Spreadsheets are sexy - convince me otherwise! 🤓

TL:DR – Understand data (or find someone who does) to optimise your property business.

Data is my thing. I love it. 🤓 Can’t get enough of it. It’s foundational to the savvy business decisions Polka has made over the years to buy the right properties, in the right areas, for the right prices. 📈

It’s how we operate our service accommodation at above 60% profit margin, when national statistics suggest 33-43% is ‘healthy and good’ for the sector.

It’s the key to our average occupancy rates staying firmly above 75% and topping out over 85% by year end, and why we’ve got more than 250 five-star reviews.

But data-driven decision-making goes way beyond managing the properties and serviced accommodation we currently have: It’s how I can forecast our future earnings and plan the growth of the business without relying on guess work. It’s the reason we’ve just closed on a £1.25 million property and I can guarantee the additional £3 million investment will return 7+% within the first 12 months.

I told you data is exciting! 😂

OK, maybe I’m going a bit too far, maybe I’m losing your attention already. I know the glazed look that descends when I start talking numbers.

That friend I told you about last week, she’s actually about to start work on her own home renovation project, in the hope of creating two little apartments for holiday makers. But when I asked her about their earning potential, running costs and what the market’s like in the area she’s bought, she looked at me like I was talking another language. 👽

I get it. I wasn’t trying to catch her out, and certainly didn’t want to make her feel stupid. It’s not rare for people to go into this sector with hopes of success, but very little understanding of the numbers. And more, the tools I use aren’t affordable for most. Sure, anyone can pay to access the multiple platforms I utilise to pull information, but if you’re a small business, the costs just aren’t viable.

Besides, for most people, stats aren’t sexy. I doubt many of you got into the serviced accommodation and holiday let sector because you woke up one day and thought

‘Ooh, I just love maths’. 🤓 🔢

My business partner, Jay, is the one who does the gorgeous stuff: the brass finishes on the kitchen, or the precise design of the eco village to maximise relaxation and wellbeing.

But without crunching the numbers, none of that is possible.

And what, for many, starts out as a dream of creating incredible experiences for guests and running a business that brings joy and purpose, can quickly become a nightmare if you don’t get down and dirty in the data.

It’s awful to see good people, with good intentions, start to give up on their business because this side of things feels too complex, too difficult or just too boring. Most people just don’t know where to start.

And it’s for this reason that I decided if, with my expertise, I could help people, I would.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve spent weeks and months building tools that use data scraped from open-source APIs across the web to tell me precisely how to dynamically price my properties. I spend a hell of a lot of money accessing those data platforms I mentioned earlier, so I can give Jay an exact budgets to work with.

I’ve tested over a dozen channel managers so I can confidently share with my clients which one is the best for them, and how they can utilise the different available reports on each one.

I’ve analysed the search results guests use across all the major booking platforms and tweaked clients listing to see immediate increases in occupancy levels, and dived headfirst into clients’ historic business data to see where unnecessary expenditure is coming from.

These might seem like complicated, techy words, but let me give you a couple of real-life examples –

-      After discovering one of our own properties wasn’t showing up in 186 searches on a major booking platform each week because we didn’t have a 'dedicated workspace', we bought a desk and an office chair quicker than you can say ‘one-click payment option’. This property now remains full both summer and winter, because it’s suitable for holiday makers and business people, alike.

-      A client was looking to invest in a new property and had done the generic Google search of average yields. I went deeper, analysing the typical profile of holiday makers to that area, the most searched and filtered criterion of properties, and the type of property with the best profit margin. I quickly discovered that parking was a must, but room size mattered less. There was also a gap in the market to accommodate the overspill of wedding guests who couldn’t fit, or couldn’t afford to stay, in an incredibly successful country house venue in the local area. He bought and marketed a property accordingly and has turned a profit from Day One.

If this all sounds like a plug for my consultancy work, it really isn’t. I’d love everyone to be as enthusiastic as data as I am, and get involved in the numbers themselves. I’ve seen how doing so can revolutionise a business, and the more people who use it, the healthier the entire sector will be.

But it’s taken me years to build my expertise and months of unpaid labour to build my own systems and tools, and I understand that managing just the basics of a serviced accommodation business in the early years can take up every waking moment.

And because I understand all this, I’ve developed three levels of support, at accessible price points, to support you to unlock the exact information your business needs to grow sustainably.

1) Strategic Insight, a package for those with one or two properties (or just starting out), where I won’t bombard you with the behind-the-scenes spreadsheets, but instead prepare an easy-to-read set of tailored suggestions you can implement quickly and easily.

2) Optimal Growth, a deeper-dive analysis and implementation package for those who want to optimise and grow a portfolio.

3) Business Club, for those looking to develop their own understanding of how to make data-driven decisions, I offer a bespoke service with ongoing support.

As always, my phone is on and my inbox is open.

Get in touch and I’ll happily answer any questions you have about optimising your business.