Send us a message!On today’s episode, we’re featuring our recent panel at DESTICON, a virtual conference that brought together tourism and hospitality professionals from the DMO (Destination marketing organization) space. In our session, we discussed how professional managers can work with their DMOs and CVBs to promote responsible tourism. (DMO = designated marketing organization and CVB = convention visitor’s bureau. These organizations are typically funded by local and state tourism dollars, and exist to promote tourism to the destination.) There’s plenty of confusion as to what the difference is between our product and what Airbnb is as a company. Lauren Madewell, David Krauss, and John Flanagan represent different sides of our industry – and collectively, we attack the biggest questions and misconceptions.Don’t miss this episode of Alex & Annie: The Real Women of Vacation Rentals – it’s an important one!“REAL” TALKLauren Madewell: The lack of ways to verify guests on Airbnb is concerning"Frankly, every bit of it is concerning. So you're getting their name and you're getting their cell phone number. Thank God you're getting their cell phone but you're getting a masked email. You're not getting their address. You have no way to verify their identity. You are trusting that this listing company, this tech company, Airbnb, has fully verified their identity and said, it's cool. It's cool. Everything's good."David Krauss: Create a voice for vacation rental on the boards "I think that's fundamentally the area of opportunity is to be proactive, not let this conversation kind of happen without engagement, but in terms of the CVBs and the boards and the DMOs, generally speaking, I think that the more that accommodation option is valued and seen as a valuable contributor and a complimentary activity, I think that's where the conversations are productive."John Flanagan: Regulations are actually good, restrictive bans are not"One thing that I think that I would impress upon anyone listening is that regulations are not a bad thing. We actually want regulations from both the supplier side and the operator side in our industry. The threat to what we're trying to do for travel and short-term rentals is restrictive bans and restrictions on short-term rentals. The reasons that those things come into fruition and happen is because of a lack of education on what a real professional operator does and a lack of regulation is standardization."This episode is brought to you by our Premiere Brand Sponsor, Casago, along with Co-Sponsors, Guest Ranger and Good Neighbor Tech.Special thanks to Rev & Research, Presenting Sponsor of Alex & Annie’s List Connect with our guests below:David Krauss | Lauren Madewell | John FlanaganConnect with Alex and Annie and get more real vacation rental goodness:Alex Husner | Annie HolcombeAlexAndAnniePodcast.comIf you enjoyed this episode of

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