Strong Communities: The Key to Growth with Jodi Cleer of I Love Vacations

In this episode of The Vacation Rental Show: How We Grow , host Lynell Gordon is at the Streamline Summit 2023, where she is joined by Jodi Cleer Jodi Cleer of I Love Vacations . Together, they discuss how to manage fast-paced growth, touching on whether it’s a good idea and how community relationships and technology can help with it. They also touch on the heartwarming spirit of hospitality.

Jodi is Chief Marketing Officer at I Love Vacations, where she is responsible for developing and executing the brand’s marketing strategy. She is also President at TAG Social Consulting, offering help with social media marketing to sole-proprietorship and corporate businesses, specifically those in the Hospitality and Direct Sales Industries.

This episode is sponsored by Streamline.

Handling Fast-Paced Growth

In only four years, I Love Vacations has almost tripled in size.?

It’s impressive.

So, how have they done it?

Through community engagement and technology investment.

On the technology side, they have made sure to invest in software that helps them hit their goals, especially on the marketing side. After all: if you have good marketing, you will get more interest - and then grow!

What’s interesting is their approach to community engagement.

Although they have headquarters in Park City, Utah, I Love Vacations has smaller operations across several other smaller towns. Jodi explains:?

"We have local offices for all five territories, but we just run accounting, marketing, and sales out of the Park City office, and then all the other ones are our inspectors, maintenance, and general managers, those are all run locally, so we're kind of nationally local.”

Each operations team is integrated into their local community simply by hiring locals for the roles. This has helped prevent the “outsider” stigma that can come from being a vacation rental business and thus helped the company grow.

Although I Love Vacations has successfully navigated this period of fast-paced growth, Jodi advises against trying to grow too quickly. She says:

"You can't grow too quickly because then you start to run into other issues.”

She has seen benchmarks that often come with growing pains – between 40 to 60 properties, around 120, and then again at 250.

For each roadblock you encounter, Jodi advises building systems and processes to help, something which I Love Vacations has done in every territory they operate in.?

You can even then upload this all into a custom ChatGPT, ensuring your whole team is on the same page and any future growth will have minimal effects on your business.

The Spirit of Hospitality

Many vacation rental companies have repeat guests, those who come back so often they consider your properties a second home.

Jodi is very familiar with this, recalling a family who regularly came back, led by their grandfather, for family vacations.

When the grandfather passed, the wider family kept up the tradition, coming back to celebrate his life and share the memories they created in the house.?

To Jodi, this is what it’s all about, saying:?

"Hospitality is a feeling and a spirit that just warms our heart.”

To listen to the full conversation between Lynell and Jodi on How We Grow: The Vacation Rental Show, follow the links here:

?? Apple - https://apple.co/3IudorW

?? Spotify - https://spoti.fi/48KwKUn