MC Fireside Chats – July 29th, 2026

[00:00:45] Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name’s Brian Searl with Insider Perks and Modern Campground. Sitting outside, it’s outdoor hospitality. I get outside of my studio. There’s real benefits to this. I was talking to these guys beforehand about how I don’t have a graphics card for my new PC I had to build ’cause RAM prices are up, crazy memory prices.

I have to, like, pay $5,000 for the one I need and the part didn’t come from eBay, but it’s driving me outside. Like, I kinda like this. It’s too bad that I live in Calgary and it’s not this nice all year. Uh, but then somebody on this here was listening to … Who, who’s the one in Arizona? 

[00:01:16] Sam Jankovich: Oh, Sam here. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:01:19] Brian Searl: That’s Sam. That’s Sam. You gotta move, man. I don’t know. 

[00:01:21] Sam Jankovich: Uh, well, I, I live up in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, but I’m down here visiting, but it is super hot. 

[00:01:26] Brian Searl: Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. ‘Cause the water, I mean, the, the Colorado River, they’re gonna take all your water away there in Arizona, so you gotta get back pretty fast.

[00:01:33] Sam Jankovich: Yeah. It’s pretty challenging. 

[00:01:35] Brian Searl: Uh, okay. Uh, welcome everybody to another week of, uh, MC Fireside Chats. We got a … It’s kind of one of those weird fifth week episodes. We don’t have any recurring guests this week, uh, so we just have three special guests with us here. I’m gonna let them go around the room and just briefly introduce themselves, then we’ll have a good show, uh, talk to you about, uh, who knows what.

So Sarah, you wanna go first? 

[00:01:53] Sarah Krause: Sure. Uh, my name is Sarah Krause. I am the CCO at C&D Hospitality. We- I oversee the operations of four campgrounds and one beach bar here in Wisconsin. They are all seasonal. And then in addition to that, I also have my own business called Campground Manpower. 

[00:02:12] Brian Searl: Nice. If I was you, I would be at the beach bar all the time.

But that’s probably why I’m not you and I, I could never do your job and I’d be fired, so.

What you got, Sam? Tell us about GuideTime. We’re appreciative. 

[00:02:27] Sam Jankovich: Yeah. Uh, Sam Jankovich, CEO of GuideTime. Um, yeah, my, my career’s actually gone full circle. I started off in the hospitality industry, and my first job with was w- a trainee at Westin Hotels. But now for the last 35 years, I’ve been leading digital transformations for some of the biggest, um, enterprises out there, and recently retired from IBM.

And, uh, I’m now leading the charge at GuideTime, helping my son, the founder of the company, um, embed and build great memories through our marketplace, um, directly with our hospitality partners 

[00:03:06] Brian Searl: Awesome. Welcome, Sam. Excited to see what the Guy Time is. I’ve seen a little bit about it on my LinkedIn feed, mostly from Quentin.

Um, we’re gonna- 

[00:03:13] Sam Jankovich: Yeah, Quentin, yeah … 

[00:03:15] Brian Searl: yeah, learn a little bit more about Guy Time. I’m excited about that. All right. Francois, did I pronounce that right? 

[00:03:19] Francois Gouelo: You did, 100%. You got it right. 

[00:03:22] Brian Searl: That’s good, ’cause I’ve been in Canada for a few years now, and I have to practice. My girlfriend learns French on the phone every three days.

She’s been doing Duolingo for, like, I think almost 280 straight days, ’cause we went to France for the SETT conference last year. 

[00:03:36] Francois Gouelo: Nice. 

[00:03:37] Brian Searl: And then she’s been… Like, she knew a little bit of French before that, but that’s not my cheat code, but it’s my girlfriend. But, uh, tell us, yeah, tell us about yourself. Who, who are you, bro?

[00:03:45] Francois Gouelo: 100%. Uh, yes, my name is Francois, also based in Canada. Based in, uh, Toronto, uh, although currently in Alabama. And, um, I run a company called Enso Connect. We’re a guest experience platform for hospitality businesses, currently focused primarily on vacation rentals, as well as some, uh, boutique hotels. Uh, we operate with about 60,000 units globally, 60 different countries, and really our mission is to digitize and monetize the entire guest experience.

So that means, uh, making that whole check-in experience online, leveraging AI to communicate with your different guests, uh, and being able to upsell them different services from different marketplaces. So s- maybe I have to connect with you, Sam, afterwards to see if there’s anything we can do there.

[00:04:26] Sam Jankovich: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:04:28] Brian Searl: All right, Francois, I wanted to start with you, and here’s why. Uh, because, uh, at least Sarah knows I’m an AI geek. Uh, and our, and our company produces a lot of da- data and developments for the outdoor hospitality industry. We do a lot, like we have custom AI chatbots, connectors and things like that we build.

We don’t play a lot in vacation rentals, I don’t really want to do that. Like campgrounds has been my, uh, outdoor hospitality’s been my thing for 16 years-ish so. Uh, and so I’m interested from your perspective, I heard a little bit of the conversations, like I, I… My gut instinct, and you tell me if I’m wrong, other than maybe like you do this in your spare time, you don’t have a lot of experience with the campground industry, correct?

[00:05:02] Francois Gouelo: No, that’s correct. Not as much as you guys, certainly. Um, or very little to say. So I’m here to learn, if anything. 

[00:05:09] Brian Searl: Well, but we’re also here to learn from you, which I think is some of the benefit of bringing in somebody who works in vacation rental and stuff. Obviously, there are people in the outdoor hospitality space.

Marriott’s getting involved in this with Postcard Cabins. We’ve got Hilton coming in with AutoCamp. There are plenty of people who do glamping only accommodations. They put their list of things up on Airbnb that people utilize for services, things like that, right? So it’s not like we’re isolated campgrounds with our audience.

But because of that background coming primarily from campgrounds or RV parks, most of the owners and operators who watch our show, either they’re into expanding glamping or glamping standalone, which is common and not had any experience maybe in either side of it. And we certainly have people in our industry who worked in hotels, right?

But there’s a lot I think that people don’t understand about where technology can actually help their business today. And what I, what I mean by that is not necessarily preaching to them like, “Hey, you can do dynamic pricing. You can do automated flows. You can do funnels. You can do…” Like, they know all that, but they don’t know how to do all that.

What they don’t know is what’s possible as an outcome that they can get from taking the time to work through all those things. So can we just– I just want to throw you a softball and start there. 

[00:06:20] Francois Gouelo: Yeah. I mean, the first thing I would say, and this is connecting to, to one of the value propositions that, that we provide to, to operators.

So we work with vacation rental managers. Typically, they don’t own the assets. They don’t own the properties. They manage on behalf of property owners. So margins can get really thin. You take twenty percent of that, and that’s really your revenue, and then you have to factor in your cleaning costs and your team and staff, communication, everything out of that.

So you end up with like four to six, maybe seven percent margins on average, uh, for every booking. So it’s pretty tight to manage a lot of vacation rentals. So a lot of operators, what they do is they go about it with scale. So the more properties I manage, the more revenue I’ll grow, and therefore I’ll be a bigger business.

But then you start adding a lot more complications. You have to add more staff. So I’m currently in a eight hundred and fifty unit, uh, property management business down here in Alabama. They operate like it’s a machine, these guys. They have… You know, uh, I went and visited their maintenance system this morning where they have all the professional industrial laundry machines to do all the cleaning.

So it’s a different kind of ballpark at that, at that scale. But even if you’re managing twenty, thirty units, it gets really complicated. The biggest advice I give operators in our space specifically is even though there’s all this technology and AI, the biggest thing you need to do in order to leverage that technology is to write down your processes.

Write down the facts about, you know, the knowledge base, if you will, of your business and how you handle certain situations. ‘Cause a lot of times these businesses are family-run, so you kinda just know ’cause you’ve been doing it for so long, and when you hire a new employee, well, you just train them up and you tell them about all the things you’ve been doing for ten years, but you don’t really have it written out anywhere.

And so it becomes really hard to adopt different AI systems because those AI systems are not connected to your brain, at least not yet, unless you have some of these microchips that we can put in and, you know, maybe connect some MCPs to it, but we’re not at that level yet. So m- for the most part, it’s just I have to tell the employee, “Well, now you have to tell the AI.”

And the benefits in terms of value, it’s everything from being able to run your entire guest communication for you, answering all the questions guests might have in a very natural human tone of voice, um, or voice that, that, you know, people wouldn’t even realize they’re speaking to an AI. It’s about prioritizing what conversations you should focus on in general.

Guests that are in-house that are having issues, guests that are about to check in that are having issues, or guests that have booked for in six months. Should you answer that one first? Um, so I think technology can be wildly used in so many different use cases, upselling communication, you mentioned dynamic pricing, and so on.

I think the first step is identify the problem and make sure you’ve documented, uh, a sort of solution or a path to a solution that you take today. I don’t know if that makes sense, Brian. Happy to go more into more details. 

[00:09:04] Brian Searl: It does, and I think that’s part of the problem with gener– let me just say generally business owners, ’cause I’m a…

You know, I own multiple businesses myself, uh, and, you know, I build, I, I build the agents and the things and the custom automations, right? Like, so I’m more deep into what you’re talking about than most of our audience is But I think that’s part of the problem, what you bring up is where do I start? And, and I’ll give an easy example.

Like, I’ll sit down and I’ll, and I’ll, like, I’ll have a client email us and ask us questions about like, previously we did marketing, so we do a lot of that in the industry, right? Uh, and, and they’ll ask me questions about like, “What do I do with Google Ads?” Or, “What’s my strategy?” Or, “How do I increase conversions on my website?”

Or whatever else. And I’ll ask it to a team member, and the team member knows the basics of like, I can either go to Claude or I’ve been through the ringer enough that I can tell you like, “Here’s a big blocker.” But they don’t know the industry like I do. And so sitting down and s- and giving that knowledge to them in either a Loom video or a meeting is almost like exhausting.

It’s like I know that’s the way it should be done because then the next 12 times they can do it themselves. But also, I don’t have an hour to sit here and make a Loom video for them, so I’m just gonna do it myself, and that’s, I feel the same way that people are getting trapped- Yeah … into AI is overwhelming.

I hear you, it can do all these things, but like, I don’t know. So it takes- 

[00:10:18] Francois Gouelo: Yeah So the amount of work to set something up doesn’t feel like it’s the right thing to do in that moment even though you know that down the road the outcome is gonna be worth it. Um, and, and, and that’s with anything. With any sort of process change, anything that you have to change in your business, sometimes it just feels like it’s better to just keep doing it the same way because it’s easier or you know, you think it’s easier.

But once you understand or can at least quantify the benefits, I think this is the thing that we’re, we’re missing in hospitality. A lot of people don’t value their time the same way they value the revenue from their business, and for us this was one of the, the, the features we focused on. We don’t just sell time, we also sell you money.

It’s actually so much easier to sell money, free money than it is to sell time ’cause people in hospitality have no idea what it’s worth, uh, ’cause they’re just busy all the time. There’s so many requests and things to do that you’re always going to be busy. Um, so two things I like to focus on is, like, how do I quantify that pain point?

And we did it with time and, and money, so we, we upsell guests. That’s 100% margin, uh, for these gue- for these operators. So if I can sell an early check-in to your vacation rental, you as the operator get to keep 100% of that revenue, and making an extra 50, 60 bucks on every reservation is a huge margin improver.

But then also from a time savings it’s like if I can take 30, 40% of the conversations that you have today and automate them, where can I, where can I use that time and put you towards something else? Um, we had a, a, a company that was working. They had an employee whose only job was really to try and, try and get reviews, Google reviews, so they could get really well indexed.

And what we did was we looked at the entire conversation with guests and we would rank the conversation to be positive or negative, uh, using AI. So was that, the guest happy or not? If they mentioned some sort of issue or something and it didn’t get resolved, we’d mark it as negative. And if they were really happy and they were like, “This is so great, I love this stay,” then we would mark it as positive.

And we then asked every guest that was positive to leave a five-star review, and any guest that was marked as negative to fill out a Google form to say how can we improve the experience. So then we seven next all of their Google reviews because, well, they, they were scared always to ask for Google reviews ’cause they never knew if they were gonna get a five star or one star, and it was just always this kind of big gamble.

So then they got someone on their team whose job was to go through these conversations and try to id- identify a few gaps and, and, and tell those, uh, guests, “Can you leave me a review?” And this is a perfect example where we’re saving time, we’re generating more revenue in a way ’cause we’re getting all those high, um, five-star reviews, so you get more bookings, more visibility and all the things I’m sure Brian, Sam, and Sarah you guys know of, uh, around the importance of those reviews.

So just a small tactical example of the many things that you can do that’ll drive ROI. 

[00:12:58] Brian Searl: Yeah, and it’s not all AI. It’s AI… Like, what you’re talking about could be automated, but it doesn’t necessarily need AI. 

[00:13:05] Francois Gouelo: That’s right. 

[00:13:06] Brian Searl: There are instances that you could build for them. But Sarah, Sarah, how do you think about the, all this from an operator perspective?

[00:13:10] Sarah Krause: Um, well, I think that’s a great idea, and we had actually switched reservation systems, um, ’cause they were offering something like that, but it didn’t turn out to work that way. But, um, that, that, um, automation itself is, is really cool, and I wish we could figure out a way to do that, ’cause we are always looking to get those good Google reviews.

You definitely get the bad ones all the time , you know? Um, so our 1% of guests that are unhappy are always the first ones to complain anywhere. Um, so I love, love all of that. And a- as you know, Brian, we’re always trying to implement any sort of, um, AI automation pro- processes into our business, especially ’cause we have so many of them. 

[00:13:55] Brian Searl: Yeah. I mean, and, and that’s, that’s part of like, I can only imagine with running the beach bar too, in addition to the campgrounds, obviously, are easy. But just the beach bar, uh, where, where do I start? How do I do the things? How do I… Right? 

[00:14:06] Sarah Krause: Yeah. And I, I had actually, um, fed all of our invoices into Chad at some point and said, “You know, get me a par list for the summer.”

So, ’cause a lot of times at the end of the year we have a lot of stuff left over. Um, you know, set up a par list, set up an order guide for my cooks, for the people that are doing the ordering in the bar. And then, um, Chad had actually been like, “You know what? We should make this manager guide.” But, but it was honest with, with me, which was kind of cool ’cause it was like, it’s gonna take us, um, definitely a few days of hard work, so let me know when you’re ready to do it.

But it’s, I’ve all of that stuff, I’m, I’m, I’m in trying, trying to find time to do it. 

[00:14:45] Brian Searl: Yeah. And I think that’s the biggest issue is the time, right? And so obviously there are vendors and suppliers like Francois, right, who offer services that can speed those things up. Mm-hmm. But I think one of the things that we’ve heard from our clients too is like, “Well, where do I start and how do I know that this is the right place to start?

And even if it’s the right place to start, you’re telling me, Brian, ’cause you’re an obsessed AI geek, that this stuff is changing like 17 times every six minutes. So how do I know where I start and invest the time today is gonna be where I should do it tomorrow or next week or next month?” Mm-hmm. Like, we’re telling clients, like, build databases and master brains and like Supabase and PostgreSQL and all that stuff, right?

And they’re like, “What are you talking about? I don’t even know how to upload a file to Chat GPT yet.” And I’m like, “Well, I don’t know where that’s going, but PostgreSQL has been around since like 1980. So like, eh, probably start there, right?” Right. But as like, but how do you, I mean, how do you, how do you land on what do I do first, Sarah?

Is it just the, the thing that’s on fire today, or are you thinking about it like Francois said? 

[00:15:40] Sarah Krause: Um, we’re definitely thinking about it, but, but yes, things that are on fire today are the, are definitely the things that get tackled first. Um, we, we have spoke about processes. I, I think we’ve spoke to you a few times about, um, implementing some things and, and so, you know, in the off-season we’re looking at what can we do and how can we be better and, and what can we implement to do better.

S- you know, things like contactless check-in and, um, o- using the app to register guests and, and all of those things are things that we rolled out in the off-season, but like this time of year with- we’re looking at Building a, you know, right, uh, right now I’m building my seasonal agreements, ’cause those go out on Saturday.

So, um, so we’re already looking to next season and building our seasonal agreements, and then those, figuring out how, ’cause now we will have them sign them online in our reservation system, so figuring out how to automate that correspondence and, and have that all so we’re paperless. So there’s all these different technologies out there that…

But it is a lot when you look at it. You have to do the programming, you have to figure out what you’re doing, and there’s people to help, but the, and sometimes the people that are helping aren’t helpful because they don’t have, they have these amazing big brains and I don’t have you know? So they’re like, “Yeah, it’s just easy.

Just click these things.” And I’m like, “Control, alt, delete, buddy. That’s what I got.” 

[00:17:02] Brian Searl: Well, that’s what I tell operators. Like, I mean, they, they, they, they talk to me like I’m so much smarter than them. I’m not smarter than them. I know different things than you. Mm-hmm. Put me behind a desk at a campground, tell me to run it, I’d look at you like a deer in headlights.

I don’t know what that’s doing, right? Yeah. That’s just, it’s just the one thing that I manage to learn and, and talk about, so, uh, but yeah, you’re right. It is especially hard, I think, for a campground, because you’re taking away half your, like you take away your summer season basically from implementing any of those processes, ’cause you’re running around too much- Yeah

and doing too many things that are important in the moment. Have you tried spiking the drinks twice as hard at the beach bar and then maybe- … people will be a little bit more chill and you can just do some work during the summer? I mean, that seems like- We, we 

[00:17:39] Sarah Krause: did add buckets of booze to the menu, so that does seem to be helping.

[00:17:45] Brian Searl: Don’t… Nothing I give up, nothing I say on the show should ever be taken as advice. I-

Sam, what do you think of all this? I know we want to dig into Guide Time, but just start- 

[00:17:56] Sam Jankovich: Yeah, but no, I, I think this is a great, um, a great topic because at Guide Time, we, w- first of all, you know, being at IBM and IBM creating Watson 20 years ago, we’ve been in the AI game for quite a while, but I’m a big data guy.

And so we built our platform on Salesforce, so we have attribution with all of our data elements on how we can use that data and automate that data through AI. But the way we view it is really by work stream, and I’d say one of our biggest challenging work streams is curating supply of experiences in local markets.

And so we used AI to really, on how we drive automation, to find the outfitters, to onboard them, uh, and, and actually we built an agent that automates, uh, the whole creation of the listing, which, which is really what we’re selling. So, um, and we’ve taken that onboarding time of a particular listing, building it from, like, 45 minutes down to less than five minutes.

So i- it’s, it’s all about scale. And I, and I say one of the other agents w- we’ve, we’ve got in the progress right now is automating the schedule management between the outfitters and the guides when the, when the actual request and the booking comes in to where an outfitter can just go into the agent and see who on his squad’s available, ask a question, it’ll bring up, and he can automatically assign that trip to a guide.

Um, we also wanted to automate on the front end in our marketplace. Instead of going through thousands of listings and trying to find what you want to do, we created an agent called Scout, and you can go into Scout and say, “Hey, I’m going into this market, you know, on these days, and I wanna go do this type of activity.

What do you have?” And Scout will bring up the top six selections. You can just click on it, and you’re, you’re on your way. So, um, but it’s all about work streams. It’s all about data, and you’ve gotta be able to scale ’cause like Francois was saying, you know, uh, there’s not a lot of margins in these business.

So we’ve gotta, you know, we have to scale, and AI has been a great tool for us. 

[00:20:17] Brian Searl: Yeah, I think it’s interesting the way that like, and I know a little bit about GuideTime and I want you to ex- to, to tell our audience a little bit more in a second. But I think it naturally fits into kind of our conversation about where do I start?

What do I do? What do I optimize? Because for an owner operator, and if I’m gonna spit anything out of my mouth that’s wrong about GuideTime, you can just yell at me, right? You can scream in the middle of my conversation and make me stop. Uh, but, so, but from what I understand about it, like it embeds on a website.

It gives people an area of, uh, a list of, again, like there’s more things, right? Yeah. Yeah. With a product, end product for a campground owner. Uh, we work with one of your partner properties, CRR Hospitality. I think they own- Yep … Savannah Lakes RV Resort. So it embeds on the website, gives them a list of area attractions to view.

They click, they can get the inventories, they can buy the tickets, all that stuff. Yeah, 

[00:21:01] Sam Jankovich: they buy the booking. They can schedule the booking right there on the site. 

[00:21:04] Brian Searl: Yeah. Everything, right? So, so I think- One is, is, is looking at stepping back from an owner operator and saying that I could do certain things with AI, I could do certain things with automation, but some things are better off turned over to another company who’s already got certain things like vendor relationships, partners, partnerships, things like that.

But then also like what can AI actually do for me versus what AI actually can’t? And I’ll give you an example. Yeah. I’m more of a shoulder season traveler person, so my girlfriend and I typically go on trips in May and September every year. That’s not because we don’t want to go in the summer, but because it’s less crowded almost all the places we go in May and September.

And if you pick the right places, it’s great. Uh, and but often I will go to Chat GPT or Claude or whatever AI I’m using at the time, built our own AI platform now, uh, with local models. But like if, if you go to that platform and it will, it will tell you, you know, “Hey, I’ve got this great itinerary planned out for you in May,” and because it’s shoulder season, it doesn’t know are the ferries running?

Are you sure they’re running? Are you positive they’re running? Are you 100%? Are you sure the hot spring island in northern Canada that I wanna go to is gonna be open that week? Oh no, it opens the week after I fly out. Like, and so there’s all kinds of nuances there where like you can get a lot of information from AI, but ultimately it helps to have a partner like GuideTime- 

[00:22:15] Sam Jankovich: Yeah

[00:22:16] Brian Searl: that has curated that and plugs into AI or complements it. So what are your thoughts on that? 

[00:22:20] Sam Jankovich: Yeah. You’re, you’re, you’re hitting on something really interesting ’cause when we first started looking AI, our team like wanted to create every scenario possible. Oh, I’ve got someone that wants to book a fishing trip in Michigan, but it’s not quite available, so what other things are available in that market and this and that.

So if you make it too complex, the agent tends to hallucinate and not give you good results. Um, the other thing is, um, we– we’re all about schedule management and data, so in our data model, the scheduling, um… And we really rely on our partners, um, to make sure they keep their schedules up to date, so we aren’t booking things that are not y- accurate or not available.

And we always have in our workflow, you know, on what that approval process looks like. But, uh, the data’s key, and I think the, the, the next big lesson learned is don’t make it so complex or the agent hallucinates and gives you bad results. 

[00:23:19] Brian Searl: I mean, don’t make it so complex, period, is obviously a pretty good- Right

piece of advice for everybody who tries to overcomplicate their website and think about button clicks- Yep … and click-throughs and all the actions and some of that sciency, helpful information. I think when the agents get ahold of it, you’re gonna find your marketing team has a whole lot of time on their hands with nothing to do.

But that’s a whole nother topic that we won’t go into today. Um, but, but, but yeah, just stepping back and thinking about, like, how does the customer experience my product or service? How, how do they… Let’s use Savannah Lakes as an example. Right? How do they go to Savannahlakes.com from wherever my marketing drove them to Savannah Lakes?

How do they experience it? How do they decide, like, this is for me because I have the site type that I want, or the amenities that I want, but then also what can I do in the area? And then I’m seeing something like Guide Time and, like, to your point, it’s showing you a list of available things. I had my hopes and dreams set on, like, I was gonna go to Haida Gwaii in Northwest BC in May, and just the hot spring island that I wanted to go to is just not, like, you couldn’t get there for two weeks before I was to be there.

So I canceled the entire trip. It must’ve been like $7,000, right? I mean, there was nothing that could have made up that difference, but there’s, but that’s a, a unique circumstance. 

[00:24:27] Sam Jankovich: Yeah. 

[00:24:28] Brian Searl: In many other cases, there’s a, “Oh, you can’t do this, but you could do this.” And you go, “Oh, maybe, maybe that fits me better. I even like that.

I didn’t know that existed.” And so having- Right … that kind of thing right there, and sometimes, AI will do that for you, but it’s a whole lot better when it’s a curated local experience, because a lot of these vendors that you’re working with probably don’t have great online presences either, which means they’re not showing up in Chat GPT, like I could’ve or whatever the case might be.

[00:24:50] Sam Jankovich: Right. Yeah, you’ve got- Most … and I would say that, um, the experiences you offer really, it’s a, it’s a really wide cast of a net, because, like, when we started off, we were doing fly fishing in Montana, but now today, you know, besides all your core things of doing cycling, hiking, white water, whatever, um, the, the, the net is really wide and we, we could be doing everything from cow cuddling in Bo- Boulder, Colorado, to zip lining, down to iguana hunting in Florida.

I mean, it’s just… So we- 

[00:25:29] Brian Searl: Define cow, define cow cuddling. Hold on 

[00:25:32] Sam Jankovich: Pardon? 

[00:25:33] Brian Searl: Define cow cuddling. I wanna know what that is. 

[00:25:35] Sam Jankovich: I guess it’s like baby cows, and you can do a tour of ’em, and you cuddle ’em and play with them and whatever. But, but it’s… A- and I think that’s really what makes the big difference. Instead of having some big massive marketplace with all these things, working with the local campsite or RV site on what’s unique and different in my area, and what are the experiences that I want for my guests, and then us going out and curating all those experiences and getting…

And we don’t try to make it too complex. You know, if you have 25, 30 really unique experiences in an area, and then you’ve got multiple outfitters that offer that, so we always have backup, um, that’s key. But it… But I think, you know, really working with them, ’cause it looks very different. I mean, we did some properties with Lark up in Stowe, Maine, and the things they’re doing up there are completely different than other places.

So, um, and that’s what makes yours, makes your property more unique and different. It’s really creating those memories and a memory destination versus just going out and, and saying, “I’m gonna, I’m gonna book a campsite.” 

[00:26:49] Brian Searl: Sarah, I wanna know what you think from your seasonal site perspective, from your four properties, right?

And then, Francois, I wanna know what you think about this from how important that experience is from the, you know, hotel vacation rental side. Because in outdoor hospitality, we’ve been preaching this, at least I have and several other people I know have been preaching this to clients on calls for, you know, months.

I’ve been doing it for years. It’s like you have to build the experience, especially in the RV world where you’re– But most people’s, obviously not Sarah’s park, way upper class above everybody, right? But most people since the ’60s have been building parking lots for RVs. It’s all we’ve been doing. And we need a difference maker, and whether that’s on the property through an amenity or a service or a guest experience or customer service or something else.

And if it’s not there or can’t be there, then it needs to be something through like a curated experience, like a Guide Time. Not that you need Guide Time, but that you need to bring the… Sorry, Sam, just being, you know- No. Oh, 

[00:27:46] Sarah Krause: yeah … 

[00:27:47] Brian Searl: in the middle. Like Guide Time helps, right? But you don’t have to have Guide Time.

Uh, you need to pres- to figure out a way to present to your guests, like why am I the compelling option? Uh, there’s a client we work for, uh, Rock Springs RV Resort, CRR was on my mind. They’re managing them. They’re opening in September. They have, uh, one of the world’s most famous little pie shops, I guess, right outside the corner of their entrance.

So they’re big on that, right? But things like that, why am I coming specifically to you? Why are you the best location for me? And if it’s not your amenities, your guest service, whatever else, obviously we can all offer different customer service, but if it’s not something on the property, then what is it?

What makes me different? I’m closer to this national park or this hiking trail or this whatever. Sarah, how does that impact your park, but then also like specifically with long-term guests, ’cause I feel like that’s a different type of what they’re looking for than a short-term 

[00:28:37] Sarah Krause: Uh, absolutely. The, I mean, the, the, speaking of the long-term guest, if we have really great amenities at all of our parks that most of our transient campers would never leave the park.

Like, they’re just coming there specifically for those amenities. But our seasonal campers, they’re there all the time, so how do you get them not wore out on the things you offer, and then, and keep them as seasonals by you? Because why wouldn’t they go back to being transient campers or change different campgrounds every season too?

So, um, all of those things are definitely important, so you definitely wanna know what is around you and what is happening. I, I’m, look, we’re fortunate that in central Wisconsin there is a ton of other things to do besides hang out at our parks, not that we don’t want you to hang out with us. But, um, you know, there, there’s definitely things to see, different things to do, and, and you definitely have to, um, we have an, a partner app that says things to do in the area so that people know they can go do the Green Circle Trail, which is a big bike trail here in Stevens Point, or, um, go visit, uh, War Memorial in Marion.

So those are all very important. Whether you’re like us where we’re a destination campground and most of our guests don’t leave, or if you are a campground with nothing to offer inside except for a campsite and maybe a camp store, then you definitely wanna emphasize on all the things around you, especially to market to get those campers to come into you 

[00:30:05] Brian Searl: François, how do you, how do you look at this from the vacation rental hotel side of things?

Because I think it’s different than outdoor hospitality because you’re not… You’re more of, and I’m gonna put words in your mouth, you tell me if I’m wrong, I’m talking about your industry, not your company. But you’re more of a like, “I’m the place to stay and, and I’m not adding like extra amenities to my hotel lobby

[00:30:28] Francois Gouelo: other than the standard stuff we find everywhere,” right? It’s funny because this is– First of all, this is a subject I love to talk about when it comes to experiences and services, um, ’cause I think it’s such an underappreciated vertical of hospitality, and whether it’s hotels, campgrounds, or even vacation rentals.

I, I could see how important it is in, uh, campgrounds, how it needs to be front and center in so many ways, ’cause I think one of you guys mentioned like if you’re just a parking lot, then there’s no interest for people to come back. If you have those amenities and you have more reasons for people to come, then you’re not gonna be maybe competing with other co-campgrounds as much, or you’re just gonna get more repeat guests.

I think the vacation rental and the hotel, uh, industry has not had enough of a focus on experiences as it should, uh, because the experience is the property, and that’s wrong. It’s wrong in so many ways. A lot of times people book a property because they’re wanting to do something in the area, whether it’s watch a FIFA game, whether it’s go for a NASCAR whatever, or, uh, you know, there’s a specific tour, they have a business conference, you name it.

There’s always a reason why they’re staying beyond the property itself. Now, in the ultra-luxury villa, I get it. The, the reason is the villa and the reason is all the amenities that come with the villa, but that’s a whole different category in and of itself, and even they have a set of services, uh, that go beyond, um, you know, the, the property itself.

So I think the problem I see in vacation rentals is how do you adopt this, and how do you not create a second job for yourself, where now you are a vacation rental manager and a personal concierge for every single guest that goes through those doors? Um, and this is one area where we’ve spent a lot of time on.

That’s why I’d love to chat with you, Sam, on, on potentially partnering here. Um, we integrate with the, the big platforms, the Viator’s, GetYourGuides, the sort of huge marketplaces that are impossible to scour through. And last year we launched this product called Enzo Experiences, where we basically just provided a white label of all those different experiences to, to the guests, and the booking rate was really low And then we created a workflow, an automation that came on behalf of the property managers, the, the, the ones running the property saying, “Hey, I picked 10 items or 10 experiences for you that I think would really work for you.”

And suddenly people started booking. So then we were like, “Okay, hold up. But what, what if we made it a bit more personalized? What if we actually curated some of these services? What if we, what if we try to figure out which ones should go where instead of just providing a menu?” Because if you go to Viator or any of these platforms and you look up Barcelona, for example, there’s over 50 tours of the Sagrada Familia.

If you go to Toronto on Viator and you look up Toronto, there’s at least 60 different Niagara Falls tours. Now, let me tell you something about Toronto. Niagara Falls is not in Toronto. It’s, it’s away from… It’s three hours away from Toronto, but all the tour guides, uh, of, of Niagara Falls, they wanted to get more search visibility, so they picked Toronto as their city.

It’s a completely different city. It’s a completely different place. Um, so being able to curate this, and, and what I realized from all this was the, the local experts are the operators, are the ones such as yourself, Sarah, and any of the, the customers we work with that are vacation rental operators. They know their markets so much better.

And this is one of the reasons why I’m here in Alabama. I have learned more about Ala- managing vacation rentals in Alabama than I could have reading any blog posts, review, Reddit forum or anything. This has been like a ultimate crash course for me to, to learn about, you know, parking passes in vacation rentals in Alabama is the biggest mess you could ever imagine.

Uh, and I just discovered how it all works. So my point is, I think the operators are the ones who understand their markets the best. I think there’s available experiences, tours, and activities that are– s- there’s too much inventory, too many options out there to choose from. Connecting the two is how you convert those upsells, and it’s how you make the trip more memorable.

It’s how you get to get a commission on it, make more money, frankly. Um, and you give people a reason to stay beyond the stay itself, and I think that’s, that’s what hospitality’s all about. So yeah, I love this subject. 

[00:34:38] Brian Searl: And I think one of that, one of those answers, and Sam, do you have something to say? Go 

[00:34:42] Sam Jankovich: ahead.

No, no, I’m fine. Uh, 

[00:34:44] Brian Searl: so like I think Sam’s got time is one of those options. I think, but I think what we’re in for is like a really nice treat for the consumer going forward in how AI evolves. And Francois, you probably know this as well as I do, I’m not saying clear if Sam don’t, but like we’re both maybe kind of geeks in, in AI, uh, given our companies and where things are going.

Uh, but I think AI quickly goes to way, way, way more personalization in that you can already connect your Gmail and your photos and your calendar and all that to Google’s AI mode. You can connect way more to Chat GPT and Claude and Gemini than you can to that alone right now. I think there becomes a point where AI becomes proactive, where in February in, in our industry, in the outdoor hospitality industry, it’s like, “Okay, hey, it’s time to go camping.

Uh, where would you– where do you wanna go this year?” Or maybe it doesn’t even say that, maybe it just knows based on your emails and what you’re talking about and all the privacy things that are gonna probably get even worse as we go forward. But it just says, “Hey, it’s time to book your camping trip.

Instead of waiting for you, here’s something I’ve selected for you. It’s in North Texas because I know you like heat but not too much heat, and it’s near a river because I know you like water, and it’s near shade, and it’s in the exact dates I know you can get off of work ’cause I’ve accessed your calendar and your kids are at school.”

And it’s just, and it’s just gonna present you with an option, and it’s gonna give you an itinerary of two to three examples of what you should do. And in 99% of cases, people are just gonna be like, “Yep, you know me way better than I do. Book that.” I can’t imagine like probably me because I’m so… is anal retentive a word I can say on a podcast?

Like specific about when I tr- when I trip plan, right? I just wanna pick everything. It’s part of what I enjoy doing, and so I can’t imagine handing that over to an AI. But at some point you’re gonna get to the point where like people, like nobody’s gonna say no to that. Yeah. Like who’s gonna be like, “No, I think I’m smarter than you, AI.

I, I want this instead.” 

[00:36:25] Francois Gouelo: Yeah. And, and finding the right time too for those offers, right? ‘Cause it’s not, you know, one of the things we’ll sell is an early check-in. I love this product because, well, first off, it doesn’t work if you sell it at checkout. I’ll tell you that right now. This is a quick little tip.

If you try to sell an early check-in at checkout, doesn’t work. Um, but you know, if you send the message a few days before, the right time, and things like that. But then there’s also data that tells you this guest is 100% going to pay for the early check-in. I’ll give you an example. We have a property manager in Iceland.

Any flight that lands in the morning is landing from the US or vice versa. Anyone coming from the US is landing in the morning. So if you’re gonna land in the morning, you’re coming from the US or Canada, you arrive in the morning of c- and your check-in’s at 4:00 PM, of course you’re gonna pay for an early check-in for 25, 30, 40 bucks ’cause what else are you gonna do?

And if not, what are you gonna do? Luggage storage. So that’s the second option. So we start collecting that data as part of our verification process for guests, which is like, “Hey, where are you from?” And, uh, what’s your purpose of trip? And, and different data points that make it more friendly, but then actually behind the scenes it’s about, well, if he has a plus one number, he’s Canadian or American, so let’s sell him that early check-in proactively and tell them, “Hey, we can give you a free early check-in for 3:00 PM or a paid one for 12:00,” uh, and make that available, and prioritize him over maybe the French guy, and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll say that since I’m French, who’s coming in just to, to, you know, visit and is gonna be landing at 7:00 PM instead, and won’t even be checking in early.

So that data, collecting the information and actually being able to use it is how you’re gonna be able to drive personalization, and I think that that’s, that’s where the world’s headed, so I’m excited for it more than anything. Um- 

[00:37:59] Brian Searl: Yeah, and there’s a balance between being creepy and being helpful, right?

[00:38:03] Francois Gouelo: I don’t mind the creepy. 

[00:38:06] Brian Searl: Most people don’t, like, honestly. Yeah. We’ve seen that, especially in the United States, we’ve seen that, and I live in Canada, but it’s… We have a few laws up here, but it’s basically the same way in that, like, there’s really a free-for-all for everything, whereas Europe is more locked down with GDPR and stuff like that.

But, like, just the, the ability for you to- Take that stuff and aggregate it and collate it into an experience that you want. If you’re using it in the right way, you’re serving your guests better. And as long as it remains in the background and the tech isn’t in front of everybody’s face, and they have a choice whether to use it or not, it just creates a better experience if you do it correctly.

[00:38:41] Francois Gouelo: Yeah, 100%. Sarah, do you use anything to, like, personalize guest stays like that in, uh, campgrounds? I wonder how that works in the campground specific, like you collect information about guests and what they’re planning on doing during their stay? 

[00:38:54] Sarah Krause: Um, not, not too spe- specifically. Like, we ha- we put in notes if somebody says it’s a birthday or, you know, and some sort of flag.

But after listening to you talk, I was already like, “So what kind of text or email can I automate to get ages of everybody traveling and then send them suggested activities um, to do while they’re here?” So yeah, that’s sparked a whole lot- Yeah … for my campers. 

[00:39:19] Brian Searl: You can automate that and run that all through AI.

[00:39:22] Sarah Krause: Yeah. 

[00:39:22] Brian Searl: You just, you take the, uh, you use RMS, is that what you use? 

[00:39:26] Sarah Krause: Yes. 

[00:39:27] Brian Searl: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So you just take, okay, RMS, Campspot, Newbook, whatever you use, right? You, you take the e-commerce data that you get from the checkout window and then you automatically use that as a trigger to send them a form to fill out, then you take the form fields from that, merge it with the dates they’re staying in Campspot, run it all through AI, and give them a guide to everything they need.

And then you send them a SAM to actually book the stuff. 

[00:39:45] Sarah Krause: Yeah. Love that. 

[00:39:49] Brian Searl: This is 

[00:39:51] Sarah Krause: just purely for us today. We’re just e- educating ourselves. 

[00:39:55] Brian Searl: That’s fine. Like, we’re edu- you know, we’re educating the audience by doing that too, so. So Sam, what does the future look like for GuideTime? If you, if you look at, as you s- step back and look at how you’re automating processes to make yourself more efficient, like I think we’re, we’re headed toward a world where the AI picks everything for you.

But I also think we’re headed toward a world like Francois said, where we’re going to need the integrations with that AI from platforms li- like either a GuideTime or a Aviator or something like that, that tells the AI what’s available. It’s like a, we’re going to talk about UCP, universal commerce protocol through Google, that’s TBD.

Uh, but like just the, presenting the AI with this is available on this date at this price, here’s what it’s about, that kind of stuff, right? So it’s not gonna lie and say that a ferry is available today. Yeah. It’s not. So I think that’s where we head. If, if I’m right or many of the interactions switch to voice, which I think is naturally gonna happen, ’cause who wants to sit down at a keyboard and type when you can talk it to- Yep

in complete sentences? At that point, where does GuideTime go? 

[00:40:53] Sam Jankovich: Well, you gotta be care- but you gotta be careful because there is a human element, uh, definitely, ’cause that’s what we’re doing. We’re providing experiences for people and, and memories. Um, and we try to use AI anywhere that we have a, a process that we can fix and do it at scale.

Um, but then you have the human element. You know, like these outfitters and guides, we need to vet them. We need to talk to them. We’ve gotta make sure that they are who they are, and that we’re, that experience that we’re providing for the customer, that we’ve vetted these people, we know they’re licensed, they’re insured, they’re, there’s a process.

And a lot of that we, we do online and we, we scale that. But there is a human element, and there’s always the chance when a booking, something they have to cancel or whatever, where there’s a human element there too. But, um, you know, I, I’d say that, you know, I think five years from now, um, every campground, every RV site, any outdoor boutique will have some sort of an experience platform.

Uh, and, and so we’re trying to, and I think we kinda saw the wave Starting about three years ago when my old employer, Starwood, uh, announced the Field & Stream brand that they were gonna build outdoor boutiques in 130 locations across the country. Um, and then we saw Marriott with the outdoor collection and we saw, you know, Auto Pet Camp and all these other things popping up, but it’s there and it’s experience led, um, and people are picking their destinations based on experiences.

So I think we’re just kind of at the beginning of this, but in five years, uh, it will be just part of the overall experience on how people choose and book, you know, what destinations they’re gonna go to. 

[00:42:48] Brian Searl: So let me be more specific, and I’m just gonna push you a little bit, right? Like how does- Okay … how does Guide Time fit into that ecosystem is specifically what I’m wondering.

I’m not, I, I’m not saying I believe it’s unnecessary, ’cause I don’t. 

[00:43:00] Sam Jankovich: Yeah. 

[00:43:00] Brian Searl: What I’m asking you is, is how do you fit into a world where the consumer no longer visits the website because the AI- Yeah … is doing it for them, and the co- and/or the consumer is talking to voice? How does Guide Time fit? Because the human element is important.

I’m not arguing to get rid of- Yeah … the human element either, but there’s gonna be a lot of people as AI gets better and better. One of the earliest examples I’ve, I’ve gave is I was on LinkedIn, we released our AI phone agent like two and a half years ago, the first version of it, and some lady commented on my LinkedIn post and she’s like, “I will never wanna talk to a robot on the phone.”

And my response was like, “As soon as you call your cable company and they can, the AI can solve your problem in eight and a half seconds versus transferring you for two hours to nine different people, you’ll never wanna talk to a person again.” 

[00:43:45] Francois Gouelo: Amen. Try calling Rogers in Canada and come back to me and, and let me know if you wanna, you don’t wanna talk to an AI. 

[00:43:50] Brian Searl: That, but it has to be said the right way. So thoughts on that? 

[00:43:52] Sam Jankovich: Uh, yeah, I think that’s a great question. I think, um, there’s different ways to skin the cat of what we’re providing.

You can go get your local providers and outfitters and do it yourself. You can go hook up with some of the big booking platforms like Viator and all those. Uh, but what we provide is that embedded experience layer totally in the booking journey of the site to where it’s all white labeled and it looks like it’s your experience, but we provide all the, the booking, the payments, the collections, the, you know, s- cancellations, you name it, and it’s all a turnkey solution built on the platform, but the platform is tailored and curated based on that local lodge or site or whatever, so those experiences are just not something generic where we just, we offer the core six things everywhere.

We’re curating on a local and providing that local experience. 

[00:44:54] Brian Searl: Yeah. I still think it’s important, I just think you end up plugging into like a Chat GPT as maybe an API or something. 

[00:45:00] Sam Jankovich: Yeah. 

[00:45:01] Brian Searl: Then you get to do that. 

[00:45:03] Sam Jankovich: Yeah. That, that, that’s it’s definitely a possibility. I, and I would say also- 

[00:45:09] Brian Searl: Eventually you get that idea that makes you a billionaire

[00:45:10] Sam Jankovich: Oh, yeah, I love it. I love it. Um, one of my last projects at IBM was with a major, um, airline provider, um, and they built a pilot around the travel of the future. And it’s right what you were talking about, Brian, where they, the pilot was with this air- you know, this airline, and they partnered up with all their partners, whether it’s rental cars, hotels, experiences, you name it.

And you could go into the agent and do exactly what you’re talking about, saying, “I’ve got a family of five. I’m going to Dallas, Texas on this week, and we wanna do these things. We wanna stay in this kind of a place,” whatever. And the agent would come back and give them results of a standard, a gold, and a platinum package of what they could just pick the package and book the whole experience.

But, um, so that, you know, that’s where things are going, for sure. 

[00:46:06] Brian Searl: Yeah, I’m excited for this, and I think Francois is probably excited for this, and I think the rest of everybody who runs a business is like, “Oh my God, this is terrifying. Please stop.” Uh, because I think it’s gonna be fascinating to be able to have a, an agent dynamically compile a package.

Like, you’re gonna have to just decouple everything and let the agent couple it back together- Yeah … uh, to the point where you’re gonna give a personalized experience to every single person, both, both with experiences and the checkout process, and even the rate, to the point where you’re like, “I wanna bid higher for this customer, so I wanna lower my rate by $2 or high- raise it by three because I know that they’ll probably leave a mess in the hotel room,” or whatever else, right?

I think that that’s fascinating to build. 

[00:46:46] Sam Jankovich: Yeah. 

[00:46:46] Brian Searl: Uh, but it’s gonna be a lot of work, for sure. 

[00:46:49] Sam Jankovich: Yeah, for sure. Well, you need the data for sure, and you need the partnerships that you can provide, you know, uh, the experiences with. Um, but the data, you know, as long as you got the data and you’ve got things designed where you’ve got true attribution of what you’re gonna serve up based on what personas, um, it, it’s all there.

It’s just, it, it’s all there for the making, for sure 

[00:47:16] Brian Searl: Yep. Gonna be exciting. Sarah, what do you think about this? Are you excited to jump into this? You gonna start tomorrow? 

[00:47:22] Sarah Krause: In two- 

Hmm. I do like the idea of, of like vetting and, and bidding for your customers. That sounds like like, yes, that’s hot person, sounds like they’re gonna trash a cabin, higher the rate.

Love that. If we can work on that sooner, that would be really great. We, we are lo- I think we need someone to pass a law We are just loving all the… 

[00:47:47] Brian Searl: What’s that? I wonder if we could pass a law to prevent us from doing that at some point, like discriminating against guests. 

[00:47:52] Sarah Krause: Probably. Yeah. 

[00:47:54] Brian Searl: Yeah. It’d ruin all our fun. But we’ll do it until we can not do it anymore.

Go ahead, sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off. 

[00:48:02] Sarah Krause: Oh, I, we, we just, we love implementing anything that’s going to help any of our processes, and at, at the end of the day, make us more money, whether it’s bringing in more campers or getting them to use our amenities or buy our things or somebody else’s things or whatever it is.

It, it’s all just really great and, and super fun to play with all of these different things that can build your business. 

[00:48:27] Brian Searl: If you, Sarah, and I just have a question for you, like if, if you’re, if you step back and look at this, let’s pretend you were in, in my shoes as a geek or Fran Swah’s shoes as a geek and you knew all of these things were changing, and we’ve talked about like .0001% of the ways that things are gonna change in the next probably five years.

Uh, and then you got 10 years, 15 years with robotics and flying cars and everything else that’s coming down the pipeline, right? If you’re an operator, and let’s pretend you’re, you were in my shoes and you believed all the things that I believe or the many people that are smarter than me believe and you talk, research, learn about on YouTube, what do you do first as an operator?

Like I know we talked about making a list, but what we’re talking about in my mind is the most overwhelming transition of any business that’s ever happened in the history of forever, and that’s probably an understatement by about 265,000 times. So how do you avoid getting overwhelmed? How do you step back and say like, “Okay, I believe all this stuff is happening, but like today is today and tomorrow’s tomorrow and next week’s next week. I gotta do something, but how do I do this smoothly?” 

[00:49:35] Sarah Krause: For sure. Well, y- uh, I think just like any other revolutionary thing that’s happened, um, you have to be open-minded and be able to evolve as a business owner. You know, if you, if you were a farmer and all of a sudden everybody wanted soy and almond milk, then you probably thought about what else can I do besides having a milk- milking cows, you know?

That, that’s… So you’ve got to look into all the things and how they can help your processes. And that, and, and, and the great thing about the camping industry is, you know, we, we made a little TikTok that said, you know, “AI thinks they can take our job.” There’s always gonna be some sort of human, um, part of camping.

You can’t take that away from camping. It, it, you couldn’t have a robot out there doing things and people would not enjoy camping as much. In, in the case of 

[00:50:27] Brian Searl: your parks, I agree, and in the case of true outdoor hospitality where the experience on the property matters, I agree. I think if you’re building a parking lot like many RVs are, you can easily do an RV self-park model and get away with it.

But generally I agree with you. 

[00:50:42] Sarah Krause: Oh, it, it, oh yeah, and, and we’ve l- looked into that model of RV, RV parks where people are, are pulling in and, and like we have a license plate reader at one of our campgrounds. So w- after arrival time, it reads its license plate, opens the gate. They could go right to their site.

At d- a departure time it reads their license plate and they pull out, and we could be completely hands-off with them, and that model of an RV park is very attractive if that’s what you, you want to do. That’s it. Um, yeah. And so, um, using those sort of processes, but y- if in, in the destination park where we are and, and we, uh, or a seasonal park where we are, um, processes to add implementing AI and, um, where you pick to start is for us our focus is just giving us more time to either do other jobs or actually take some time off.

So everything that we look at for AI, like our, we implemented a, a phone, um, answering service now, um, the pre-check-in, all of that stuff, is solely to buy us more time, whether it’s time off or time to do other jobs or, uh, or less staffing because right now it, it, it is a world where it is very difficult to fully staff your campground too.

So that’s where we focus and that’s where I would imagine most campground owners or managers are gonna focus the implementing AI, is to get themselves whether more time off or more time to do the things they wanna do as far as their business goes, or have less staff on, on there. So just pick those things and figure it out.

[00:52:30] Brian Searl: Yeah, little by little. That’s all you gotta do, but start now, uh, probably. Should’ve started a couple years ago. Start now. Never too late. 

[00:52:37] Sarah Krause: Don’t start in a couple years. Just, just jump right in, whatever it is. But one of the big things I really enjoyed having AI help us was, was we did not, um, we, we… I read Traction and decided we needed processes for everything, which we had kind of fun pr- some processes, but nothing really, really great.

So that was the focus of my winter, was just implementing Traction, i- i- implementing processes, and AI was huge for all of that because it helps you think outside of the box of, and make all of that stuff happen. So if you don’t have processes, and that goes back to what Francois said about having all of your stuff written down so people know how to…

Because AI can’t help you if it doesn’t know your processes. So that’s a great place to start and a great place to have AI help you start. 

[00:53:29] Brian Searl: All right, let’s spend the last few minutes of the show just, uh, we’ll give everybody a chance to be the host for a second for one question. So Sarah, do you have a question for Francois or Sam?

[00:53:38] Sarah Krause: Um, I, I do. So, um, Sam, when you’re building these, the, you are reaching out to properties and saying, “Hey, we’ve got these guides around you. Let us integrate int- in- in- integrate into your website,” and then they will be taken over to your product. Is that kind of what I caught from all of that? 

[00:54:01] Sam Jankovich: Yeah. It’s, um…

Well, first of all, number one, it’s a, it’s a revenue share model so that this is not an expense. So it is a, uh, it’s a revenue share model. So, you know, a property that only has maybe 50 sites on it at a 50% occupancy with 15% conversion rate could, could make upwards of over $20,000 a year just on, on that alone.

Um, but yes, we, we have a platform that automates the whole curation of experiences. We have a marketing automation tool that we reach out to all the providers across what experiences we wanna offer, and we do all the onboarding, and then we handle everything from end to end. It’s, there’s no administration by the campsite team.

We handle all the bookings, cancellations, payments, processing, you name it. And at the end of the month, we give a, a revenue share back to the property. We don’t want this to feel like it’s an expense, but to be ancillary revenue that it really gives the property some upside. And obviously at the end of the day, a memorable experience for the destination.

They’re gonna remember you by the experiences they had there, not just the campsite. 

[00:55:16] Brian Searl: All right, Sam, your turn. Any question for Francois or Sarah? 

[00:55:20] Sam Jankovich: Yeah, I, I had a question for Francois. Very interested if you could elaborate just a little bit more on When you guys were working with Viator and some of the big booking platforms and it was kind of generic, but then you got into specifically like curating like 10, you know, experiences, whatever, um, what was the, what was the key to success in, in what you saw in that transition?

[00:55:48] Francois Gouelo: Two things. One, um, letting the local operators be the curators, and pick and choose what they wanted while informing them of, “By the way, if you click the add all button, it’s probably not gonna work. Like actually take the time to add the ones that make sense. Don’t click the add all button.” So doing a bit of work on that front.

Um, and, um, and then the second one, which I would say is, you know, unique to what we’ve built, is we decide where to put them throughout the guest journey. Yeah. Uh, and that’s something that y- we couldn’t give local operators control on because, um, you’d wanna sprinkle it kinda everywhere and you’d wanna be, “Oh, let me show the, the guests, you know, some items here and let me show them there,” and actually we want the guest to follow a very specific path so that there’s minimal friction throughout the check-in process, especially in vacation rentals ’cause it’s not like a hotel where you show up and you just kind of expect that there’s a front desk, you know, and you’ll be able to check in.

In vacation rentals you want the information a bit ahead of time and you wanna make sure when you get to the property you know how to get in. There’s no front desk that you can communicate with. So on that part it was really about us, um, curating at the right place at the right time, so we have a few specific CTAs throughout our platform.

W- we, we have two parts to our platform. One is messaging, inbox, communicate across different channels, SMS, email, WhatsApp, Airbnb, Booking, VRBO, all in one place with AI to, to assist and, and respond. And the second part, which is my personal favorite part, called the boarding pass. Mm-hmm. And it’s just like a boarding pass for your flight but for your vacation rental or hospitality business, and if you remember- Um, you go to an airport and you would check in, you could go to the gate and you…

or the, the little kiosks and you can get your boarding pass there. Well now, if you go to that kiosk, for most of them are gonna look at you like, “Just go on your phone.” Like, “Why are you here in line asking for a boarding pass? Like, just do it on your phone.” So that is the concept of the boarding pass, and really just like a boarding pass for your flight, there are steps that you need to take first, and then we’ll sprinkle at the right time throughout those steps the correct upsells, and that’s something we kinda mapped out, uh, that, that works really well.

So I’m happy to chat, Sam, and see if there’s things we can do together on that front. 

[00:57:59] Sam Jankovich: Yeah. 100%. I look forward to it. Thank you. 

[00:58:01] Francois Gouelo: My pleasure. 

[00:58:02] Brian Searl: I just want to say that I’m only at the boarding pass kiosk because WestJet’s app sucks. 

[00:58:06] Francois Gouelo: See, I’m a big Air Canada fan. I love Air Canada’s app, and so there’s actually a lot of inspiration of our boarding pass from Air Canada, but don’t tell them I said that because I don’t wanna get sued or something.

[00:58:20] Brian Searl: I still got my

[00:58:20] Sarah Krause: I owe them money.

[00:58:22] Brian Searl: Which partners with WestJet and I’m in Calgary. So anyway.

[00:58:25] Francois Gouelo: Fair.

[00:58:25] Brian Searl: Uh, Francois, do you have a question for Sarah or Sam b- and then we’ll wrap up the show? 

[00:58:28] Francois Gouelo: Yeah. I mean, first off, Sarah, I’d love to, to chat after the show because I, I don’t know enough about campgrounds, and it feels like there’s a lot of nuances, differences, but similarities with some of the things that we do in vacation rentals.

So I’d love to understand a bit more how that works. Um, but I guess one of the questions is like how do you prioritize, uh, bookings across different channels with campgrounds? Like, what is… Do you get more bookings? This is gonna be a first question. Do you get more bookings from various channels, or is it almost all from your own booking website?

[00:58:58] Sarah Krause: It’s almost all from our own booking website. Um, we had implemented Airbnb a few years ago and, um, we’ve… There’s a few other campground specific ones. I think Spot Tonight we’ve tried, and, um, there might be m- some others. And, uh, the reservation system that we use, RMS, is really good about integrating with OTAs, so we did try giving them a whirl.

But, but honestly, most of them come direct through our website. Um, and so that’s just the way we, we grab all of those bookings. Um, I just pulled up something yesterday. Most of our bookings, new bookings, I would say probably 70% of our new bookings come from our social media posts. So, um, we just have a really great-

[00:59:42] Francois Gouelo: Got it

[00:59:42] Sarah Krause: social media game. Yeah. 

[00:59:44] Francois Gouelo: I was gonna ask ’cause this is the one thing the vacation rental operators dream they had. Most are at 70, 80% Airbnb, 70, 80% VRBO, et cetera, which costs you 10, 15, 20%, uh, or at least it’s 10, 15, 20% more expensive. So I was gonna ask you as a follow-up question, like, what’s, what’s the strategy that actually drives the most bookings right now for you?

But you said social media is the- 

[01:00:05] Sarah Krause: Social media … 

[01:00:05] Francois Gouelo: the, the driver. Yeah. Is it TikTok? Are you doing dances to get people booking? Um, 

[01:00:10] Sarah Krause: we use the… Yeah, we, we, we have done dances. Yep. Um, r- last week we created a video. We have a guy that works for us, his name is Bernie, and, um, so we s- are now starting a series, um, recreating scenes from Weekend at Bernie’s.

So my… Two of my guys are dragging around my dead Bernie. I… We just do dumb stuff. But, but yes- I love it … it, you know, we, we focus and, and show off of all the great things that are at all of our properties. Um, and same thing with the beach bar and, and really that we just get a lot of attention from those places.

So we’re pretty fortunate. Not everybody has got a great, um, social media- Um, platform to work with. So- 

[01:00:53] Francois Gouelo: And last question. I know you told me one question, Brian. Here I am taking over your whole show, but, um, one follow-up question would be, like, how many repeat guests? Like, from those social media posts, you g- you- you’ve got that, that sort of, uh, top of the funnel coming from marketing.

Do you know how many of them come back to your places and, and book again? And is it a big majority? 

[01:01:12] Sarah Krause: It is a big majority, yeah. Okay. We, we could probably get some pretty firm numbers from the reservation system, but I would say well over 60%, um-

[01:01:20] Francois Gouelo: Wow …

[01:01:20] Sarah Krause: turn into repeat guests. Wow. Yep. Yeah. 

[01:01:23] Francois Gouelo: That’s awesome. 

[01:01:24] Sarah Krause: Yep.

[01:01:24] Brian Searl: But I think a lot of that, too, is specific to Sarah’s property and audience, given that they’re, they’re longer term, seasonal, in Central Wisconsin. Not a lot of… There are com- competition around you. There’s lots of campgrounds in Wisconsin, but you’re not the overnight who’s gonna maybe choose a different place, and so social media is a different kind of content stream for you than it would be for a transient park, right?

[01:01:45] Sarah Krause: The, the, the other big part is, is we’re not seeing a lot of longterm travelers. Like, like, e- pretty much everybody that comes to… I would say maybe 5% of our campers are from out of state. So, you know, the people that are coming to our campground are also going to our competition 30 miles down the road the next weekend, going to our competition.

They’re not really our competitors, but, you know, they’re, they’re visiting every campground in Wisconsin and o- and they’re not going… Th- this is what their summer, their whole summer consists of, is going from campground to campground. So th- they’re just going to every destination park or what- whatever it may be.

Uh, most of our customers are, our campers are not coming from maybe Illinois, but they’re not flying from Florida to go to River’s Edge, you know? Does that make sense? 

[01:02:34] Brian Searl: Yeah. All right. Let’s wrap it up real quick. Uh, Sarah, final thoughts, and then where can they learn more about your campground if they’re interested, or campgrounds or whichever you… campground Manpower, whatever you wanna promote. 

[01:02:43] Sarah Krause: Uh, you can definitely learn more about our campgrounds at cdhospitalitywisconsin.com. Uh, and, um, we have all kinds of exciting stuff, so if you’re in Wisconsin, we do have s- a big rock fest at the end of August. Come check that out. Uh, and then, um, th- this was awesome.

I love hearing… I’m a- an AI geek, too. You know that. And, and hearing ways to implement stuff into our business from you guys, uh, was great today. I think it was awesome. 

[01:03:09] Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Sarah. Appreciate it. Uh, Sam, final thoughts and where can they learn more about you? 

[01:03:13] Sam Jankovich: Yeah. This, well, first of all, Brian, thank you so much for inviting us to be here today.

And I would just say if you are looking into offering outdoor experiences, um, don’t wait, do it now because, um, there is a process that it takes to get everything curated and up online so don’t wait till next season. But I think it’s, uh… I’m really excited for just the outcomes and the great experiences we’re providing out there and, and, and the partnering opportunities.

This has been an amazing call just listening to Sarah and Francois. That’s just, just, there’s unlimited opportunities of what we can do to make a big difference out there. So thank you. 

[01:03:52] Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Sam. Last but not least, Francois. 

[01:03:55] Francois Gouelo: Yeah, I mean, super eye-opening. I didn’t know enough about campgrounds, uh, and now I’m, like, opening up my whole research.

I’m gonna have so many ideas. I’m probably gonna go back to my team being like, “Guys, we’re opening a new vertical.” And they’re gonna get mad at me. Uh, but, uh, no, if you guys wanna learn more about Enzo Connect and what we do and how we help hospitality businesses, just go to enzoconnect.com. A really big pleasure of, of mine to, to learn more about what you guys do, what you do, Sam, what you do, Sarah and, and Brian.

So I’m gonna do a lot of research tonight. I think I, I won’t be able to sleep tonight as I, I read more about how this industry evolves into outdoor hospitality as well. Um, really appreciate it. 

[01:04:34] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thank you, guys, for being here for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. If you’re not sick and tired of hearing it from me, I will be on my other live podcast in, uh, about 55 minutes with Scott Bahr.

We’re gonna be talking about data and we’re gonna do an exercise on cost-cutting for campgrounds which is even more important as we deal with inflation and whatever’s happening in the Middle East and causing us all to maybe panic and not sleep as well like Francois. Uh, so we’ll see how that goes. If not, we will see you next week in another episode of MC Fireside Chats.

Take care, guys. Appreciate you. 

[01:05:01] Francois Gouelo: Thank you. Thank you.