MBA2310 Q&A Wednesday: Should I book an AirBnB or Hotel for my team retreat?

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show, no fluff, just the good stuff with our 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenhom. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co-founder back in 2014. Just a quick reminder, we are publishing episodes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, three days a week, giving you a day in between to implement what you learned. That way you can listen to every episode and get the most out of the show. And of course, you have access to over 2 ,300 business lessons in our back catalog.

0:42Just hit follow on your favorite podcast app to get access to those. Today's episode is Q &A Wednesday. On Q &A Wednesdays, we answer a question from one of our listeners. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net. Fellow entrepreneur, Ladin, asks, when organizing a retreat, should you go with a hotel or an Airbnb? I'm planning an event myself. And see that you run events and you just finished your team retreat. Why did you choose a hotel over an Airbnb? be? Great question, Landon, and I'm going to answer it in today's episode. In-person events are an amazing experience, not only just for the attendees, but you as the organizer, as the person that's throwing it.

1:22It's a great way for you to become a connector, build relationships, and run an amazing, profitable event. But when you're planning a retreat, accommodations is a huge decision. It's a big factor in if this event's going to be successful or a flop. And I'm going to show you how I make this decision when it comes to accommodations, whether you're running a team retreat or you're running a retreat or a mastermind for other professionals or whatever it might be. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So Landon's asking, should I choose a hotel or an Airbnb for my retreat? Why one over the other?

1:56What are the advantages? What are the disadvantages? What are things I need to consider? I have a rule of thumb when it comes to planning any in-person event, whether I'm running an event for my own team, whether it's the whole team or maybe management retreat, or if I'm running an event for my business, for other entrepreneurs, like I run an event called OzCon over OzCon.co, which is a founder's retreat. It doesn't really matter. But whenever I plan an event, I have a rule of thumb. This is my rule that I stick to no matter what, because it's always served me well. And that rule is I always optimize for convenience.

2:32Let me explain what this means. When you optimize for convenience, you're basically optimizing for things not to go wrong. I want to minimize the headaches. I want to minimize chances of things going sideways, of things just not going my way and causing the attendees of the retreat to have a bad experience. So I like to start with the experience being smooth and convenient for everybody. For me as the organizer, as well as the attendees. A lot of people start with a budget and that's not a good place to start. They start with saying, how much can I charge for this? And they start there and they work backwards and say, okay, how can I afford this?

3:11What kind of accommodations do I need to get to fit within that budget? That's really a bad way to kind of plan an event. What you really want to do is you want to plan for the experience to be amazing, to make sure everything is smooth and convenient. And I'll give you some examples in a moment. And then from there, I price my product. I price my tickets. Once I know how much that great experience is going to cost me, then I'm going to charge based on that so that I'm making a profit so that it's not super tight. So what does optimizing for convenience mean? So I'll give an example. I ran my team retreat in the Philippines recently, and we chose to stay in a boutique hotel versus renting out a big villa or Airbnb.

3:51Why? Because there are many things that the hotel is going to do for me and make things convenient for me that an Airbnb won't. I'll give you an example. With Airbnb, breakfast is not included. I have to figure out how I'm going to feed these people that are coming from around the world breakfast every morning. With a hotel, I can make sure breakfast is included. I can at least pay for it if it's not included in the price and make sure that there's breakfast there for them to eat. I don't need to sort that out. That's a big headache. Again, optimizing for convenience. A hotel can organize hotel transfers, meaning that they can pick them up from the airport and take them to the hotel.

4:27I don't need to worry about them having to Uber or get a taxi. This is especially important if you're going to a new city or country that maybe people are not familiar with, like the Philippines in my example. Again, optimizing for convenience. Here's a big one. When you're running any kind of event, retreat, anything, and you have it in a hotel versus an Airbnb, the hotel takes care of all the hotel things. What do I mean by that? Let's say you're staying in an Airbnb and one of the attendees of your retreat needs new sheets or needs more water or the TV is not working or wants some extra towels.

5:04In an Airbnb, they're going to go to you. They're going to say, hey, I need this. Then it's your responsibility to figure that out. How am I going to get more towels? Do I got to contact the host? Do I have to go to Kmart or go to Target to get some new towels? It's a headache, right? Not convenient. But in a hotel, anything that they need, you can just tell them. If you need anything regarding the hotel or regarding the accommodations, just dial the reception. The reception will take care of you. You have nothing to do with that. You don't get any complaints. They want more towels? They're going to get more towels.

5:34TV's not working? They'll fix the TV. This is why I'm a big fan of always optimizing for convenience because I want to, again, lower the risk of things going wrong. The more that things can go wrong, more chances it's not going to be a good experience for the attendees and myself. This is why I always prefer to go with some sort of serviced option. A hotel, a hotel apartment, something that has a reception or some sort of services. This is especially important if you have a larger group. And now when I say larger, I'm saying more than four or five people. Now, if you have a small team, let's say four or five people and you're doing a team retreat, maybe an Airbnb is a good option for you, especially if you're doing it in the city or somewhere where you can just like walk to breakfast and eat out breakfast.

6:21And we have less numbers. It's just easier to manage. But when you have a group of, you know, 14, 15, 16, 18 people, 20 people, 30 people moving around and getting everybody on board and getting things sorted is just a headache. And the chances of things going wrong are high. The other thing I love about booking accommodations with a hotel or resort is that they can take care of a lot of things that I need taken care of. They can tell me what are some local restaurants if we're going to go eat out to dinner, and they can tell me what is a good place to go. This happened in our last OzCon. We spoke to the hotel, we spoke to the resort, and they told us, hey, there's a great little farm that serves a delicious dinner that you and your group would love.

7:00Here's their number. With Airbnb, maybe the host will give you that information, maybe not. Maybe you'll have to wait till you get to the accommodations to see that little pamphlet that has all the recommendations. Hotels can organize excursions for you. Let's say you're going to some sort of beach location and you want to go jet skiing with your team or banana boating or whatever it might be. The hotel can help you out. What about the actual meeting, the actual conference itself? The hotel itself has a conference room, has a meeting room that you can use. They can set it up with a nice table and AV equipment so you can project and use music and sound.

7:36They can give you notebooks and pens. There's a lot of convenience by going to a venue that actually is prepared. With an Airbnb, you're going to have to turn the dining room into your meeting room. And again, this is not so bad if you have a smaller team because it's cozy, it's fine, it's acceptable. But with a larger group, I would say more than five or six people, it's just better to have a place for everybody to meet every day. It's simpler, it's easier, and again, it gives you less chances of things going wrong. And guess what? If things do go wrong, you can just easily contact the reception.

8:11Hey, the projector's not working. Help me out. And that's another point. When you're in an accommodation that has 24-hour help, immediate help, this is a huge advantage when you're running an event. why? Say, for example, a Wi-Fi is not working. Okay, that's basically criminal and people will freak out. Where's the Wi-Fi? I'm joking, of course, but if you're in a hotel, you can just dial reception. My Wi-Fi is not working. What's going on? Can you get me on the network? And they'll solve the problem within a few minutes. But let's say you're in Airbnb and it's like 6 PM and the Wi-Fi is not working.

8:43You're going to contact the host. They're probably troubleshooting with you, but if it still doesn't work, they're going to have to send somebody probably the next day at the earliest. This all comes back to my rule to always optimize for convenience. So what is the most convenient thing for me? What's the most convenient thing for my attendees? I'm going to go with that. If it's going to cost me a little bit more and I'm charging for this event, I'm just going to charge more and I'll make sure everybody has a great time because I'm optimizing for convenience. So the wrap up, in most cases, if you have a team that's larger than six people, I like to go with a hotel or some sort of resort or some sort of service situation.

9:21It could be a service department with somebody that can be on call or somebody that has a reception. I prefer places that have food options like a restaurant and breakfast. And this is all to optimize for convenience. Now, listen, you don't have to go super fancy. If this is your first kind of event and you're on a budget, you can go with a three-star hotel, even motel that has all these services and has breakfast and it'll still be a pretty decent offsite, a pretty decent event. I remember reading the book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, had this huge tech company. They ran out of money.

9:55They did their offsite to get the company back on track at a motel. I'm talking about the ones that, you know, the corridors are outside and the pool is in the middle by the parking lot. Now, in his case, it sounded pretty, you know, rough, but there's things that are a little bit better than that. They're inexpensive and they don't have to be a five-star hotel. Just food for thought. Thanks so much for listening to the$100 MBA show. And thanks a lot for asking your question on Q &A Wednesday. If you've got a question you want to ask, you can email me over at omar at 100mba.net at any time. And make sure you let me know if you want me to mention your name or keep it anonymous.

10:26And we'll answer the question right here on Q &A Wednesdays. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. When it comes to events, planning is key. I like to plan as far in advance as possible. This gives me enough time to work out any kinks or any things that might cause me problems in the future. Also, it gives you a whole lot more options when it comes to finding accommodations and booking things because things are available when you book in advance. But when you wait too long, then your options get slim. My event, OSCON, that I do for founders here in Australia, I plan it 12 months in advance.

10:58I sell tickets 10 months in advance. This ensures I have all the important things booked. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Friday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Thank you.