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Steve: Welcome to cost cast a day with Andrea park.
Andrea park is the owner of South Padre Island.
Casa go.
And it also works for, it also works for Streamline as the software development
manager, Andrea, welcome to the show.
So happy to have you on today.
Thank you so much for having me, Steve.
I'm pretty excited to be able to do this podcast with you.
Andrea, you're in charge of pretty much all development at
Streamline right now, right?
Correct.
I oversee the development department work very closely, of course, with
our product team and even our support team to make sure, we prioritize
and get the important things into development and out to our clients.
That's so cool.
And you've been with Costco now for about a year and eight months.
Yep.
Correct.
It'll be a , couple years here in about four months.
So Andrea, something that people don't know necessarily.
Is that you and I are from the same place in the world.
We're both from Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Yeah, tiny little Las Cruces.
Say, go Aggies, but, now, before we get started going into real business,
I need to ask you a question.
Okay., red chili or green chili.
I think a true New Mexican can't decide and would say Christmas or it depends
on the season and what the meal is.
That is the answer of a true new mexican
So today we're talking about eight things that you didn't know that Streamline does.
And with your expertise, and your depth of knowledge, this is
going to be a really fun podcast.
So for number one, you wrote, people don't know about Streamline's
ability to change languages.
Yeah.
You started with a top secret one.
So this is one.
And we have the ability.
No matter where in the world, maybe the office is located for the PM, we can
change the system into any language.
Now, there's a caveat to that.
We do have to actually add that translation to every menu item,
every line in the system, everything on an owner statement, etc.
So, at this time, we've only worked on Spanish.
Because Streamline is not very international.
So right now we have a good majority of our system translated into Spanish and
with the flip of a variable for the PM.
And on that admin side, it can be in Spanish.
That's really cool.
I had no idea.
It's definitely a top secret feature there just for you, Steve.
I appreciate that.
, so for number two the Streamline does is custom user groups.
Yeah.
So this is a great feature.
I know some people use it, but I think many don't definitely
larger companies use this.
So what custom user groups.
And I think one of the things that this allows people to do is
I'm sure many people who stream.
I know we have super users.
We have front desk users admins, there's different access based on
those, but maybe you have two or three different groups of admins that
you want to have different access.
So if you want to restrict access for, group A, maybe you don't want them to
have access to the accounting menu.
You can do that.
Or maybe you want them to have access, but read only.
And you can even get as granular as giving access or read only
access to tabs on reservations.
Maybe you don't want them to have access to the commission tab, for example.
Unit setup.
Maybe there's certain tabs on the unit level you don't want to allow
them to have access to or just to read only for informational purposes.
So the custom user groups allows you to set that.
And you just add your users to the specific groups you created.
So cool.
Yeah.
I don't think a lot of people know about that, but I didn't
know you'd go so granular with it.
I think that's really powerful.
So for number three, you said rotation logic.
What's rotation logic?
Yes, the rotation logic is very specific to how units are listed on your website
and it's completely customizable.
, what you can do is have the system look back at the number
of days a unit has been booked.
For example, my system, I have it set to 90 days, and then you can decide what
reservation types do I want it to look at?
Do I want it to look at only my website bookings?
Do I want to include Airbnb, Vrbo?
So you include what reservation types, how far back you want it to
look, and whatever units have the least amount of book days, they're
going to show first on your website.
Going even further than that, though, what's really cool about this
logic is you can manipulate that.
Let's say for whatever reason, there's one owner you really need to make happy.
You can go into the system and actually add negative days
that unit has been booked.
You can manually do that.
So it pushes it to the top to be shown on your website.
And you can do all of that with, from within Streamline.
That's a really great way for you to be able to put some extra heat on
specific properties, make it more fair.
But, also the way we use that, in rocky point is we have the
rubric in which we rate properties and we put negative numbers.
You get a negative 50.
If you're a 5 star, and then you get a negative 30.
If we're a four star all the way down to zero.
And so the idea is that we rotate and offer our best properties more often.
And it's a way to reward those homeowners because originally I
tried to charge more for the better properties, but that did the reverse.
It actually made them rent less.
So using this logic that you're talking about is a great way to
keep your best owners up front.
I love that idea.
I have an owner who refuses to update his place.
And I think if I could maybe push this idea, it might entice him
to do a few upgrades to his home.
So I think that's a great idea.
Yeah.
It's a fantastic way to do this rotation.
And a lot of people don't know about it.
It seems like a hidden secret of streamline.
Yeah.
Number four, this is something I didn't know about and I'm so excited about this.
I was just talking about this recently and didn't know that we had this option.
So, Owner Statement Builder.
Yeah, so we have a customizable Owner Statement Builder.
You can, exclude or add different sections of the Owner Statement.
You can even, there's settings to say if this section is zero, don't show it.
So you have that option as well.
You can add a little bit of HTML in there.
So you can really customize and not only for your entire system, you
can customize owner statements per say property groups, so you can have
different looking statements for different property groups in your system as well.
No freaking way.
Yes.
Way.
. I am so excited about that.
I can't tell you how excited I am about learning about that feature
of the owner statement builder.
Number five is auto response for OTAs.
And this now includes both VRBO and Airbnb.
Correct.
So this feature has actually been around a while.
Gosh, it's been years.
I think people just don't know about it.
So in the OTA messaging area of Streamline, we have a
auto response button there.
And you can add any type of message to auto respond to all
of your Airbnb or VRBO messages.
And of course, this is going to help your response time.
It's going to be immediate.
It may make things a little less personal, right?
Because it is just that auto response, but for the response time, I think it's
so valuable and your team can immediately follow up with a more personal response.
Yeah, I think this is great.
If you can get that first response out immediately, , even if it's
not as personal, you can follow up with your normal response with
the personal messaging, making sure that you're making them feel seen
and heard and whatever that is.
But from a statistics point of view, this is a great way to keep
your, super host status going and your OTAs at the top . Exactly.
So, Andrew, for number six, you said.
Owner commissioned discrepancy report.
I've never even heard this report before.
So as I'm sure many people know, we have a plethora of reports, right?
But this is one of those reports I think are not utilized enough.
It's very valuable for your month end.
And what it does is it allows you, if when you run this report,
it'll show you any reservations.
That have a different commission set than what's set at the unit level.
So if at any point you change your owner commission up or down,
it'll show you that discrepancy.
So you can verify if that reservation needs to be updated with the commission
that's set at the unit level or not.
That's such an important report.
I know that we've made mistakes.
In, in Rocky point or different locations with.
With that exact issue and so running that report is fantastic.
So number seven, you put the units set up.
Yeah.
So, with the unit set up and this is kind of things I actually learned from
Costco once I became part of the family.
We have the different sections for descriptions, for your website
description, Airbnb, Vrbo, and something I just never really
understood why we had those.
And now I know it's for, SEO purposes and you want to have those
different descriptions for those different platforms and when people
are searching for vacation rentals.
Another thing was the gallery as part of the unit setup.
Of course I know the gallery, but to actually know how to set it up properly.
I cringed a little bit when I looked at my first photos of the few units
I had when I started with Costco and Katrina was amazing in guiding us.
And, very, she was very kind when she was telling us the improvements
we needed to make on them.
? It's really cool to get to be part of that journey with you.
Yeah, it's been pretty exciting and definitely eyeopening on many things.
You just get kind of tunnel vision when you're in development, just
spitting things out, getting it done.
And to really understand a lot more of the use cases for a lot of these features.
It's been wonderful.
And to start using them, in my day to day business.
Yeah, really cool.
Number eight and the final one is work order approval.
So another one I learned from Costco had no idea my system could do this.
So it was not a feature that I must've been part of when it was built.
Having, this parent logic where the work order you can set, is it
maintenance is the HVAC almost like categories for the work orders,
but the best feature that I love.
And I learned about through you was the approval process for owners.
So.
Of course, I know you can trigger a document, but to have a button for them
to approve or deny that work order.
I just think it was so wonderful creating even more transparency with my owners.
It really showed more of our value managing their properties, because
they're seeing every work order coming in and being able to approve
it before it even gets started.
So, I thought that was a very cool new feature that I didn't know
about, and you shared that with me.
I love it that you love that.
And I'll tell you this, that it has been a game changer for us from a
business development point of view, being able to tell homeowners we do
that because people just don't do that.
And then retention, and at the beginning, owners were a little shocked by it
because all these messages were coming out . And so once we got them past
that, I think it's been one of the reasons why we've been able to reduce
the current a lot for our inventory set.
Yeah, I believe that.
I believe that.
I mean, any communication I had with owners before regarding maintenance
was mostly text phone calls.
And as I grow I'm just not going to be able to keep up with that.
. It becomes unmanageable through the other channels to
. Exactly.
You have a back story with the Harley Davidson that you wrote around.
? So I come from a family of riders.
My mom rides, all my uncles, brothers and I'm only five, three
but I still rode pretty big bike.
It was a Dyna low rider, a hundred and two cubic inch.
So it was pretty big.
It's about 1700 CCs and.
Rode it every day back and forth to work.
That was the vehicle that I chose to have over buying a second vehicle.
I had the choice.
Do we get a second vehicle or do I get a motorcycle?
And that's what I chose.
That's a whole lot of bike, even for a guy, six foot one, let alone
somebody who's five foot three.
, As long as I could stand flat footed, I can ride it.
That's it.
That's really fun.
Andrew, what is your favorite?
Letter from the credo and why it is definitely, Oh the relationship
with owners I love from Costco.
It just resonated with me being owner centric.
It is so important.
I mean, even before I was part of costs ago, getting into property
management immediately I knew that's what's priority is your owners.
Right.
And from the credo my, my favorite there is say, I will build a professional
relationship that transcends business.
And and that's, I think how it has to be, especially with owners.
One of my first owners, any time he's in town, wants to go to breakfast with us.
Him and his wife.
We have that personal relationship with them, and even though I'm
the small guy in the area, I'm confident they will never leave me.
And it is because of that relationship.
They have brought us multiple owners.
I have a couple of owners who brought me at least three more owners.
And it's, again, because of that relationship.
Yeah.
I always talk about love letters from our homeowners and, you being owner
centric and caring about and building these relationships that transcend
business is like a love letter to them.
And when they come into town and they invite you out to dinner or to
breakfast or, or send new owners your way, that's a love letter back to you.
And, there may be a problem with the work order sometime, or.
Maybe a reservation went wrong, but those are the owners that don't call to quit.
They call to resolve and communicate with somebody who they care about.
Yeah.
And you obviously embody that and that's really cool, Andrea,
thank you so much for coming on.
I can't tell you much.
I appreciate it.
And gosh, I learned so much in this short podcast, I've got homework to do now.
Well, it made me kind of dig into those memory banks, it's been
over seven years of developing different features and products.
So yeah, it was fun.
It was fun.
Kind of looking back at a few of the features I had kind of forgotten about.
Yeah.
Good stuff.
Well, thank you so much.
And we'll talk to you again next time.
Take care.
All right.
Thanks, Steve.
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