In today’s crowded Airbnb space, gain a competitive advantage through data analysis!
We welcome Airbnb data expert John Bianchi to discuss how we can extract and utilize Airbnb data to make our listings stand out and boost our bookings. John is the founder of Jaunt, an Airbnb property management company, and his goal is to help investors acquire profitable Airbnbs. Today, he offers data-driven insights on the current trends in the market, hotspots for opportunities to look out for, and proven ways to add value to our properties.
[00:01 - 02:24] Meet the Airbnb Data Guy
- John talks about his consulting business with clients all over the world
- Why he decided to upload a free Airbnb Data YouTube course
[02:25 - 13:13] Experience is King
- How COVID impacted Airbnb
- People are now searching for amenities, not places
- What are the best locations?
- Areas to consider: National parks
- The rise of second-tier and third-tier spots
- Why unique stays are winning
- Exploring the motel and RV resort industry
- The advantages of an unmanned hotel
[13:14 - 19:42] Analysis with AirDNA
- Consistency and trends are key
- Replicating what works and offering more
- How amenities can make a big difference
[19:43 - 21:28] Closing Segment
- Reach out to John!
- Links Below
- Final Words
Tweetable Quotes
“Airbnb's all about the amenities. The boring homes are the ones that lose.” - John Bianchi
“Data is all about finding trends. You find some sort of consistency, some sort of pattern that can be repeated.” - John Bianchi
“In the long run of things, by adding in those hot tubs and adding in a game room, and a pool table, all that's doing is sort of securing your bet.” - John Bianchi
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Connect with John! Shoot him an email and schedule a free consultation call at hello@pointanalytics.co. Subscribe to his YouTube channel for his Airbnb Data courses!
Connect with me:
I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.
Like, subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you listen on. Thank you for tuning in!
Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com
Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
[00:00:00] John Bianchi: Now the way that I explain this is that data is all about finding trends. You find some sort of consistency, some sort of pattern that can be repeated, right? It is, in a sense, the Burger King logic. So McDonald's spends millions of dollars to figure out what corner to be on, Burger King opens up across the street, right? We are the Burger King in this scenario. We use all of the Airbnbs that currently exist as guinea pigs that, to figure out exactly what's working, what's driving revenue. And once we find a trend, a home at a certain style and a certain theme where we can see that it's been done a few different times, what ends up happening is you see they're all roughly making about a hundred thousand dollars. So then that tells you if I then go open up across the street with the exact same style, look, and feel, I'm going to make about a hundred thousand dollars, right?
[00:00:55] Sam Wilson: John Bianchi built and sold an Airbnb business. And during that time he learned how to analyze Airbnb data so well that he's been able to build a consulting service based upon it. John, welcome to the show.
[00:01:05] John Bianchi: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
[00:01:07] Sam Wilson: Pleasure, man. There's three questions I ask every guest who comes to the show: in 90 seconds or less, can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?
[00:01:14] John Bianchi: Started out of Michigan actually. So started out of my own bedroom. I had an Airbnb and I rented out the extra room. Just kinda get a feel for it Where I ended up, where I am now is an Airbnb data consulting business where I literally helped people purchase Airbnbs all across the United States, all across the world, actually, just to, I do reports in Italy and in London, England, and stuff like that.
[00:01:33] John Bianchi: And I got there through a lot of work, ended up building up the business from, started in Michigan, building up a couple of homes, raised money, opened up a business in Chicago, built that up to about 15 locations, had some down in Scottsdale, Arizona as well. And also built out a cleaning company alongside with that.
[00:01:50] John Bianchi: Then 2020 came and I had somebody who wanted to buy my business, so I sold it. And then I was trying to get, stay within the Airbnb world. And the data was something that I did extremely well and I realized that nobody else did well. And so I actually just created a course, put the course on YouTube 'cause I had no idea how to sell it and it wasn't that great. So I was put onto YouTube for free and now about 10,000 people have gone through it and 10% of those people have actually finished it. And literally, just from putting that course out there, I've kind of created a name for myself as the Airbnb data guy and literally, like, created a business from there. And so I've just kind of been rolling with it from then.
[00:02:24] Sam Wilson: Man, that's absolutely fantastic. I want to hear more about that. You know, everybody knows the trends inside of Airbnb and the reason I think you and I are talking on this show is 'cause I see personally Airbnb as a scalable business. And that's the name of the show, How to Scale Commercial Real Estate. Yes. Airbnb is typically in the single-family sector, but let's talk about a trend maybe that we're seeing before we get into the data side. So that way we have some kind of supporting evidence or things to apply the data to. What are some trends we're seeing in the Airbnb world right now that, yeah, just talk to us about that? I hear there's some interesting things going on.
[00:02:58] John Bianchi: So COVID is one of the most interesting things that has happened to the Airbnb world. Like, it literally shook up everything that was happening. Before, it was just very, very typical. You know, you get your single-family home, you rent it out and you go to the main areas that you could think of, right? So you got your, all your major cities. The biggest ones are obviously Nashville, Tennessee, because they were like a town, but also had a bunch of tourism from bachelor parties, stuff like that, right? Then COVID hit and COVID kind of changed everything. It stopped everything but also moved everybody out of the cities into these remote areas.
[00:03:29] John Bianchi: And so what ended up happening was you saw these areas like Poconos, just outside of Philadelphia and New York, you know, the Smoky Mountains just like absolutely blew up, all these different spots. You could just go on and on about these different spots. We're just seeing insane revenue because everyone in America wasn't traveling internationally. They're all just staying local. And so there became all of these hot spots, like, you could literally buy a home within, in Poconos for $300,000 and it would make $150,000 in a year, right? It's insane. So now though, so a couple of things have happened. First, we're going into a recession.
[00:04:00] John Bianchi: And so people are slowing down. People are traveling internationally now. So there's not as much people traveling around or, sorry, going to these local spots anymore. And Airbnb actually made major changes to their platform, which changes the way that people search for properties. They're no longer just typing in a location that they want to go to. They're actually typing the amenities that they want, right? Like, I want a lakefront. I want a lot of space. I want a view. Like, that's the way that people search for properties now. So they're not going to specific destinations. So the combination of all of that literally shifted the entire trend of Airbnb within the past two months.
[00:04:34] John Bianchi: So places like the Poconos that were just absolutely killing it are sort of falling apart or softening. And so, you know, I work for an investment fund right now and every single time they were looking to go into a market, we're looking to see, is this market softening, right? Has too many people gone in there? Has the revenue dropped year over year, even though there's more supply? And so with all of that being said, it's really hard to say what the exact trend is going to be in the next year because everyone is going international. These ones are softening and we might be going into a recession. So there's like a couple of different factors we've got to consider, right? The way that I keep thinking about it is, what's the stuff that's never going anywhere that people are going to keep going to, that you can build a 10-year business, 20-year business off of, right?
[00:05:20] John Bianchi: The easiest ones without a doubt are national parks, right? National parks, people are going to keep going to those. They're going to keep being cool. But the way to actually think about it is that there's multiple entrances to national parks. So as an example, Gatlinburg is, like, the main area to get into the Smokies. But on the other side of the Smokies is Bryson City, which is like this tiny little spot, which apparently is now doing even better, but you could also access the Smokies that way. It's just not as common. So that's where I think, like, a lot of the interesting trends are going to be is like find the places that aren't going anywhere, but where's the opportunities within those areas.
[00:05:53] John Bianchi: And, like, one last thing to add to that is even airlines have created one-way flights to the second entrances of national parks. So, like, the second tier entrances, because there's a lot less business travel 'cause of Zoom. They're now trying to figure out other ways that they can fly people around. And one-way flights to these sort of second-tier cities that also enter national parks is happening as well. And that's just going to push more people to those areas.
[00:06:20] Sam Wilson: That's really interesting. I'm trying to think of, shoot, I'm thinking of like St. George, Utah or Kalispell, Montana, places like that, you know, you'd probably, a dozen other cities that would come off the top of my head. You never searched for those, right?
[00:06:34] John Bianchi: Never.
[00:06:35] Sam Wilson: If you're going to a national park, but yet you're telling me that those are cities now that we should probably start looking for flights into.
[00:06:40] John Bianchi: To be considering. You know, the way that I like to explain it is, a great example is Big Bear right out of, outside of LA, like everybody knows Big Bear, but it's an established market, been around forever, and all of the homes that exist there are Airbnbs, right? And so now there's restaurant stores, tours, all that kind of stuff. One of the main things that I'm seeing is that there's a lot of second tier, third tier locations that are turning into that because people who own family cottages are now selling them to Airbnb investors and Airbnb investors are bringing in, like, a hundred different families into that one specific home.
[00:07:12] John Bianchi: If you get a hundred people doing that, right, now, you have like hundreds of new families coming into these new areas, which can support businesses, right? And so once that happens, they're creating new vacation areas, right? And so, like Big Bear, they ran out of space in Big Bear, right? So it's, like, now they need to create all these other new little spots. And so I think those new little spots that are going to be created that are close and have that similar amenities, right? Like the same sort of features that Big Bear has, but maybe not Big Bear is where the majority of the opportunity is going to be coming.
[00:07:43] Sam Wilson: I like that idea, you know, but I guess I want to hear how do you account, if you're a data analyst, how do you account for search changes, softening of the market? How do you build that into, is this a good investment? Is this a bad investment? I mean, is it a crapshoot?
[00:08:00] John Bianchi: Yeah. So the way that I think you have to win with Airbnb is you got to, you got to think long term without a doubt. Like, if you're just trying to get in for a year or two, just never makes sense, right? But Airbnb's all about the amenities, I said earlier right? Like, the boring homes are the ones that lose. So the people that buy the boring home in the neighborhood of a cool area tend to not do nearly as well, right? So what I mean by that is you need to have the hot tub. You need to have the views. You need to have the lakefront, if you can, you need to have, like, a home that's bigger than the other homes in the area that allows you to have a game room, right? I was just looking at this, doing a property analysis today. And this one home had a slide that went from the kitchen island to the basement, right? It's making $10,000 more than the home next door that doesn't have that, right? The reason being is 'cause they're focused on the kid stuff, right? And so the way that I always say, like, you have to wait in, like, what I'm planning on doing with my own portfolio as I continue to build over the years, 'cause I'm planning on rebuilding my own is just a hundred percent focusing on the properties that just provide everything that you could possibly want in comparison to the neighbors that don't have that. And I think even if markets soften, there's still going to be people going to those areas and it's going to be the homes that provide everything that people want that they're going to be going to, especially with the way that Airbnb is now creating their search.
[00:09:17] Sam Wilson: Yeah. That's a really good, really good points there. And I think that's what people want. We've shifted and for better or for worse, either way to a more experienced-based society. Especially with the younger generations coming up, it's like, I'm kind of part of that in the sense that, like the last thing I want is more stuff, right? Like our, I think our parents and our grandparents, like the acquisition of things in homes and like all this was part of their kind of ethos, but for us, it's like, I don't want any more junk. I just want to experience something really cool. And so to your point, like, Hey, a home with a slide in the kitchen, like, what in the world?
[00:09:52] Sam Wilson: Like, oh, the kids go into the basement on the island. That's really, that's pretty fun. Like, I want to do that. So that's really, really cool. What about the trend that we're seeing in the motel space? I've heard some rumblings about this. Do you think that's sustainable?
[00:10:07] John Bianchi: Honestly, this is something that I need, I personally want to be doing even more research into, just because of the amount of noise that I'm hearing or the amount of people I hear doing certain things.
[00:10:17] John Bianchi: So, the concept here is you take a motel that has staff. And, you know, it has a check-in desk and, has the breakfast and all that kind of stuff. And you get rid of all of that. And you automate everything that you possibly can within the motel, so that there's literally only a cleaning company. So that when people book on Airbnb, they get their door code, they get their door number. They don't have to talk to anybody and they just go to the door and they check in, check out, and the cleaning company comes, turns it over, and gets it ready for the next guest, right? This is referred to as like the unmanned hotel. You're also making them really trendy. So you buy this motel and then you make it super trendy, really cool looking, and get rid of the expenses, right, of like what you have there.
[00:10:55] John Bianchi: And you know, this is happening in motels. I've also seen it happen in apartment buildings, people taking over complete and entire apartment buildings. Sonder, which is, like, one of the biggest companies that exist did this in downtown Chicago. And I ran all the numbers 'cause I had all their data from the area and they were making like $250,000 more per year running it as that rather than as an apartment building, right? And so like, there's definitely money to be made in it. You just have to have the money to be able to buy the hotel, but you know, there's some big players.
[00:11:22] John Bianchi: I don't know if I can necessarily name names, but, like, I know that Robuilt, you know, from BiggerPockets, they're looking at an apartment, a hotel in New York, right, and I can guarantee you it's going to be an unmanned hotel in New York, right? I know other people who are looking down in Miami to do that, I come across in the data, tons of these different places that are already doing it as well. There's one guy on our team who knows somebody who's, that's his entire portfolio. He literally is just looking for motels that he can flip into unmanned hotels.
[00:11:48] Sam Wilson: Right. And again, it goes back to, I think you said, you know, the experience based you know, this maybe isn't necessarily the roadside motel that is, you know, just servicing the local construction crew that's coming through, though that might be part of it. It is, you know, probably again, making them really, really interesting places to go and stay, and yet cutting so much of the expense. Like you said, you know, the breakfast probably nobody wanted anyway. And the front desk staff, the check-in just, you know, the inefficiency there behind that.
[00:12:16] Sam Wilson: And we're certainly seeing that even in the RV resort space. I mean, adding, adding a lot of these places, we buy have cabins. They might even have a 10 or 20-room motel and that's a hundred percent the model we're taking, which is like, oh wait, we can completely get rid of the front desk. This makes all the sense in the world.
[00:12:31] John Bianchi: Yeah. And that's, you know, that's, that's another area that I'd love to talk about even a little bit more because that's a super trendy, I don't know if it's necessarily trendy like it's going away. But people are amping up their game when it comes to these RV parks and unique stay parks, let's call them, right? Yep. There's one outta Yosemite. That is just absolutely amazing. Like it's, it's one of the coolest places. I want to own it. Like, I literally, I just want it. It's so cool. But there's, but it's creating this experience that you're not going to get anywhere else, right?
[00:12:59] John Bianchi: Like, you can book a motel or you can book an Airstream and have, like, the really cool area that you're going to be saying. And it's, you know, it's going to cost double, but you're gonna want to pay for it because it's also the experience, right?
[00:13:11] Sam Wilson: Right. Yep. That's it, man. That's it. I want to get into really the heart of this discussion, which is the data, the data that you're pulling. You're a data analyst. I want to hear what data you're pulling, how you're synthesizing it, and turning it into a meaningful, something meaningful that you can then make decisions based off of. Can you walk us through that?
[00:13:30] John Bianchi: Yeah. So AirDNA is the site that I use for Airbnb data. It's the number one Airbnb site or Airbnb data site, without a doubt. There's some other players out there but I've, you know, honed my skills within AirDNA. Now, the way that I always explain this is that data is all about finding trends. You find some sort of consistency, some sort of pattern that can be repeated, right? It is, in a sense, the Burger King logic.
[00:13:55] John Bianchi: So McDonald's spends millions of dollars to figure out what corner to be on. Burger King opens up across the street, right? And we are the Burger King in this scenario. We use all of the Airbnbs that currently exist as guinea pigs to figure out exactly what's working, what's driving revenue, and once we find a trend, a home in a certain style and a certain theme where we can see that it's been done a few different times. What ends up happening is you see they're all roughly making about a hundred thousand dollars. So then that tells you if I then go open up across the street with the exact same style, look, and feel, I'm going to make about a hundred thousand dollars, right? It's the same idea as comping in the, you know, comping a long-term rental, like, you're saying, okay, you got two bedrooms, two bath, but there's more to it, right? It's like, how did they design it? What amenities did they have?
[00:14:36] John Bianchi: What kind of views do they have? Different things along those lines. So the way that to kind of bring this back is that when you're going through the data, you have to find the trend, you have to find the consistency. So I have a course on YouTube for free that teaches you how to take AirDNA data and extract it. So pull that data, pull that information out, plug it into a spreadsheet, and do that in a way that allows you to see how much do the four bedrooms make within this specific area of the city. And is there a difference between those four bedrooms and the next neighborhood over, right?
[00:15:10] John Bianchi: And you'll be able to see this because there is, there'll be enough, depending on where you are, there'll be enough data to be able to see that sort of trend, right? And so some examples here is like I had my, I had a bunch of four bedrooms in Chicago. The closer you were to the city, the more money you would make. The further, the next neighborhood over would be $10,000 less. The next neighborhood, $10,000 less, right? You just kept dropping by $10,000, sort of the further out you went, but super consistent trend. So you knew whenever you were going to rent a home or whatever in the next neighborhood you had to account for that $10,000 difference in making sure that you were getting it for less than you were in the other neighborhoods.
[00:15:48] John Bianchi: Right. And so, yeah, so like the idea is you're looking for some sort of pattern, some sort of consistency where you can literally just replicate that. And the best part about it is that, you know, everything that works. And then you can do more on top of that, right? it's like, oh, okay. I know that I know that I need all this stuff, but I'm actually going to design my home even better. I'm going to take even better photos and I'm going to add a hot tub in the backyard. So now I'm better than everybody else. And so I, I should be able to outperform these people and I'm actually going to be taking the reservations from them to allow me to hit that a hundred thousand dollars.
[00:16:18] Sam Wilson: Is there an algorithm that you use when figuring out what an amenity might be worth?
[00:16:25] John Bianchi: I don't have an exact algorithm, so that's literally one of the hardest things to figure out. And the reason being is because you have so many different little factors, like, there's some listings that will be like great, amazing, amazing photos, really well designed, super professional, but it's not a luxury property.
[00:16:42] John Bianchi: And then you have like a really bad, bad listing, bad photos, but it's a luxury property and they do the exact same. You know what I mean? So if, you know, in other words, not everything is equal when we're looking at the way that they're marketed, the way that they're designed. So you have to almost play with it, right?
[00:16:57] John Bianchi: The only way that you're actually able to figure that out, first, you have to have a ton of data. That's the first one, right? You got to have a good enough amount of data. It, and it works really well. So like for certain amenities, it works really well when it's a larger amenity. Okay. So what I mean by that is views is a great example. So view, right? Like, if you have, in Blue Ridge Georgia. So I was just doing this analysis for the company in Blue Ridge, Georgia. If you have spectacular views, not just like, I can see off my deck, you need the rolling sort of mountain look, right?
[00:17:28] John Bianchi: If you have those spectacular views from a deck, You can make about $130,000 as with a four-bedroom cabin, right? It's got to be a pretty good cabin, but you got, and you have the views. If you take that exact same cabin and you give it no views, you'll make $80,000, right? That's just like very, very clear consistency in the data, that's the difference between the views and no views, right?
[00:17:52] Sam Wilson: So fifty grand a year in gross income, view or no view?
[00:17:56] John Bianchi: Right. A hundred percent. Like, that's not, that's not made up, that's not a gas I've gone through the data, like very thoroughly, right? That's an amenity that's really clean and easy to be able to see the difference because the homes are made fairly similar there, and then some homes will just be like, there's, they're just in the middle of a bush, which is awesome.
[00:18:10] John Bianchi: But somehow the views, which is $50,000 better, right? Now, when it comes to like a hot tub, that's where it gets a little bit more difficult. . It's a little bit more of a guessing game, right? So the kind of the way that I think about this is, you know, in the long run of things, by adding in those hot tubs and adding in a game room and a pool table, all that's doing is sort of securing your bet, right? You're securing your bet in the sense that like I'm going to be better than these people. I'm giving more, I'm offering more. And so I should be able to get more. It is difficult to put an exact dollar number on the smaller stuff.
[00:18:44] Sam Wilson: Well, and I think that amenities like that, I like that. I like what you put, there's called it securing your bet. I also think about amenities as being regional. Like if I'm going to Breckenridge, Colorado and it's, then it's January. I absolutely, I'm not looking at listings without a hot tub. If I'm going to Destin, Florida and it's July, I don't give a rip about the hot tub, but the last thing I want is a hot tub. So it's like, you know, it is regional as well.
[00:19:08] Sam Wilson: So I'm sure there's a bit of, a bit of art in figuring that out. But I think, I think the really big thing you gave us here was that one, you know, you got your course on YouTube where we, where we can make meaningful inferences from the trends we're finding in the data. So I think that's, that's really cool and something, I'm probably going to go watch as well.
[00:19:24] Sam Wilson: 'Cause I think, I think it's just very fascinating. So thank you for putting that together for us. And also just the idea of making those, those amenities where it's, like, you will rise to the top, even if it's maybe, you know, getting the same, the same return or the same, same rent as everybody else, at least it puts you at the front of the pack. So those are very, very interesting things. John, this has been awesome. I can't believe our time is up here. We've covered so much. We've talked about everything from using data in a meaningful way. We've talked about the trends that we're seeing in the markets. We've talked about softening of the markets, how we're seeing some unique opportunities in some tertiary markets we've probably never even heard of. What did you call it, Bryson City?
[00:20:00] John Bianchi: Yeah, Bryson City. I was looking at it yesterday. Pretty sure it's Bryson City.
[00:20:03] Sam Wilson: .Yeah. Right. Never heard of it so that, you know, that's, there's stuff like that, that I just think will be really fascinating to watch. You know, as here, as we potentially may go into a recession and then, you know, as international travel expands, like how does this market evolve, but certainly appreciate you staying in front of it and sharing with us your insight here today. If our listeners want to get in touch with you or learn more about you, what is the best way to do that?
[00:20:26] John Bianchi: Best way is to email me. So hello@pointanalytics.co. You can email me at that email and I like to talk to everybody and kind of give them a free consulting call to help them understand, you know, exactly what they should be looking for. So if you do email me, we can hop on a, you know, 15-minute call. We'll go through your situation and try and figure out exactly if my consulting business can be of use to what you're trying to do, otherwise it's just going to give you free advice. So, yeah. So hello@pointanalytics.co.
[00:20:57] Sam Wilson: Awesome. John, thank you again for coming on today. It was a blast. Certainly appreciate it.
[00:21:01] John Bianchi: Yeah. Thanks for having me on.
