Hospitality’s Early Warning Signs: What the Data Reveals About the Economy Ahead - Jamie Lane, AirDNA

Josiah: I'm very excited to be sharing today's episode with you because we have joining us Jamie Lane, who is somebody I followed his work for years. He's the chief economist at AirDNA, and before that, led research at CBRE and PKF. In this conversation, we get into so many different elements of using data, how to interpret it, how it can make you a stronger hospitality professional. We are, of course, operating in an environment now that is chaotic and volatile. And Jamie brings a real perspective that is both grounded in deep experience, working across different elements of the hospitality industry, and he's very focused on what is coming next. And that's what I want you to learn along with me today in this episode.

We start out talking about how he got started in his career, how he thinks about data, and how the use of data is changing across different roles in hospitality today. We also get into a lot of different elements of what is unfolding right now, what Jamie's seeing in demand trends, how to think about internal data versus external market data, and what kinds of questions each of these data sets helps us answer. There are definitely some areas of concern that are taking place now, as Jamie will get into a bit later in our conversation, but there's also ways to respond, whether you're an owner, an operator, or someone else in the hospitality ecosystem. You can use the chapter markers in the show notes if you want to jump to a specific part of our conversation, but I highly recommend you listen to the whole thing.

So without further ado, here's Jamie. 

[intro]

I really do appreciate you making time to talk, Jamie, because we ran into each other briefly at Hunter. You were mobbed by fans, and so we didn't get a chance to really talk then. But I wanted to talk with you. I think the work that you're doing is fascinating to me. I think it fascinates everyone who gets a chance to read articles you've written, listens to your podcast. I'll link in the show notes to a bunch of places where your work shows up. But I always do love starting these conversations on a personal note about how you got into doing the work that you're doing today. In this conversation, we're going to talk a lot about data. How did you get interested in the world of data, specifically in hospitality?

Jamie: Back in 2010, I started working at a company called PKF Hospitality Research. That company was sort of an arm of a consulting group that was doing market studies, feasibility studies. And the leader there, a guy named Mark Woodworth, brought me on to help them develop their hotel forecasting product called Hotel Horizons. So I started as an analyst, really, and my job was digging into market trends that was happening in the hotel industry. I was really interested in economics and what was sort of driving these trends and quickly moved through the PKF ranks where I was running the forecast group. And then we were acquired by CBRE, the world's largest real estate company. And it really opened my eyes to data, economics, and really how to relate that back to hospitality.

And so I spent 10 years there, really learning the trade of being an economist, but also really being able to dive deep into STR's data set, and they had 30 years of hotel data. Just getting access to that and being able to dig into it on a daily basis and really try to understand what was driving the trends, what was causing some markets to grow, some markets to contract, what was causing some operators to have really outsized returns and others to just really struggle. And then be able to turn that into a forecast of some of the biggest developers really in the world making their bets on which markets they're going to be developing in and why, and helping them think through that strategy. It really opened my eyes into what data could be used for and what data could lead to in terms of making strategies and making real bets on the industry.

Josiah: I love it. I mean, whether it is deciding where to build, where to invest, or you're operating, one of the goals that we talked about before we started recording, you wanted to educate people, but also specifically help them think a little bit differently about their market, right? So whether you're an investor, whether you're an operator, that's what we're going to get into a little bit in this conversation. I am curious to kind of stay with that theme of what you mentioned there. You've spent years, as you mentioned, both studying traditional hotels and short-term rentals. And I'm curious if you've seen an evolution in the way that people are using data over the past decades.

Jamie: Absolutely, it's changed. When I started, 15 years ago, it was really all about your STR report. Every week, you sort of got your STR report, you analyze historical data, and you got a sense of what happened. And if you were over or under penetrating your comp set, and you're looking to course correct, where you're always looking to course correct off of historical data. And now I feel things have changed entirely. There is future-looking data now. There is detailed data on what's going on in different segments. So you can find out what's actually happening with corporate group transient. There's really detailed profitability data. So it's not just around analyzing what's happening at top line, but you can take it all the way to the bottom line.

The amount of data now that an owner operator developer has at their fingertips has just grown exponentially. In some ways, that's great. In other ways, that makes any decision that you need to make around what to do next a lot more difficult. And what I love is it's led to so much more specialization where maybe back 10 years ago, 20 years ago, we're just getting to this notion of dedicated revenue managers, dedicated data analysts sitting at the either property level or just above it. And now there's just been this explosion of people that are really dedicated to hospitality data and using it to make better decisions.

Josiah: It's so exciting. I mean, I think on this show, I'm talking a lot about the diversity of careers in hospitality, your own career proves that out. And there could be people listening to us that hopefully one day have a chance to work for you or work with you because they love some of the themes that we're talking about. But regardless of where you're working, what you're interested in, there is a lot of potential here. I want to dig into this a little bit further, because I think as we think about data, obviously, there's so much internal data that most hotel operators have, there's all this external market data. So I guess, is there a relationship between those? How should our listeners think about the balance of that? Do I focus more internally, externally?

Jamie: How I think about it is, it's generally you're looking to understand your internal data with what's happening external. So New York was historically one of our hardest markets to forecast when we were at PKF. It was a market that was just growing astronomically on the hotel side. So everyone thought that New York was a high barriers to entry market. It's an island, you can't develop hotels there. And then all of a sudden from 2007 to 2018, we saw 40,000 new rooms being added into that single market. At the same time, you had 30,000 short term rentals being added into that market at the same time. And then all of a sudden, pricing power essentially evaporated in New York City.

So if you're sitting there, looking at your own internal data, and maybe you're the GM or you're the owner of that property, and you're looking at your rates just continually underperform, it's easy to say there's new supply, and we're still getting our fair share. But occupancy stayed at 80% throughout that entire time in that market. Now, fast forward to today, from 2018 to today, we've seen demand of short term rentals in New York drop by almost 80 percent. And that has a lot to do with new regulations, things changing dynamic in that market. We've really seen pricing power come back. We've seen new hotel development still continue to increase, but we have seen changing market dynamics.

Being able to piece together each of those changes in the market to tell the story of how much pricing power, how I should be reacting to changes in this market on my own property, I think is really powerful information for you to be collecting. And New York's maybe one of the most egregious examples of wild changes in the market. But really, in any market, you can see these dynamics at play. And by not having that complete view, I'm not saying you need to be looking at what's changing in short-term rentals or at the market level every day. But I think when you are stepping back, looking at strategy, getting a sense of, we all need to do it, what's in the pipeline? How much new supply is expected to come in over the next couple of years in terms of traditional hotel supply? Looking at short-term rental supply and how that's changed over the past year, past three years, past five years? What are the dynamics at play? Is short-term rental occupancy high? Should we expect more to be coming in? Is this going to be more competition that we need to deal with?

And we could talk maybe in a bit about the changing dynamic of short-term rental demand, because it's not static. What people are looking for short-term rentals for has really evolved over the past decade. And in my mind, it can really give you a sense of what guests want, what they can experiment with. And you can sort of start to internalize that of maybe how future development for hotels should be evolving.

Josiah: I'd like to talk about that now. But I want to just underscore something that you mentioned, because I like how you framed up your answer to that. The question of what data should I be looking at? It depends on what question you're asking, right? Or what role you're operating in. I think it's always good to think like an owner, right? But I think the capacity in which you're operating, you mentioned a general manager, going back to kind of what you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation around if you're deciding where to build, that is a very different conversation versus, let's say, a department manager at a hotel.

In my role at Actable, we have a lot of operational data, you can understand efficiency in workflows, in scheduling, things like that. These are very different conversations. So maybe step one is frame up what questions do you need to be answering, and then what data will inform that. But I want to come back to what you mentioned. You know, a goal of this conversation was to open the eyes of people to understand how can we think differently about the market? Let's talk a little bit about short term rental data. We have a wide range of listeners here. Some work in short term rentals, many in hotels. So you take this whichever way you want. But what might be some of these maybe overlooked data sets that maybe our listeners should focus on a bit more?

Jamie: Maybe I'll start just from a developer side and maybe rules of thumb we've always thought about as a developer of finding markets with 70% plus occupancy where there's sort of supply demand imbalance, where there's strong ADR growth, where there's diversified demand, business corporate leisure, where there's growing economic and employment growth, there's barriers of entry, things like that, high GOP margins. That's what I was sort of told about, and I need to help developers figure out, and that's honestly what we used in our models. If these things were all there, we'd expect to see more supply growth.

Now, let's step back and think about where we are today. So when I was at Hunter and listening to Jan at STR talk about pipelines by growth, the only type of areas where hotel development is really happening right now is in the top maybe 25 markets where it's growing pretty substantially and with a major brand. Now, sitting on top of my data set, where we're looking at supply, demand, occupancy, ADR revenues for short term rentals, we can see where demand has been going. And I can tell you demand in those top 25-50 markets for short-term rentals is actually down over the past year and it's down over the past few years. Demand outside of those cities, sort of small, rural, more experimental markets, is exploding. So there's some markets out there, mostly transient leisure demand type markets, where demand in short-term rentals is up three, four, five, 600% over the past six years.

Josiah: Jamie, can I just jump in there? I want you to continue with this. But just for our hotel folks that are listening, do you believe there's a relationship between STR demand and trends that you see and hotel demand? Or are these two different worlds?

Jamie: 100%. There is a connection here, because in the end, is people looking for accommodation. And where I wanted to tie it back is there's reasons why short-term rental demand growth would be happening. And I think one of the biggest factors there is a lack of lodging options. So if all this demand's growing, and there's not a lot of traditional hotel supply there, in some ways it might be because they like the short-term lodging options, and that's what you might need to understand. Are they choosing properties because they have more space, because they're experiential, unique-type stays, or is it there's no other option, and now this is your leading indicator of where potential demand that could be staying in hotels is going.

And that can be happening in these small, really fast growing markets, which I think is absolutely true. And you can see it internationally, some of the countries and areas that are really growing. But it could also be telling you information about maybe sub-markets in your city. Let's say you are operating in a market, you're looking to expand in that market of understanding which sub-markets are growing, maybe where there's new demand drivers, new businesses coming in that had lodging needs that aren't being met, and now they're looking elsewhere.

And this can be, for a short-term rental host is what we, and investors, what we're really training people to do is find where there's pockets of opportunity. And if you see outsized growth happening at a very micro scale, because remember, a short-term rental investor, they're making a bet that they're buying a $200,000 or $300,000 home, not building a $200 million hotel. And they're able to make a lot of these bets, be able to repeat them, do them often, find what's working, and then double down on those opportunities. And when you can start to see those patterns happening, that as a hotel owner operator to me is, all right, I've got a real indication here that something's new, something's happening.

And we work now with hotel developers. We work with groups that do feasibility studies, market studies. And this is the way that they're using our data to really find opportunities for expanding what's going on in the hotel industry.

Josiah: Well, I appreciate you getting into that because I think, yes, the scale is different, right? You can be very surgical in coming up with an offering for a very small niche of travelers, but the big factors are still at play here, right? Whether it is a single property or it's a $300 million asset that is being developed. So I appreciate you getting into that. So that is from the development perspective. How did some of these themes play out if you're owning or operating an existing asset?

Jamie: One of the things I like to talk about is differences in lead times between hotels and short term rentals. So we think about typical hotel, and you're getting lead time anywhere from two weeks, three weeks out, the average short term rental host is getting their lead times anywhere from one to two months out. So when people are booking a home, it is not surprising each home is unique. If you wanna get that exact property that you're looking for, you gotta make sure you're booking it well in advance. Where if you're going to stay in a hotel, there might be two, 300 rooms. If I wait, I might have to pay a little bit more, but it's not I'm gonna be locked out of getting a stay in that property. Where in a home, each one absolutely is unique, and if you like that property, you're gonna book it ahead of time once you know that you're actually gonna make that trip.

So what that means is we've got almost a peek into future demand that's going to be coming in and how maybe it's trending off of prior years by looking at forward short-term rental bookings, because it really does give you a sense of, all right, and we can look at over time that essentially the same trends that are going to be happening in hotels just happen in short-term rentals about a month prior in terms of booking behavior.

And for me, once you internalize that insight, it's, all right, I can look at the data I'm getting from a Travel Click or Kalibri and know how I use that. But maybe I'm starting to get into summer travel season and maybe there's a little bit of uncertainty right now in what's going to happen. And maybe I'm worried about international travelers coming in or government filling in. So let me go out. And to be fair, this is only maybe a unique view into what's happening in transient leisure, because short terminal demand is so leisure heavy. But because leisure travelers do book further ahead, especially compared to government corporate travelers, it can be a peek into that. And I think for revenue managers, operators that are trying to get a sense of the health of forward bookings, it can be a great indicator.

Josiah: Okay, so this is super exciting, right? Everyone wants a view into where things are going. And I think, in general, the data set, the business that you built at AirDNA is fascinating to me. It is the gold standard of kind of what you do. And it's really interesting on a lot of levels. I'll include a link in the show notes so people, if they're unfamiliar with, can learn more about this. I want to stay with this theme of leading indicators. I guess, is there any other lodging adjacent industry in travel, outside of travel, that you look at when it comes to leading indicators of where is the industry going?

Jamie: There are some things I really like to track. A company called OAG tracks airline bookings. There are measures of consumer spending, which are really indicative. And for me, just digging into what we're seeing in our own data set of forward bookings, what happened over the prior week for bookings for out in the future? And how did that compare to prior periods?

One of my favorite or really interesting ones today, and it was a co-presenter at Hunter, was Mark Lomano from Kalibri Labs. And one of the really interesting data sets they track is hotel demand by segment. And they have a forward view of those bookings. And we've all heard about what's going on with DOGE and the pullbacks in government spending. So a really interesting question is what's happening in terms of government travel bookings. And it's not a huge segment of total demand, they reported about 4%. But 4% in an industry where hotel demand is essentially at 2019 levels, it hasn't grown at all over the past six years, you reduce demand by 4%. That has major implications for operating performance for a typical hotel.

And the fact that they were reporting forward bookings and government travel down 80% over the next 90 days, for me is a really worrisome statistic in terms of where demand might be going. You then combine that with what we've been seeing on the airline booking data is that demand from Canada is down almost 70% in terms of spring and summer airline bookings, the expectation that inbound from Europe could continue to be down from pre-COVID levels because of the strength of the dollar and perceptions on travel to the US. So while we haven't seen it necessarily yet in stay performance, I think there are a lot of warning signs out there that demand could be weaker as we come into spring and summer travel seasons.

Josiah: Interesting. So you mentioned DOGE, you are always publishing updates and informing people on what's going on in the world of hospitality, what's going on in the broader economy, and how will it affect the world of hospitality? I guess, what have you seen unfold since the beginning of the year? I feel like both sentiment wise, and just the conversation about what is going on has changed a lot. I think with this administration, there was talk about efficiency, and then we've seen how it's unfolded. What has that been like from your perspective? What have you observed over the past three months? And to timestamp this, we're recording the first of April. I know it's a quickly moving environment, but what are you seeing out there?

Jamie: I think there was a lot of enthusiasm around the changes that the new administration would be taking in terms of supporting a pro-business environment. And you look at the hospitality industry, and it really is a whole bunch of small business owners that are investing. They are operating. They've got a lot of employees. And while there still may be many benefits that come out of the administration in terms of supporting their business, what we've seen in the first quarter of the year of 2025 has been things that have just increased uncertainty around their businesses.

So we've seen what a 10, 15% correction in the stock market. And there's implications that has on direct consumer spending and how comfortable people feel making forward decisions. And really anytime you introduce uncertainty into the mind of consumers, you have the potential that they pull back, that they pause on making decisions. And a common decision that most people are making in the first quarter is where are you going to travel this summer? And do I want to book that trip? Even if people are just pausing that decision, that can disrupt how we operate our hotels because we don't get those number of leisure travelers booking, filling in our forward calendars, that then allow us to price more aggressively as we get coming in.

So just this pause that clearly consumers are making could have implications. My hope still is that it is just a pause and not a pullback in travel. That's still yet to be seen. And why some of this increase in uncertainty can start to snowball into recessionary fears. And just over the past month, we've seen the chance of recession that most economists are predicting go from roughly 15%, which is just a typical chance of recession. They happen typically every six to seven years, that equals out to about 15%. And now the average chance of recession has gone up 30, 35%. So that's really elevated. I don't think most economists are expecting a recession this year. But just the talk of it can sometimes lead us into a self-fulfilling cycle.

Josiah: And I mean, just to that note of psychology, I wonder if you could share a little bit about kind of what happens with consumers when they see maybe their stock portfolio decrease in value, even if that is maybe a long term investment. How does that play out in the short term?

Jamie: So there is this economic theory of the wealth effect. And this sort of plays in of when you're looking at your bank account, when you're looking at maybe your Robinhood portfolio, and you see it going up, you're not necessarily trading those stocks, generating income from it, but you just start to feel wealthier. And when you feel wealthier, maybe you decide to stay at a little bit nicer hotel, you decide to take a little bit longer trip, you maybe decide to take that second trip, when you're only gonna take one trip, you're thinking, we're looking good as a family in terms of our economic health. Let's do a little bit more.

And we saw that clearly in the aftermath of the pandemic, 2021, 2022. And yes, there was revenge travel, but there was also a major run up in the stock market that really led to wealth effects. There was the government stimulus, which led everyone to see a little bit more money in their checking account. And people really did spend that down and spent it on travel. I think we all saw it.

So now when we've seen a pullback in the stock market, which to be fair, we're still at August 2024 levels, it's not we've seen a major pullback from historic levels. But in terms of just the past two months, we have seen a pretty significant decline, and that can start to wear on consumers. It's going, we don't know where it's going to go. Maybe I don't feel as good about expending that trip or making a second trip or all those things that were in my mind when I saw it going up. I start to get the opposite impact when I see it going down.

Josiah: Fascinating. Now, I want to switch over to, I guess, the investor and the operator side of things and how this all plays out. I feel like in the headlines, I see a lot of stuff around chaos and uncertainty and risk. This conversation is all about data. Are there data points or measures that you look at that quantify that?

Jamie: One of my favorite charts and sites to go to, it's totally free. And I feel it just tracks the sentiment of America out there. It's called policyuncertainty.com. And they've got this Economic Uncertainty Index, and they do it globally to do it for a lot of the major countries. So the one I zoom in on is the U.S. Economic Uncertainty Index. And essentially it measures all this sort of talk and worry about uncertainty that's out there in the market. They do it every day and you can sort of get a sense of where sentiment is moving. And obviously it goes up during recessions that really hit all new highs during the pandemic. We all remember that sense of uncertainty that we felt, but you look at where it's at today. And you get a sense of why so many people are now worried about recession, because we are almost at, outside of COVID, all time highs in terms of uncertainty.

And so outside of just how strong the economy's been, and if you just looked at that, you would have a pause and think, all right, we should at least be talking about and preparing for what would happen if we did see a real pullback in terms of spending. There are, especially in areas that are dependent on either international travel or government travel, real concerns. And those concerns can start to snowball into other aspects of the business, people that support or dependent on those type of travelers. There's worry, it clearly shows up in the data.

Josiah: I'm gonna ask this question in an intentionally broad way. I think this is kind of one of the things we have here on the show, because we have people listening across the ecosystem, we have hospitality brands, owners, investors, operators. I guess, with high uncertainty, what are some of the things that you expect to happen if uncertainty remains at an elevated level?

Jamie: One is a reduction in lead times. So if you can wait, you do. And even if that's at the expense of you might get a discount if you book ahead. But if you don't know or there's a little bit of uncertainty of whether that trip's going to happen, you're going to wait. So reduction lead times. Absolutely. We're already seeing it happen. And I expect when you hear from the global hotel chains in Q1 after their earnings calls, they're gonna be talking about that.

The other is, and we're already seeing it from the airlines, and how I think about the travel booking behaviors, you start with your flight, and then you do your hotel, then you do your experience. So the fact that we heard from the hotels in early March, that we're seeing a pullback in forward bookings, for me means that that pause is there.

So for me, it all starts with revenue management strategy and lead times. All right, if we're seeing a pause, now are we starting to actually see a pullback in activity? And what segments are we seeing the pullback? What areas are we seeing maybe growth or expanded opportunity? So where can we double down on looking to expand the pies that are still growing? Because overall consumer spending is still growing and overall consumers, job growth, overall incomes are still expanding. So it's only certain aspects of the economy that are pulling back right now.

So as an operator, I would want to get a real sense of, all right, where are the risks? I mean, what is my exposure to that risk? What are the opportunities of growth? Where are those opportunities? And how can I be pointing our efforts into growing in areas that could continue to expand and make up for areas that might pull back?

Josiah: Well, and this is where it all comes back to data, right? And go back to earlier in our conversation, thinking about internal and external data sets, you need to have these external market data sets to understand where those demand, how do you drive top line revenue, smart revenue management, and then you have to be an efficient operator. And I think this is one of the big things that stood out to me from Hunter, was in an environment of a lot of chaos and uncertainty, what can you control? And so I think you can control your strategy around capturing or developing market segments, as you pointed out. You can also kind of focus internally around how do we become more efficient? How do we build capabilities that allow us to operate with agility?

And so I think that's where I expect and I hope to see more digitization, more looking at data to make almost sort of real time decisions, operate with this agile mindset, which I feel like we've talked about for a long time. But this seems more than ever an opportunity to double down on this way of operating. It feels essential moving forward.

Jamie: Absolutely. Because if you wait till end of April or wait till the end of May and you're already seeing the declines in actualized performance, you may be too late to actually adjust course correct while this is happening and not see the impact. And that's, I think, one of the great ways now the industry has when we're talking about how to change over these past 15 years is you do have these forward views. You do have these ways to segment the data. You do have your own data set, which you hopefully have people that can get their arms around.

And then the ability to benchmark that against market segments that give you real and I think insightful views where you don't have to wait until it's already happened. You can start digging in now and make changes that can potentially lead to outsized results, at least compared to your competition, because some of these market trends, you're not going to be able to change. Right. It's all about how you react and potentially course correct at that time.

Josiah: I love it. We've covered so much here, Jamie. I wonder if we could use the last couple of minutes to talk a little bit about your own journey. If we zoom out, I want to kind of bring this full circle. You talked about how you got involved in the work that you're doing today. I've found it fascinating to watch you move from these different segments of hospitality, demonstrate leadership, provide insight. I'm curious for you personally, we wanted to educate people on how they can become better at using data. What has been useful in your own journey in building your own capabilities for analyzing, interpreting, making decisions with data? I'm curious on what your journey has been there because I think it might help some of our listeners as well.

Jamie: For me, it's really never be afraid to dig all the way down to the source in terms of coming back up to the trend that you're trying to get to or the question that you're trying to get to. It served me so well, starting with at PKF and understanding STR's data and how do they collect it? How does it flow through? What are the insights that we're actually trying to derive from it?

And now getting to AirDNA, where it's just entirely different way that it's collected, it's entirely different way that it's interpreted, an entirely different client base where you still think of the hotel industry today as a very professionalized established business. Most short term rental owner operators today have one or two listings that they maybe bought as a side hustle. They're managing themselves. They're not using almost any technology at all to run. And this is the fastest growing aspect of the industry right now, which just really blows my mind.

And a lot of the things that you'd expect and how people react when they're operating just don't happen. So it's starting with the basics. It's understanding how it works. And it can be daunting when you sort of think about all these processes, all these things that go into create this one number. But for me, it's step by step. It's leveraging off the people that really know it. Now we're up to I think we're 160, 170 people. We've got this massive team of data engineers, data scientists. And I spend so much time just trying to understand that they know they've got to break it down to me like as a fifth grader of this is how it works. And then for me, I can then try to break it down for our clients, because to the point that we all understand how it happens, how the sausage gets made, we're going to be able to make better decisions off of that data.

Josiah: You and your team produce so much. I mean, include a bunch of links in the show notes so people can see some of that. Is there any specific resource or place you would emphasize or recommend maybe they check out first?

Jamie: In general, AirDNA has an awesome free tier. So I would absolutely suggest creating a free account. You can search any market in the world and get a sense of what's happening high level in that market. And then we also have a blog. Me and my team write it on U.S. and European short-term rental insights. It's free, comes out every month, gives a great download in terms of what are the high level trends happening across the industry.

And then I host a podcast called the STR Datalab, where we get into those trends, we interview operators that are making moves in the short-term rental space. And it can give a really, I'd say basic introduction and what is happening in this space, give you an easy way to keep up with the trends, and maybe think differently about how you might be analyzing your own properties or piece of the market.

Josiah: It's really incredible. I encourage everyone to check that out. Last question for you, Jamie. Before we go, we've talked about a number of things here that are a little alarming, a little scary. You pointed out things that people can look at to navigate this environment, whatever the future holds. I want to zoom back out and talk a little bit about why are you in this business? You not only work in it, but you also invest in it. And I think it's been interesting to observe your journey there as well. I guess my question for you is, why do you continue to not only work, but invest in this space? Given the volatility, what is interesting to you in the world of hospitality?

Jamie: One, I think so many people in the industry caught the hospitality bug. That happened for me in 2008, actually through couchsurfing, where I started hosting in my own house, people for free. Thinking back now with kids and wife and all that, I don't think we necessarily do. But we still wanted some aspect of hospitality in our life over and above the data.

So last year, we bought a house up in North Georgia, spent a lot of time thinking through analyzing the data on what would be the best return for our investment. And we wanted to be a piece of hospitality, but we also wanted to show that for average person, they could go and make an investment, a direct investment in the space and operate it. I'm operating myself. I've got some messages from guests on my phone right now that I've got to respond to on checkout instructions. But it sort of gives me a tangible piece that in my day-to-day life that I felt like I was missing over the past few years. It's a lot of fun. I've had a lot of fun with it. I know my wife was scared of how are we going to take your busy lifestyle of working and doing what I do, and then add on top of that, trying to coordinate cleaners and handymen and guests. And if anything, it's just made my sort of day job more enjoyable by getting that day-to-day interaction.

Josiah: I love it. I love it. Well, I'll let you get back to your guests, get back to all the incredible, important work that you're doing. Jamie, this has been a real pleasure. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat today.

Jamie: Awesome. Thank you.