff, but break it up and start out. If you're just coming to the end of your season or you're just coming into the winter season, you've got a couple of months before they start blowing snow, this is where you take that time and say, All right, this is going to be our focus right now. We're going to focus on making sure nobody's going to die in our rental properties.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. I hate to say I like that way of looking at it, but it is taking that negative, it's a better way of of addressing it. So everybody is focusing on the guest experience right now. The guest experience is the thing. But on the other hand, you also want to communicate safety protocols to guests to let them know. How can you do that without scaring them? Because I know you scare me sometimes. It's not scaring, it's jolting. It's a little bit of a jolt to go, oh, God, I have not thought about this. I need to take this into account. But how do you translate that into really selling safety?

Justin Ford
Yeah. And I hate, by the way, being the scary guy. I'm at a conference, I saw somebody last night. They're like, I thought of you in the night last night. And I'm like, My wife wouldn't appreciate that! She's like, No, no, no! My smoke alarm was beeping; I was terrified. I'm not trying to scare people, and I've tried to steer away from that.

Justin Ford
There's so many selling opportunities now. I mentioned that earlier one. So If you take a look, all these surveys that have come out, Gen Z, number one concern they have in travel is safety. Cost is number two. Then every other generation, Generation X, Generation Y, the baby boomers, safety is number two under cost. We know safety is an important factor, so play to that, highlight that, and educate your guests. We also know that keeping guests, repeat guests, is critically important. After your guests have stayed with you and assuming they're having a safe stay. They're left with great memories. Point that out to them. Highlight that to them. Hey, we know you had a great stay at our property. We just want to double check. Did you have any issues?

Justin Ford
Did you need to use a fire extinguisher? Did you hear any issues with the smoke alarm? We put great care in it. If you didn't have any trouble with it, that's great, but we just want to make sure everything worked out fine. When they start seeing that, we're seeing it now. There's a company that's in Sedona, Arizona that recently told me that they do that type of stuff. They actually now have guests that will come back and stay with them because the next property they went and booked, they saw that there was no fire extinguisher. When they called the host, they said, Hey, there's a few safety issues here. The host blew it off and they went, Wait a minute. The last company we were with cared about us. If I just even pointed this out. It works to do what you're doing, then highlight it, because now you're educating that guest. You're making them a more aware consumer. When they're more aware, they're going to remember you for helping implement that for them.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, you've mentioned trust several times during this conversation. Trust is such a foundational issue in this business. It's a core value. We trust our guests are going to come and respect our properties, but they are trusting us on a whole range of issues that the property is as described, that their money is safe, but also that they are safe, too. So I've talked a lot in posts and on the podcast about creating a page on the website that is more about developing that trust. I can see why not have a page that says how we keep you safe?

Justin Ford
It has to be. You have to have a commitment to safety page. I've been saying that now. That's one of the first things I told managers to do 10 years ago. I did it. I know less than 10 of them out there. Marriott has it, Carnival Cruise Lines has it, Delta has it. Every sector of travel, every hotel has their commitments to safety. And yet in the vacation rental industry, we know more than half of people don't want to stay at our product because they're concerned about safety, and we've done nothing about it. It's mind-blowing to me, because in most cases, you're using Streamline, LMPM, Track, any of those popular PMS. It's nothing for them to add that page on, and you can put that content on there.

Justin Ford
I did a video yesterday at a swimming pool for a vacation rental company that hired me to do this. We're not charging them. They're a Breezeway customer, but they asked me to do it, where it's a video about pool safety that gets sent to the guests 2 hours before arrival, and I talk to the kids. It's really neat. It's automated. It's set up through their CRM. Two hours before check-in, this video message goes out, and I start out talking to the parents saying, Hey, I know you're excited. The kids are in the back of the car. You're headed to that vacation rental, and you can't wait to check in. Let me talk to your kids for a minute. I do. I talk to them about making sure that they're safe around the pool and a few different things. And I kind of have with them that authority that it's not their parents that's saying, Hey, you guys can't go out to the pool unless mom and dad say you can. You can't cover it in inflatables, no glass. I talk to them about a few things, and I keep it short and sweet. I know of other companies have done that. Caleb Hannon does that with Stay Lake Norman, and they've had great success. Those are little things you can do that again keep getting that awareness out there and letting the host know that you care.

Heather Bayer
That is awesome, because going back on my experience, all our properties, 200 properties, every one of them waterfront. And we knew that the moment that car door opened, the kids were not going into the house and going, Oh, what a lovely this is, and where's my bedroom? They were just out of that car door and down to the waterfront. And we know that the majority of issues with water happened on that very first day.

Justin Ford
Almost everything happens in the first... When you talk to some of the leading insurance companies in the industry, the claims all come in in the first couple of hours. Trip, slips, and falls. They come in between 9:00 PM and midnight on that first arrival. Why? Because guests get out and the lights aren't on, and they can't find their way into the property. They're not familiar. If I came to your house, Heather, tonight for dinner, more than likely, you're going to greet me at the front door and you're going to say, Hey, watch out for that little step there. My husband's going to get that fixed. You would guide me in because I'm your guest. We have all these guests that are showing up at these rent properties with no guidance, and we haven't done anything to make it as easy as possible for them to get in. That's when we have the most incidents. Kids getting out, running around, parents trying to haul the luggage in and the groceries. Holy smokes, this is when everyone gets injured and we haven't done anything about it.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, I remember one incident where this happened. A kid jumped out of the car went straight down to the end of the dock, and jumped off it. There was a log in the water and ended up with eight stitches and.... just trauma. It was so preventable. We could have prevented that by that type of video. I also recall going to a vacation property in the Bahamas a number of years ago. And we got there relatively late, about eight o'clock in the evening. It was beginning to go dark. And what do you do? You're on vacation, you have a few glasses of wine. And we went to bed and we woke up in the night. There'd been a storm and the power was out and it was pitch black. And where's the bathroom? You don't know. It's so unfamiliar. When you're at home, you get out of bed in the middle of the night and you feel your way, you know exactly where the door frames are, and you know where you're going, you know where the light switches are. But we did not know this, and I fell down two steps on that very first night. Fortunately, I didn't really hurt myself. But the preventable part of that is so simple, and it's having those motion-detecting nightlights.

Justin Ford
You mentioned a word here that I do want to touch on, and it's something our industry has also done a really poor job of identifying, and that is we know national surveys, Canadians, Americans, 76% of them are going to reach some level of intoxication at least one point in time on vacation, whether it's on a cruise ship at a hotel or a vacation rental. That's what everybody in North America said they're going to do 76%. Everything we're doing and checking, we're doing sober and making sure, we don't do a good enough job to remember that our guests are going to be using a gas grill after four or five beers and making a decision on how they're going to light it the wrong way, that they're going to be stumbling back into the property and all these different things. We need to put those goggles on more so than ever. Most incidents now that we're seeing are related to alcohol. The guests, they want to cover their butt and they're coming after you. They did something stupid, but they don't want to take accountability for it. Even though they had four or five drinks, they slipped and fell, and it's your fault.

Justin Ford
You've got to take into account that you have to do even that much more because the bar is higher. While on that, one more plug on alcohol.  Stop. Do not ever give alcohol out in your property. If someone could tell me, prove it to me, I'll give you my salary for the rest of the year, that a guest showed up at your property, and because you didn't offer wine or a local brewery or something like that, because you didn't have it, they want their money back and they want to leave. That's never happened. It will. Stop giving out alcohol.  Casiola down in Orlando, they give Oreo cookies. I'd rather have the Oreo cookies any day.

Heather Bayer
Oh, yeah. Well, I'm 100% in on that because I don't drink alcohol. So if I go somewhere and there's a fancy bottle of wine, it's like, well, that will go in the fridge and stay there until we leave. We'll leave it behind.

Justin Ford
It's not worth the risk.

Heather Bayer
It just is not worth the risk. I'll come away from that because I always had this thing about being left a bottle of wine that was from a local supermarket. If you're going to leave me something, then make it mean something. We used to leave local maple syrup.

Justin Ford
Yeah, and there you go. That's fantastic. Maple syrup. By the way, my daughter just made some lemonade with it the other day. It's the best lemonade I ever had. I would have never thought that.

Justin Ford
There are some good friends of mine in the industry who are professional property managers. I was at one recently, they were doing wine tasting with their employees to see which bottle of wine they want to have. I'm like, Guys, stop! This was an elite vacation rental company that many of us know of. I was like, Guys, you've got to stop doing this. I get it. But if you're an elite property [management company], trust me, your guests that are coming in are not going to be impressed by a $19 bottle of wine. So there's not even any point.

Heather Bayer
Yes, and that is a really good point. And there's so many other creatives, if you want to leave something, so many other creative things that you can do. I spoke to... Who did I speak to? Nick Russell from The Cottages on the Key. In Siesta Key.

Justin Ford
Oh, yeah.

Heather Bayer
And they have a local bakery that does personalized cupcakes.

Justin Ford
Yeah.

Heather Bayer
So much rather have that, showing some care in a gift.

Justin Ford
I stayed at an Airbnb in your hometown back in the north of London in England this past year where I showed up. It was a farm, and they had fresh eggs and fresh milk and fresh bread and all that stuff. It was fantastic.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. Amy Hinote talked about this when she went to the Cotswolds a couple of years ago, and she just talked and talked about the breakfast pack that was left for them. Everything homemade and fresh, and yeah, I think we can rest our case on that one, I think.

Justin Ford
That's right. You know, going back to some of the incidents this summer that we're still learning on, I wanted to highlight a couple. There was a fire in Destin this summer. People barely escaped. There were six in there. Actually, the fire, the only reason they knew there was a fire was because there was a car at a house next door, and OnStar felt the heat of the car now burning and called the fire department. I looked at the photos on the listing site for that property, and I could see the smoke alarm was brown. So the smoke alarm didn't work.

Justin Ford
But it also highlighted something that we've been talking a lot actually about here at Breezeway recently, and that's occupancy. We see that over and over and over. That's a huge topic. Those were eight people in a four-bedroom house, and they barely got out. I really want to emphasize that this industry needs to stay focused on occupancy. I hear people say all the time, Well, we can't have too many people in the house because of parking or because of septic. No, it's got to be for safety. Safety, and that's the only reason. Definitely some lessons this summer from some of those incidents that we've seen.

Heather Bayer
Let's just touch on technology. What is out there right now? You're going to all the conferences and you're going to see all the latest technology that's there for safety. What can you talk about or recommend for monitoring safety remotely?

Justin Ford
Yeah, there's some really new... Minut has some really... I can't announce it here. I know they've got a big announcement coming out on some new products before the end of the year that with their sensors, they're going to enhance a lot more for safety in the industry. That's going to be a close one to watch. You definitely want to make sure that you're paying attention that there's a whole new series of smoke alarms coming out. Watch out. If you're going into Home Depot, Lowe's, and Target and stuff, you're going to see tons of smoke alarms on sale right now. They're getting rid of the old models. I was in a big box store the other day, and actually, they've received those new shipments of Kidde smoke alarms.

Justin Ford
The key focus on new smoke alarms that are coming out are, they're not going to go off from what's called a nuisance very much, burnt popcorn, things like that. The unfortunate thing is a lot of those smoke alarms are still only using one sensor. So you really can't just discount and go, Well, wow, that smoke alarm is five bucks now. I'm going to buy a bunch of those for our properties. Don't do that. They're dumping the old ones, but the new ones still have some opportunities, too.

Justin Ford
You've really got to dial in and understand in the US and Canada, right now, there are over 750 different models of smoke alarms you can buy for your home. That's a lot to choose from. There's only three or four that actually scored high enough on consumer reports that I'd want to put my property. You've got to start to learn and understand the different type of products in this big evolution that's happening with smoke alarms right now.

Heather Bayer
What about how safety regulations are evolving? Because we haven't touched on that. We've touched on what you feel that people should be doing, but what about safety regulations across the board?

Justin Ford
This is a warning. It's a strong warning. This should be more firm than me scaring you with some horrific story. I have been invited on several committees for the NFPA, National Fire Protection Association, as well as ICC, International Code Council. This is how it happens wherever you are, whether you're in Canada, Guam, Hawaii, Florida. Your state legislature adopts building codes. Every couple of years, the legislature just goes, Yep, we're going to adopt the 2023 version. Done. Those codes are being written now to include short-term rentals. To this date, they've never been a part of it. Some of these committees that I've been on that are discussing it have taken the biggest members of the industry. I've been proud to be on these committees,  Airbnb has had representation, Expedia Group. They're taking everybody in the industry, all the input, and they're saying, Going forward, we want these things in code.

Justin Ford
The prediction, at least on the NFPA side, is 2027 versions of code are going to start to see the words short-term rental in it. ICC would like to see that as well. They're voting on those at their Congress in November at the ICC Code Council. These are fire chiefs and fire professionals all over the world. What does that mean? That means at some point in time, before this decade is out, your state legislature could just vote and accept code. Overnight, there's going to be all these new code requirements. It's going to be like what some of the people are experiencing in the Smokies right now with all these new fire sprinkler requirements and all the different things. So your biggest investment right now should be in safety because it's going to get more costly. And if you don't have your ducks in a row right now, when 2027 hits and you want to sell your property, that's going to be a big problem. If you're a professional manager, you're suddenly going to be scrambling, and the managers who have their ducks in a row are going to be doing a lot more owner acquisition than you are. So, the time is to start now, and believe it or not, three years isn't very long. You've got to get your ducks in a row fast, like next week. Sit down with your team and go, We've got to start thinking about things that we need to do to make our properties safer, because we're going to be forced to do it soon. If we don't have it all set up, we're going to fall behind the curve.

Heather Bayer
That is a great point to just about end on, because I was going to ask you, what should managers be doing right now? You mentioned that. What else should they be doing right now as we go into perhaps a bit of a slower period?

Justin Ford
If you've been listening to this podcast, which I hope you have all the way to the end, the very first thing you need to do right now, if you haven't done it, as you get off, your action item is to have someone in your staff, whether it's you or someone, I don't care if you're a three-person company or a 50-person company. Someone needs to be designated the safety manager. They have to have that title. It has to be in their job. Give them a 5% bump. I don't care what it is. I don't care if they're head of housekeeping as well, reservationist. Someone needs that title, and then they need to get to work and you need to have a safety meeting at least once a month. I know a lot of companies are now doing them weekly. You've got to take this on and recognize this is just part of the business, just like organizing the cleaning and everything else. That's your takeaway right now. Get that started. First and foremost, designate a safety manager.

Heather Bayer
Wow. This has been just an amazing conglomeration of knowledge and really good advice and recommendations, Justin. Always, it's always great to sit down with you. I know we could talk for another hour, at least, and we will revisit probably in another six months or so, and we'll see, unfortunately, what usually happens when we do have these conversations is that we kick off with a disaster just like we did today. It would be great at some point in the future if that wasn't necessary to jolt people into realizing how important safety is. Well, of course, the next time we probably do this will be in February when we come into our second season of SSTIR Crazy Month.

Justin Ford
That's right. I'm looking forward to that. I've already got some great ideas for SSTIR Crazy Month.

Heather Bayer
So for anybody who's missed out on SSTIR Crazy Month this year, it was five weeks where we talked about safety, sustainability, trust, insurance, and regulations. I probably got that in completely the wrong order. But we had a complete week where we just talk nothing but safety on posts and podcasts. So you will be super involved with that in February. That's when we'll probably talk again. Well, we'll talk again before then.

Justin Ford
I better see you at the VRMA Conference. I hope I see you next month.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, not this year. Not this year. We're taking a year off.

Justin Ford
That's good. Everyone needs a break once in a while, but I know I'm sure I'll see you soon. It's always a pleasure.

Heather Bayer
Well I'll see you in Vermont for...

Justin Ford
Oh, yes, that's right. I'll be speaking.... I'm coming. Holy, I might need your help. I'm coming directly from Australia to Vermont for that. So I might be a zombie. So you got to help hold me up. You and Mike got to hold me up.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, we are so looking forward to that conference. It's almost going to be like a re-meeting from our Vacation Rental Success Summit from 2016.

Justin Ford
That's right.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, that's going to be so much fun. So I'll see you there. I'll talk to you, no doubt, before then. But thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing all these nuggets of wisdom. And I'll make sure that people have everything they need to connect with you and Breezeway to organize a conversation or to get into the information that's there on the safety certificate. Anything else you want to add before we wrap up?

Justin Ford
I could go forever, like you said. So now get your safety manager designated and then let's talk.

Heather Bayer
Okay, wonderful. Wonderful to talk to you, Justin. Enjoy the rest of your day down in hot Phoenix.

Heather Bayer
Thank you so much, Justin Ford. Well, I hope that's opened your eyes a little bit. And I hope that you do take that action. Every property management company needs to have a safety officer. And it's a role that I know somebody would embrace if they are given the right information and the right support. And certainly starting with Breezeway and the safety qualification, which I went and got. And I walk around my own house now, and it's now ingrained in me after doing that course, all these different things that you need to be aware of in terms of safety in a home. And I've made changes in my own home based on that, not just in my vacation rental properties.

Heather Bayer
So this is serious, folks. This really, really is. You could take action right now that will seriously save lives. So I'll leave that with you. Hope that you will take action. Get in touch with Justin if you need more information. And I will look forward to hearing from you. I'd love to hear from you. If you do this, if you do take these steps, take these actions, let me know, because I want to see that what we're talking about here in terms of safety is actually having some impact. And I can talk to my heart's content on a podcast and talk to you like this, but unless I actually see it in a text or in an email, it's not true. It's not happening. So let me know. I want to hear from you.

Heather Bayer
So on that note, we are coming up to the hour. So I'm going to say goodbye now and hope you've enjoyed this and look forward to being with you again next week.

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 of Vacation Rental Formula. For the episode at vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you, and I look forward to being with you again next week.

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