Flexible Living Isn't Just Short Stay Anymore - Why It Should Be a Strategic Decision, not a Plan B - a Lavanda Special

Hello everyone and welcome to How's the Shared Living Podcast. This is a special bonus episode of season six and this week We're doing something a little different as no news, no views, no ground up just one topic and one guest Because honestly this topic and conversation deserves our full attention and it's increasingly topical given our recent episodes on Hybrid hospitality and that approach to student housing and co-living operations So without further ado, I'm Dan Smith from Resi Consultancy in Verde the flow AI and I'm Dean Lee from the property market strategists and a little bit of context before we bring our guest in if you've been following the PBSA space at all You'll know that that conversation around flexible and short-state bookings during term time has been getting a lot louder over the course of the last few years But especially as times are little tougher at the moment Operators are under real occupancy pressure and investors are asking harder questions So the old model of In September on a 51 week contract it doesn't have the certainty that that it once did So the question of what comes next and how you actually make flexibility work in practice You know and not just in theory is one of the most important conversations the sector is having right now Which is one of the reasons we've been talking about it quite so much and Very fortunately our guest today has probably spent a lot more time thinking about it than almost at anyone else And we're really delighted to welcome Fred Lertge Lertgeborg from LeBander to the podcast LeBander has been working with PBSA operators across the UK on making term time short-stays a real functional part of their model and not just a summer Bolton or a plan B as we often talk about it, but really a genuinely strategic part of how they're going to build things So Fred welcome. It's really great to have you with us Hi there, and thank you for having me on and I'm super excited to be on the podcast I am a frequent listener and keen to talk about this topic and all the questions around it amazing Fred can you give us a bit of background as to us to you and LeBander and really where you're up to now? Yeah happily So LeBander we're based in the UK although we serve Europe wide and global markets and we started out on short-term rentals This is pre-pandemic is about eight nine years ago And we realized that there was a space for filling gaps typically summer at that point in time However, the typical systems operations and business plans to be fair did not factor that in So this is kind of the professional side of Airbnb and booking at that time was very focused on the summer And we built a business around that supporting Build the rent but increasingly student operators to help fill hospitality stays in there in the easiest possible way On that journey we discovered that actually the systems were the thing that were most exciting about the tech And we built out a full short-term rental property management system And then continued to build out a full long-term booking engine to combine the two in our vision And our vision ultimately is that short-term rentals and long-term rentals are combined together In a system where people can set the dial all the way in once one side of that equation or the other As appropriate to their strategy market and as we're seeing right now economic backdrop And so this point yeah, we work with most most partners across the UK increasingly across Europe And yeah, super excited to talk about what we've been looking at today I have to say I've been really looking forward to getting you on the podcast Just because the journey that you've been through is fascinating And I think also when you look at the amount of data and the understanding that you have within You know BTR and PBSA industry in particular I think there are very few out there that would be able to talk with quite such authority about You know exactly what's going on and and where things are headed So I think let's let's start with that data because I think it does surprise people when they when they hear it and see it And you know the industry narrative around those short days it kind of started with And for me but personally with the Edinburgh fringe and Looking at trying to fill certain beds in Scotland over the summer That you know were sold previously on a 43-week contract and then that That then sort of you know approach really expanded across the rest of the UK and more recently You were seeing more commute to students So I think that's sort of starting to creep into it into term time So If you can walk us through what sort of term time short days actually look like in practice and Who's booking for how long and what's really driving it? Yeah, no that's the piece that we are really interested in I mean two three years ago to be fair term time short stays was not really a thing As you say it was generally the the fringe type festivals in summer And that was kind of a very historical legacy of those unique things Was it been really interesting as particularly last year but now it's exploded in this this academic year We've seen so far are stays of less than 41 weeks between September and June So core academic year and what we've seen is obviously there's this public narrative of the commuter student But we've been going through tens of thousands of bookings that we we see in the market and these are across every single location Literally every single student town or major city or minus city across the UK So it is it is a really interesting Set of data that we have built up and actually what we've seen is that the commuter student is possibly a little bit misleading It is actually very few stays that are people repeat booking every sort of choose day to Thursday And staying in that kind of traditional way we think of a commuter you know almost like a working commuter from another location What we've actually seen is a huge amount of bookings that are over 30 days But between about 30 days and three four months so think of it as like two two three months And they make up their 10% of the bookings but they make up over half of the booked nights So over 50% of the volume is a is a is a topic essentially nobody's really talking about Which is people who are staying for one two months They're booking ahead of time so it's quite a deliberate booking They're booking up to three four weeks ahead of time It's not last month and they are all students And they are generally speaking we can dive into why and how But it's a huge volume of stays and we're seeing that across the UK Which is really really interesting That I've been fascinating and I guess how aware is operators in the sector that this is happening And this is a product that is being provided for them Or is it just happening happening by chance Yeah I think this is one of those scenarios where the market in terms of demand is moving ahead of operators And probably even ahead of channels, marketplaces, even tech companies And I think it is because when we are speaking to these students When we are trying to figure out what's going on here A lot of it is relatively modern but they are secular trends Meaning particularly cost of living cost of living as a huge factor A lot of these students are simply unable to afford the full year And they are figuring out smart ways to either stay at family, stay local But then come in for blocks of time So for example we've seen a huge amount of people who took September to October Kind of were there for that first couple of months made some friends Figured that out but then actually were like look I've kind of run out of money And now they go almost remote or go into these kind of long distance Travel things once they are cadence of two hours a week of lectures And home learning can kind of figure that out Plus the other way around people are being very thoughtful about Well look maybe I just skip the whole autumn term And then I kind of come in and sort of early feb And that's just the trade off I have to make I think what's happened in the market is some operators have been quite savvy and thoughtful About the voids And being proactive in that last cycle we saw And said look we're just not going to get there Kind of accept that early on And then be a bit more proactive in putting in short stay availability Into the turn time in September October Those that have done that you know Whether it's accident or sort of you make your own luck type of scenario They've then been at the forefront of seeing this Evidential bookings come through And then have ramped into that opportunity And this you know the ones who are probably most on this Are now making every single bed available Being really thoughtful about unit configurations Can we move the people into clusters? Can we free out beds? And as a reminder all of these are students These are stays of students in academic year They are not generally speaking not tourism People are quite careful with that They don't necessarily open to that element So this is much more of a change in the market demand But I do still think a lot of it I mean there's still a lot of investors in operators who always speak to Or quite new to this topic Or maybe have a very partial view of Maybe they think it's hotels just purely coming into turn time Is it co-leave? You know there's a lot of questions The would signal that it's a confusing topic To be fair because it's evolving Are you finding from those conversations with kind of investors An operators that they're still a fear about They've shifted in this change That actually the market expects 51 week 48 week contracts And actually this is not something we do strategically It's just something we do if we absolutely have to Yeah and I think it's a very I'm very sympathetic to this I mean even in my personal background I come from asset management And investment background and in another life And so I understand how hard this is to start to change your investment structure Investment thinking What does it mean to cap rates? There's a quite terrifying number of questions that start to be posed Once you start to question the 100% 50-51-52 week kind of model However, I think there's a growing amount of evidence And feeling and view and strategy That the market is changing And in certain places, and other locations The way that I see it is a bit of a falling life situation And the smartest I think are getting ahead of that Now I would say I think it's easier if you're in an integrated scenario Because obviously then the investor and the operator are a little bit more aligned and you can have maybe those tougher conversations without a blame culture or issues on that side. However, even in the third party independent investor thing, I think it then just depends about who's being most thoughtful about this, who's being a bit more honest, who's not hoping that this cycle of re-bookings and bookings will just sort of magically get back up to 100%. But I would say that it's very hard to take the opportunity of short stays and turn time if it is a plan B. Because by definition, if you think about it, you're in September, you're sort of wondering whether you're going to house clearing playing out of October, you're kind of making a business plan, you get busy. If this is always a plan B, then it really gets relegated towards the end of the academic year. And by definition, the academic year has kind of passed. So it really will be the winners or the ones who collectively look ahead, put plans in place to make sure that their operator, their teams, their technology, is fit for purpose here. And it means that they can immediately move into that opportunity if they need to. And if they want to. And then I think there's a strategic dialogue, do you proactively do this? Do you actually free up beds and units and position into this, which I think is a really interesting conversation? Or do you just have it as a backstop? But you can't have it as a lazy backstop that you pick up in January. It's just too late and too hard. Yeah, you cannot have this as a last minute thing. I think what every investor in particular, and by proxy, the operator, if looking for, is that reassurance that you're ultimately going to fill those beds with the highest possible at annual occupancy, not spot occupancy, but the annual occupancy. And I think that's something that has always been missing. And especially in times when it gets that bit harder, I previously would rely on 43 weeks. And then during the summer, I would really look to yield up as much as I could so that 43-week rates weren't too expensive compared to 51 weeks. But there was that opportunity. And it does feel like city by city, the markets are changing across the board. And obviously, having seen some of your data with regards to how different the picture looks city by city, can you take us through what you're seeing and what this means for how the operators should be thinking about this? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're exactly right. I think it is incredibly localized story by city level. What we're seeing is actually a diversification or by the irrigation of the market into-- so you have basically your traditional short-stay market. So these are really Edinburgh, Dublin. These are markets that are high-frequency, high-rate-driven, almost hotel-style markets. And they have their own dynamics. Then you have markets that are actually performing really well on this longer mid-stay in-term time. So these are actually quite unusual markets. So we've seen Nottingham, Sheffield, Birmingham, Bristol, UCASL, Cardiff do really well on this. And there's lots of different dynamics there. But I think people are more sensitive to price and affordability. We're seeing a lot more placement, exchange student kind of demand, but also big enough cities where people can make this work about staying with family or staying with the nuncle for part of the term and make that kind of human kind of configuration up. And then there's some slightly more blended markets. Something like London is a very complex market. So you have to go down to almost post-codes and obviously it's a very big city, which has its own cost of doing dynamics. But also, some unusual ones like Glasgow and York where, depending on the time of year, different models kind of work. So what we're seeing here is you have to get very intelligent about this. You need a lot of data, which is partly why we've been working so hard to build up this data set. Because ultimately you can't sell into this market blind. But there is increasing evidence that, regardless of what you do, if you just stick there at 51, 52 weeks, all you will really see is occupancy go down. And those other people will figure out, by hook or crook, whether how they can make this work. And the only real strategy that I can see that makes sense is to get ahead, get informed, get into those kind of data sets, understand that market. And then you can put pricing strategies in place for those different markets. I'll give you an example where one operator without desperately trying to reveal who they are had a post-grad lean and were in sort of what I would call second tier locations. And they found a sort of plus and six week model worked really well. And so they used our data to figure out that actually quite long placements in their buildings for that particular tier was very attractive on that basis. And they've done phenomenally well out that. They know their brand, they know who they are. They can match to the data to understand their dynamic. But going back to the original point, you need to do at a local level because it is a very localized thing. And you need to kind of expand your expertise and knowledge beyond the long-stay market at this point. I think otherwise you'll blind to a huge, huge segment of demand. I think it's brilliant. I think on-house, we're often talking about the lack of data and the lack of kind of forward thinking on strategy. And I think actually what you're saying here, Brad, is that actually you've got all this data. You understand how these different markets are working. And actually you can work with those operators to develop a model that suits their market and their portfolio and what works for them. There isn't one size fits all, as we're often saying. How do you support those operators to ensure how do they get ready to kind of deliver this kind of new type of product to ensure it delivers efficiently? Yeah, absolutely. And exactly right. So firstly, we and for any of our partners, we'll do a free analysis of that whole portfolio down to the building level, really looking at the demand level between term time and summer as two distinct periods of time. And they are very distinct in terms of their behavioral dynamics. And then we'll also look at their long-term rental days, which obviously they will have, or is available in the market. And then we can suggest a strategy across those three elements. And essentially, at a very minimum, you need to understand those as distinct phases and distinct dynamics. We then will also go deeper and look at the operational models to support that. Typically, in term time, most people won't actually operate that in-house, because you might be dedicating, say, 10, 20, 15% of the building to short-term days. But actually, what you want to do is upgrade your kind of housekeeping to teams to be able to help do the turn. But you need a lot of technology and support on some of the operations, like vetting, for example, for student only, which is absolutely critical, guest communications, pricing is really important, channels, demand, branding, because you really wanted to go also, combining into your own flow, which can be quite different from summer, where you might want to bring in one of our partners to help support on the physical operations due to the hotel nature. The other really interesting thing, in term time, that we are supporting with now, is also remarketing to those short-stay guests. Because ultimately, if you think about it, you have lots of students who are arriving in your building. They're staying in your building for maybe a couple of weeks. But they are studying in your city. They are almost always on a placement or doing some sort of fractal rule part of the year that they're looking at a very minimum, if not just a full student who's trying to save money. And we've seen really successful pilots have been launching in the last couple of months of obviously gaining their consent through the flows and everything else, but being able to say, are you actually also in the market for long-stay accommodation? And then offering those is almost like a form of rebooker on the short stays. And in a couple of pilots, we've had 10, 20, 30% conversion into long stays for the following year or the extension of that year. So suddenly you get a sort of try before you rent model, which has worked and built a rent before. And again, if you have people staying in your building, then generally you're going to have a good experience if you've got a good building and a good brand. So they are perfect people to then move in full-time. And even worse, you don't want them to come to Bristol being your building, not really understand how to book your building and then go book something across the street. Because they saw an offer somewhere on the internet. Yeah, I love that try before you buy sort of there. Because I do think that especially for international students as well, quite often they're looking for that temporary accommodation before they then go into either slightly long of contracts. But equally, universities are now starting to look at more modular courses. And I think that this is perfect timing on your part. It's all be it. It's timing that you've had for quite some years since you've founded it. And I think that that's going to be really important to investors as well as operators when it comes to a revenue perspective. So on that note, I think that's where some of the resistance to short stays and doing that from price setting, rather than just, oh, actually it's May and we're struggling for summer. So what do we do? Or we've got January some messters to fill or whatever that might look like. I think the perception seems to be that opening up to short stay during term time, that could lead to some revenue risk or leakage potentially. But I think how do you push back on that? How do you show that this can be that stable, predictable income stream and introduce a bit more certainty to it? Yeah, it's a great question. And fundamentally a very fair question. I think it is obviously a concern if you are in a market that historically has been for however many years, full 51 weeks, you know, gold plated and just going up by X percent. I think those markets-- firstly, there's a sort of half of it is a realization that those markets are dwindling. There are only so many of those markets where you can guarantee that. And therefore, if you are going to end up with one, two, three percent of voids almost guaranteed in the new world or all higher, heading up to Dan. I think-- that not to have a plan to monetize those, as long as the monetization that is equal or higher, you know, it's just like having a hotel where you sell nine out of 10 rooms, you wouldn't deliberately leave that room empty for a year, right? To increase the revenue you would almost certainly want to at least try and sell it for part of the year. The more interesting thing then becomes, okay, well, I sold it that one year, and we've actually seen an outperformance in these midterm or short term in turn stays over the price, as you can imagine, people are paying for flexibility and people are paying for that. So the price is higher. What we're seeing is where people go into their second year, people start to get more confidence and can show more evidence to investors because it's down to a building level. So obviously, once you have building level data, that's where it gets really interesting. And again, a relatively small number, but are now into that, they're now in their second or third year now, they will start being very confident because they have one, two, three years of data, they will now be able to see that happening throughout the semester and all the different patterns. And I think there's a genuinely, actually quite a smart edge for a designation matter of the size of company. But if you think about it, if you can get that data into your building and your portfolio over a period of years, you will then be able to monetize that in a future sell on in a data room or whatever, because you're the one that understands that, we've even seen some very sharp PE firms think, okay, I've actually done this successfully over here, and are looking at for buildings that are underperforming that don't have short state. Knowing that they could put that in and immediately kind of give an uplift on cash. So really, what I would say, or what I try and say to investors is, investors always say that information is the most important thing, right? KPI's data, et cetera, is the most important thing. If you're blind on this and you haven't tried it, then you almost by definition are deliberately removing yourself from an important part of information flow. So at the very least, pilot this on a one building, pilot this on a few units and an empty thing to start the flow of that information. And the most fundamental thing is that term time is fundamentally different from summer. It is an all year round thing, and you want to get some units live in September, October. So you need to be telling your operators all you tell you, telling your teams internally, don't wait in September and see how it's all going. If you've got 15 bett-left, just just put five in for that term time. It doesn't have to be a crazy amount. Let's start generating that data to give us the confidence to go into the under-rights, to go into the models, to go into the plans. Our biggest customers at this point are actually more sophisticated than you might think. I mean, they're careful about maybe what they talk about publicly, and I obviously won't share anything confidential. But they do have clear KPI's. It's in their under-rights. They've thought about performance incentives and timely. How does it work in budgets? How do our managers get renewated? That all of that needs to be slightly tweaked, because otherwise, the dynamics go against the greater good, probably to be fair, the thing that is the holy grail than it hasn't happened yet, is a number of these flexes, it's increasingly flexes its trading. Because that's obviously an important point. What does it mean for capray? What does it mean for exits and stuff like that? But eventually, that will happen, because these things will be built in. And then by definition, as portfolios trade hands, there'll be a view on that. I would say in Iberia, if we look over there, flex has flexed and somehow starting to do turns. I've definitely now been just baked in. People understand it. It's common. So there is definitely a path towards it. I think maybe the UK has just had the luxury of not having to think about this. It's exactly that. It's had the luxury of borderline 100% occupancy year on year. And again, that, for the last couple of years, has been a bit more of a struggle after the post-COVID boom. And I think one of the issues is that it's typically in a struggle in those cities where the demand maybe wanes for whatever reason. University drops out the rankings or more supply pops up, or-- and I'm thinking along the lines of a Sheffield or a Coventry or Nourle leads and a Nottingham. And it's a case of then, I suppose, understanding that this will work best, ultimately. Obviously, pilot it. I think that's the key thing. You do have to test it out. But it's the understanding that what most investors and operators would probably want to do is pilot this in a place where their occupancy is quite low already. And therefore, that demand-- there's going to be more people coming to you for that. So it's a case of how you manage that and how you can then leverage that performance that you can showcase in those difficult cities to then generate that business elsewhere in some of the cities that are maybe more desirable, especially for the summer I'm thinking London and Edinburgh and Glasgow, et cetera. No, I was just going to say you're absolutely right. There's a sort of an interesting circle of thinking where people say, oh, Nottingham or whatever location isn't doing very well. Oh, probably nobody else will kind of want it. But that's really thinking just through that 51.52. Actually, what we see, because one of the biggest things is the cost of living pressure, is that a load of people have been filtered out of your thing. 51 weeks, time's X is the price. And essentially a whole bunch of people just simply cannot afford it. So they're out already. They're not going to-- they've already gone into debt. They've already done everything they can do to try and get there. Then they're not going to be there. So if you just think about it from a different type of industry perspective, they're already the people who are not going to buy your flight ticket peak time. They're not going to buy your business car or whatever it is. So they're actually more likely to do your flex days. So that's why we've seen this kind of counter success, we believe, in Nottingham, Sheffield, and all these locations. Those are the ones that have done the best with these mid-shore term stays in term time, because they almost tap into this stream of demand in that market. Now, it does take you to kind of accept that that is a thing and kind of go for it. But actually, it's the lowest risk place, because you're already not paying your numbers. I think to be fair, some investors might worry that incentives can get skewed, operators might stop focusing on the long stays if they're doing this other thing. But that's the point of it being a deliberate thing. I think that happens if it's a plan B, pick it up in March, and sort of figure out the last second. But I think if you're constructive and you work forward and whatever happens in the background, you make your operators incentive-wise, you bring hospitality people into your business. There are lots and lots of different ways that you can do this proactively. It will actually help you solve your worst markets, as well as some, which is a very different thing in your more glamorous locations. I think it's also around visibility piece here. It's I think where-- and we talk about it in several aspects around PBSA-- is that there isn't different products often when it comes to actual building. And actually, there aren't these products available for people to come and buy. But yet, what you're telling this for Adi is that, actually, there isn't a guarantee, there isn't market, there is people searching for this. And they're doing this without any visibility or awareness that this product actually exists, which I find fascinating. And it just shows that actually there's so much more as a sector we can be doing or should be doing. And you seeing any shifts or change on a sector wide to drive this forward. Absolutely. I think we are seeing some, but not enough. I think the demand has moved way ahead of what the provision is. And I also think the question or what that provision hasn't actually been particularly well figured out. Even us who has the most data in the market, I think, and see the most, we're still doing lots of work with the guest voice. We're actually doing a huge project, which I'd love to kind of share with yourselves in the next couple of months, working with the guests and the students to go deeper in terms of their motivation. But also, what do they want? Because just because they've booked this thing for two months, doesn't mean that was actually what they were trying to book to your point. They were just trying to almost get in the building. And what we are seeing, though, in early things is that this is not-- most of them are generally speaking, pretty typical students. They're not necessarily looking for a full hotel style service. They're not looking for things like daily cleans or additional products around it. They are generally speaking, trying to come to the accommodation, spend the time there spending their c-friends, be part of the social and community of that building. They are often typically deliberately picking student buildings, because they are of that demographic, that age, that vibe, and they want to be in that construct, even if it's only for one or two months. Make some friends, be part of clubs, or whatever it is that they can be part of. But you get into interesting things there. If you're coming for two months, should you give them access to the gym? If you've got an app, how does that-- how does that link in? Should they be invited to the community event? And I think those things we should be thinking about much more proactively, and I think particularly within the academic year, the answer to a lot of those things probably should be, yes, they are essentially people trialing your bigger product and should be catered to in a similar but differentiated way, equally with their rooms. What access do they need? Do we make sure they're on the Wi-Fi? Obviously, because Wi-Fi is crucial. But there's lots of things that maybe not laundry apps. Do you issue them with that, et cetera, et cetera? So I think the, I would say, most of the phrases are probably figuring this out a little bit on the back of it, because the demand is surprised them. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. But there can be so much done now to think about that head for the next term time. I think the also, the interesting thing will be those that slightly reposition or maybe create sub-brands. And there's a lot of space to do some creative stuff there. And where does co-living sit within that-- first is PBSA, because co-living is designed and set up exactly for this model in menu respects. Yeah, I think co-ling is super interesting. And like we really like co-living. We really believe in it. I think we're not seeing-- we are seeing students land in co-living buildings. We are seeing that. However, we are actually not seeing-- they tend to be small buildings. They tend to be not students specific. And we are seeing students generally speaking wanting to be in the student experience and the student building. also, Column tends to be a little bit more expensive, which again, you know, is it cost a living pressure here? So although we are seeing people end up in Column, also things like built a rent in the bigger locations, in a lot of locations, you know, if you're going to work or you know, I don't know, there aren't necessarily Column, around and they might be quite physically small buildings and therefore might even be overwhelmed if 5 or 10 or 15 people suddenly want to go there for a month or two. So I think Column's doing well. I think the way that it could work out is if if PBSA doesn't move to address this, I know a lot of co-living business are scaling as fast as they possibly can. So I think it's one of those things where if co-living misses the lunch here, then I think co-living will eat it and will go for it. But as we know planning and getting buildings and building, it's not so easy for co-living suddenly to go, I don't actually know how many Column units are, but they can't just generate another 20,000, 30,000 beds overnight. So it seems mad to me that a PBSA as sector would leave however many thousands of empty beds they have, which is the truth of the matter, even even if you're just a few percentage points, there's many thousands of beds across the country. You're kind of letting someone else build scale into that demand. I think you're also making the point there several times, is that actually these students want to live with students and I think we've said several times people say, "doesn't make enough of the fact that they are designed for built for house with students and you live with that student community?" And I think that's an important fact that we need to remember. Yeah, and I think it's sometimes easy, I mean, I forget, say we forget in Le Mande even, students ultimately are the ones that will go for that bargain. They will put themselves in an element of physical pain to go book and awkward Saturday night through to this month later and yeah, it doesn't quite fit, but they'll make it work because it's important to them. However, that doesn't mean they want to do that in a building that's miles away from town is completely filled with completely different people and ultimately like, well, university is obviously about getting the degree and learning and stuff as we, as we, I think, the people who really believe in the UK university sector, talk about as well. It is about becoming a age, it is about making some of your lifelong friends, it is about being part of society and clubs and being exposed to other, you know, fact people and socioeconomic, etc, etc. And I think that's not going to happen if you're in a very different type of product in a very distant location from from from what you are. So I think for PBS A, I think for a lot of these people booking these short sages is almost a bit odd for them that there's this big building, there's units available because they can see it for the full year, but they can't, they're struggling to like get in the front door. They're like, I want this thing, but I need it for like five and a half weeks because my course is five weeks and I don't want to spend a little money on the rest of it, but they're almost banging on the door outside saying, how do I do that? And especially if you're coming from abroad, you've got language, complexity, confusion, agents in the mid, you know, there's a whole world of confusion, which is why they end up coming through natively organic online channels, you know, they'll use agents, AI agents to figure out the best way of doing, you know, that demand is like water, it's going to find its way into the building one way or another, but they are ultimately students, they ultimately want some version of the student experience. And PBS has perfectly positioned to do that, but there is a bit of reorganization to do that. Yeah, totally agree. Just for a second, I want to get practical on this because we're, you know, we're keen to talk about the actions. This seems like a great solution at the moment, but one of the things operators do worry about is that operational lift of short-term bookings and and this sort of new layer of housekeeping and staffing and systems. And so I think it'd be really helpful if you can just explain what that really looks like on the ground. Yeah, no, no, happily. And look, it isn't, it isn't zero. I'd be lying if it's, if it's no left at all. It's very hard to do this if you're going to figure this out on your own. And I don't just mean that from a lambda perspective, frankly, it's just like anything, right? If you were to build a long-stage student business and just do it on your own and never go speak to anybody about it, you would make all the mistakes that this sector has learned from over the 20, past 20, 30 years. Generally, you kind of want to divide on-site responsibility and workflows and online responsibility and workflows. And on, we, we believe in term time where you've got students coming in and you're doing, you know, only quote-unquote "experstand the building." We believe it makes most sense largely for the on-site teams to help figure that out because it brings in their muscle. They understand who's in the building. These turnovers are maybe, you know, if it's two months, you know, think about it. One bed will only turn once every two months. So we're not actually talking about daily cleaning and all this kind of stuff. However, you need to find a good hospitality partner locally. You're a cleaning company, you'll find a different cleaning company who can help you turn those rooms. Generally, that's this easiest because you want them to be able to take the linen and clean the linen, take it away and bring it back because we all know there's no covers, there's no space, etc. However, apart from that bit, you generally want to own that relationship with the guest yourself. There are lots of partners who might try and sort of take the whole thing away and we do actually have a version of this as well, which we can if we have to, but we really think that it's more important that you create that relationship with your students there. If you need some stand, what the dynamic is going on, if there is a maintenance issue, what's going on in that building? And again, it's always better to treat those people there who might only be there for a month or two months as a normal student. It's psychologically. However, everything pre-arrival, there is no real reason why that side team should deal with that. It's high velocity sales, it's online, there's a ton of vetting, particularly student-only, there's guest communication and really you want a technology partner or a solution like ourselves who does technology plus a bit of its services to deal with that because that's where your team will be slightly driven mad. If they've got a response to messages at midnight about checking coming in two days in Chinese in one second, if you drop the ball on that, it's going to become one of those exponentially difficult problems, right? So you need a solution there to help you one way or the other and stitching together systems completely on your own is quite painful. So again, that's why I think our product is, I'd like to say, a result of the industry asking us for it rather than us prescribing it. We actually started just with the software, just with the ops and then we realized actually everybody needs something in between and very bespoke for PBS. So we spent a long time finising what makes sense for them to do and for us to do. But with that, being off and running, you can move really fast. We can go live in a couple of weeks. You know, days if they're available, reality is that they tend to be a little bit of on-boarding, etc. But the beauty as well is once your building is built and online and working, like with most of these systems, you'll then set for all the future academic years as well, right? We swide piloting, getting things going is always so important. I think there's another separate question about your core tech stack and how do you figure this out? You know, there's a reason why we went and sort of plugged disclaimer in coming. But we ended up building a full long-state prompting management system in order to balance the two booking systems. You know, so you have short stays and long stays. But crucially, you need to reconcile it in the inventory. You need to reconcile it in your finance. There's nothing else. At the minute, we happily work alongside every long-term PBS out there. But we're very happy to have people on board on our long-term PMS, which partners like you and I have and others, in order to consolidate those so that you can get the best out of both of those and really bring it into a one system, one dream kind of thinking. You don't have to do that, but that's the kind of journey of trouble that we would obviously love partners to go on. But we think that regardless of that, you can create a program operationally, get yourself up and running very, very quickly. And I'd like to think that there are actually enough voices in the market who are like, "I've tried this." It's actually easier than summer because of the low of velocity and the fact that they're all students and stuff like that. I have to say, I've seen the PMS obviously, having done numerous PMS reviews, etc. And it is extremely impressive. To what extent, I mean, where do you make sense that you're putting those two things together to have the short-stay side of things, then you understand how everybody is using that PMS. And I think that is a sensible direction of travel. But where do you think that this goes? Is the sector going to adapt quickly enough or are we going to look at the usual 10, 15-year lag while everyone waits? But for someone else to go first, and then that flexibility really creeps in. Because the good thing about LeVander is that you guys are around for the long term. We've seen numerous other PMSs and short-stay providers come and go. But you guys, I think, have raised money sensibly. You've deployed it sensibly. And feels like you're part of the furniture now. But equally, you're trying to revolutionize and transform the sector. So, yeah, how does this look? Where do you think this goes? In a sense, I feel very, very confident of where things will be in 10, 10, 15 years, right? Which sounds a bit mad to say that. But we really do believe that at that point, you will have, I actually think these would be pan-European operators. I think this will look similar to the American market. I think you will have five to ten hundred thousand plus bed operators who will have a unified system. And Flex will just be in the absolute core muscle of that, as well as AI and other emerging technologies. I think it will be not even conceivable that those things won't be deeply embedded in everything. That doesn't mean there'll be everywhere. It means maybe, for example, there'll be tons of it in Iberia, tons of it in UK and Ireland, but maybe not so much in Germany for whatever reason, right? And the point is that they will choose those dials and the operating teams locally will be the ones that kind of move those things around. I think in the UK, in the long time, I feel very, very comfortable where we'll be. In the short term, it's interesting. I mean, in our history, for example, the pandemic, while it was terrible for lots of reasons, became a bizarre accelerant of certain trends. And for example, summer really went from being a bit of a language school and the Edinburgh thing, to now almost every operation in the UK, it's not even questioned whether you do somewhere, you just do, it's obvious. And right now I think we're at the exact same point where people are thinking about that with the term time short stays thing. There's sort of a few people doing it, a lot quietly, some people doing a little loudly, but there's a sort of an industry thing of like, is anyone really doing this? Not really sure, not really sure what's going on. But actually I think in quick order, I hope there won't be any kind of shock. But if there is a sort of demand shock on the long-stay side, then obviously that will accelerate it. But I'd really, obviously for obvious reasons, not like that because I think nobody wants budgets and impact and people and all sorts of issues that come from that. But what I do think is the other version will happen, which is where the people who do this will perform better. They will very literally print better returns. And then they will either buy or start to evolve other portfolios because they will see the returns that they make from that. That is a slower version of it, but it's almost like that's the default version. And we'll have to see how that plays out. But again, if you can essentially, because you've been sort of thoughtful about this and proactive about this, make 5, 10, 15% higher NOI on a building and notting them, why wouldn't you go by another building and add that value? It's sort of a no brain now. That you agree. I think on how we're always talking about how the sector's changed. We can't always do what we've done before. And I think as we've mentioned, the sector can be really slow to react to that. Everything you've said today for me seems to know, Brainer, it seems that it's easy to get involved. There's a market out there. We just need to market it. You've got the systems in place that can do that. And we do know that systems traditionally have stopped people doing this. And I think actually, whilst it may not always be as smooth as it can be, there are solutions to that. So really, I guess, just to help summarise is what is it people need to do to actually start betting this into their system and getting it rolled out and making actually this product that we know customer is asking for out there and available to students? Yeah, no, it's a great question. I think it obviously, depending on where one sits in an organisation, I think the most important thing that you can do today is push either from leadership perspective or wherever you are in the org to get a pilot in ASAP, ideally, this term time. So you have some data available or at the very least right now, be asking the question, September 1, September 2, whatever the day is that you go in, what are we doing about term time, short stays today? Like, how are we going to do that? Who's going to do it? And generally speaking, when we work with our partners, there's almost the two most important things are you have a number in for your KPI on this. At this stage, it doesn't matter. Just put something in because it will help galvanise. And almost actually the more simplistic, like we're going to go for 100,000 revenue or we're going to go for 10 beds, some round number that people can galvanise. There's a human element to that. And then the other thing that is so important is if your organisation doesn't have a champion around short stays, it will not happen. And what we actually think that this is a cool thing because it's something that a sort of rising star, a super smart, like op-stire rectal, whatever somewhere in the middle of your org, it shouldn't actually be C-suite because they're too busy and they'll move on. Someone who can kind of do this as a thing that they can then be really proud of and they can galvanise all the little strings around the business and manage the sort of, you know, any issues around the org internally and galvanise support runs. Because generally, to the point you just making earlier, somebody kind of, once you kind of tour through it, they're like, actually, this kind of makes it like, why aren't we doing this? Somewhere between that or, you know, okay, it sounds good, but I don't quite have enough resource. So having someone who can pull the threads together, having a goal and then most importantly knowing, way before the summer, what you're going to do September, we'll set you off for success. And even, I would say, even if it's not like quite in your wheelhouse, even if it's not quite in your value, you will be so much more proactive and thoughtful about this. And then frankly, you know what, if you're all your markets end up at 100% and your 10% up and everyone's super happy, then great. But at least you've prepared for every other situation and more likely you've got a really proactive plan. You look very thoughtful as an org and you will be able to monetize and offer this to students. And also once you start doing that, other people galvanise around it. You'll get your marketing teams go, this is really interesting. What are we doing for students? Your ops teams will go from, I have to do this to what would be good to do this. And you kind of evolve it into that more thoughtful thing. So I guess what I'm saying is you don't have to go, we're going to fundamentally rearchitect our whole brand and resin d'etre tomorrow. You can do this with purpose to just put into place a serious program quite, quite quickly. And then you can think about that in relation to your strategy and your brand and your everything else. Systems is very solved. They're apartments like ourselves who can solve all of that. It really is more that internal push to take this seriously. Really agree? Fred, this has been a brilliant conversation. It's definitely one of the most useful 45 minutes that we've spent on this podcast in a very long time. So yeah, really appreciate you being so open with the data and the thinking. Yeah, it's been brilliant. I've really, really enjoyed it. And if you want to find out more about LeVander and what they're up to, all the details we will be in the show notes. Fred, where else can people find out what you're doing and more about you? Absolutely. So obviously we have our website where we try and be active on LinkedIn and we also have the LeVander lens better. So any information. But you know, I always say this is quite a small industry. I mean, genuinely, please just reach out to me on LinkedIn or on email and happily put all our stuff up here. We're at events and everything else. And we'd love to share and explain in any role that you're in really because I think it touches across the industry and we'd love to also hear feedback and thoughts and how we can improve another's camp. Well, thank you so much for listening everyone. If today's episode got you thinking and we really hope it did, please do share it with someone else in the sector who needs to hear it. We will be back next week with more from the House podcast team. Until then, thank you very much to Fred and the entire team at LeVander and we'll see you all next week.