How to Get to 60% Direct Bookings on Your STRs

0:00I got to know other local Hospitality owners in the area I went to networking meetings and and it was at these networking meetings I I I was asking them about how they're marketing the businesses because they were all complaining about you know booking.com about Expedia and they were start to complain about Airbnb and I said well what are you doing to Market your own business and they just looked at me blankly and I was like well how about you know this how about email how about social media and they just said I don't know how to do it and so the reason why I started boostly was no one was doing this I I went to the local Council I went to the local tourism board I asked what help and support was there and there was nothing I looked online to see if there's anybody offering the services and it was either really out ofate stuff or was people who didn't really know what they were talking about or a charging an astronomical amount to

0:49To do the work and so I just thought well if no one's going to do it so I'll do it myself and so I created a Facebook group called the hospitality community that Community is still going to this day that Facebook group group and after running that for a year and you know answering questions from Posts every single day I just showed up in this Facebook group I decided that I was going to basically take all of these questions that I'm getting and I would just record videos of me doing what I would do so how to do email how to do Google how to do Facebook how to do all of these things and put it on a course I discovered this thing called thinkific which is a real cool place like it's like kajabi but it was popular more popular back then and that was the first ever people I taught on on how to to sort of do marketing for for the bookings and now seven years in it's changed

1:38A heck of a lot we now do you know website design we've got a CRM we try and do a One-Stop shop for all things D bookings and we've got 2,500 members we've got over 7,000 listings currently being powered by booley and we're on track for 50 million pounds of track direct bookings in the last 12 months which is amazing so yeah it's it's crazy how much it's grown over the last seven years and yeah it's just it's just keeping on going and going yeah wow that's cool in just out of curiosity what was the property like that your parents had was it was it like a traditional bed and breakfast where it was rent by the room and then your parents like actually made breakfast for him or yeah so it was 14 bedrooms

2:26Of a guest house so basically my parents knocked down two bar and put 14 bedrooms in that was your traditional bed and breakfast and then out back we had a b that we that fell down basically there was a big wind and the band fell down we rebuilt that as holiday Cottages so that was your traditional self-catering vacation rentals so it was a bit of a both and the attraction and the niche was the farm stay aspect cuz it was 50% working farm 50% vacation rental short St accommodation and so people would come from the cities they'd come from XY and said to stay on a work in farm very cool yeah I it's funny you bring that up because I'm I mentioned before we hit record that I'm in our barn right now that I yeah we converted it was a old full Barn that we converted into a air BMB

3:15Or or short-term rental and then my wife has her shop in here and I have my office and a gym and and that's it's just worked out fantastic like it's funny how you know you can you think who wants to stay in a barn but it's got so much chman appeal if you do it the right way and ours just stays booked up the same way so yeah well it's it's it's it's crazy because back in the 90s when they did this no no one was doing the farm stay thing and now in the UK every you know I think one in three Farms has got some form of accommodation whether it is a barn or a glampsite or you know Etc so it's it's very very popular now people love it and it's just a case of you know especially if you're living in a city if you're living in a town just to be able able to escape and you know there's some amazing locations that you can just drive to within

4:03Two three hours or even you know and it's you can have a real nice couple of days away or a couple of weeks away yeah absolutely so so I think you know you talked a little bit about the Genesis of the this whole approach with direct bookings and I I think people can get kind of lulled to sleep with airbnbs you know they post some pictures they put it on autopilot but I also think there's a lot of benefits that come from Airbnb obviously you know you you saw some of that with when you converted your your parents property over but Airbnb can also rip the rug out from under you you know and and like they did during the pandemic when they just decided they're not nobody gets any bookings right now so you know how do you reconcile I guess the benefit of Airbnb that it

4:52Provides with the risk that it prevents and and how do you balance that with you know the desire to do Direct you're 100% right when you call it a balance I think the the misconception of what I talk about is that I'm going to encourage everybody to go call turkey on Airbnb delete your list and delete your account and just go 100% direct it could be further from the truth I am a as big of a fan of saying listen you need to be on these platforms as you are to have a direct element into your business but it's just it's a simple business practice if if you were going to start a PT business you wouldn't just get all of your customers from this one gym you wouldn't just get it all from this one place from all from say Facebook because what happens if that gym closes down or or Facebook just deletes

5:40Your account it's the same as business when when it comes to hospitality you don't want all of your business coming from one channel one resource because what happens and what happens is like it coming more and more at the moment as all you have to do is go into a Facebook group all you have to do is look at social media posters to see what what if you mentioned it with the with the pandemic with Airbnb just canceling guest days doesn't matter what the policy is refunding them for without even telling the host that they're going to do so that was a big one more recently they've massively changed their algorithm without changing anybody they put these emphasis on categories and I saw people go from ranking number one on Airbnb to being on page three and not being seen and just very very recently they are massively tapping into AI now so your search on on Airbnb will

6:28Be to different to mine based on your likes wants and needs and your preferences and how you interact with the site so even now like if if you see any video on YouTube that says I will help you rank number one on Airbnb it's null and voided and pointless you're watching it because it is it's just not it's not how it works now the models change so much and also as well you've got the you know ever since they they weren't listed on the stock exchange they are now heavily favoring and they have to favor their stockholders and then they have to to favor their guest because this is the majority of the people that power that business and hosters schem to get pushed pushed push pushed down doesn't matter what they say from a PR point of view and you've got to give them props the Airbnb PR machine is one of the best in the business I don't think they get enough attention as they should do and the marketing team is phenomenal but for every air

7:17Cover they create it's it's just a marketing thing that's literally all it is so those of you those people that just do everything on Airbnb everything that have their price and dictat by Airbnb have their air cover dictated by Airbnb you've got to remember everything that Airbnb does is to benefit one person and one person only and that's Airbnb it's not the host and so this is why I say don't build your house on someone else's land you know I've had people who have come to me from the real estate world or from other worlds that say yeah I I would never do this in my other business I don't know why I do it in in here but we we do and the reason why is you alluded to it is that when you start your your short term rental Journey your hospitality journey and let's just say you're converting a b you've got all of these plates that are spinning and

8:06You've got all of these things to contend with and when it comes to the marketing plate if you know that you can take a couple of pictures of your property upload it on one website and be pretty much guaranteed to bring in Revenue then you can just go I can forget about that there's no other industry that I know of that you can start a business upload it onto one website and be pretty much guaranteed Revenue but we get that when when when it's hospitality and Airbnb the problem with that is that if you leave that plate spinning you become overline and you become lazy and then when what happens if that plate stops spinning you've got to literally then you've got to go and grab it and you know and really pump some attention into it and that's starting to happen now 2020 2021 when hotels were shutting down when cruise liners weren't going when people couldn't travel overseas as much what did everybody do everybody still wanted to Vacation everybody

8:54Still wanted to go on a holiday so they would you know jump on to these short-term rentals it's why it's boom so much but we're coming around now and Cycles come and go and we're coming back to the cycle that is 2018 this is where everything is matching up now and in 2018 you had to pay attention to your listings 2018 you had to do tweaking 2018 you had to Market your business and what I see a lot of people do now is that they're marketing their business of a growing a social media following so I can see some stunning Instagram accounts I see Instagram accounts that have got you know 10 20 30,000 followers and I go to click the link to go to see where it's going to take me to thinking brilliant is going to take me to their direct booking website and it takes me back to their Airbnb I'm like oh my gosh you are building this beautiful brand you're doing all of the hard yards and then you are literally marketing your

9:42Business for Airbnb you're doing the hard work for him he's sending it back to them and so this is why it's really important one of the things that everybody comes to me for is is the protection so it's like when a guest books on Airbnb I know that I'm protected by by Airbnb but if anybody has tried to put a cover in a claim in on Airbnb with a ha cover you'll know how hard it is all the Hoops you've got to jump through you know I always say this if you're going to put a cover in on Airbnb at the end of the day it's going to favor one person and one person only and that is going to be Airbnb there's been reports recently where hosts have put x amount of claims in let's just say more than a handful and they've noticed that their that their listing on Airbnb is being booked less why because they're putting more claims in so a host that's putting lots of claims in

10:31Is becom a problem because the insurance has to pay out from Airbnb so we're going oh let's just put it down the ranking a bit I make sure nobody can see it so this is why you've got to make sure that your insurance your host protection your pricing is all done via a third party so when I say pricing price labs are the one that comes up the most or Beyond or or or wheelhouse when it comes to protection you've got companies like safely you know proper Insurance when it comes to host protection you've got super hog so these are third party people that will give you the same cover if not better but it's you're taking it into a third party you're not having it all decided on on Airbnb which is just clever business and when it comes to marketing again you want to be ranked on Airbnb you want to be listed on there 100% but don't forget verbo don't forget booking.com and obviously don't forget to

11:19Have your direct booking as as well so it's just being sensible business owners really that's what I'm trying to get out yeah and what you just described answered several questions that I had around you know protecting yourself when when it comes to taking direct bookings cuz like you said with Airbnb it feels like there's more protections in place the one thing that that you didn't mention that I think comes up quite a bit is is the screening guest as well so if you take a direct booking it's you you got some guy's name and and their email address with Airbnb typically you can see their history of bookings and so they might have five you know five star reviews and you can see what other hosts said about them and so gives you kind of a warm and fuzzy that they're going to perform the same way and they know that they're going to be rated on Airbnb

12:08Afterwards so is there some other solution to where how you can screen gu if you're doing direct bookings yeah massively so the company where I talked about for the host protection with super hog they also do the guest screening and they actually take it a step further because to get verified on on Airbnb you just have to you know upload a an image and give an email address that's literally it but anybody can do that literally anybody can do that with with super hog it goes a step further so it will do background checks it will do all of the things that you you should be doing on that thing and super hog will flag if a if a future potential guest is actually somebody that shouldn't be staying inside your property and it will tell you hey this this is literally this is some somebody that you shouldn't be allowed in your property and you'll be able to cancel it so again this is this is by working with a

12:56Third party working with the experts that that is their zone of Excellence that they can help protect you and you know in in Arizona for example this has become quite big because you've got the child protection acts Etc that have come into place especially around shots accommodation so super hog can actually help you with that so as States as as this industry expands as this industry evolves it's becoming really important and so this is why I I just say to everybody you know don't just go for Airbnb because it's simple because like I said their marketing is absolutely spot on the way that they described that you can just get started you can you know have your property take a couple of pictures and be up and running in a couple of hours that may sound all well and good but you know if it's so easy they're obviously scarting over a few things and they want to make

13:44Things easier for for some and you know this is not just let's just all pile on Airbnb it's the same with verbo and booking.com I wouldn't say to anybody go 100% verbo or 100% booking.com you want to make sure that you're listed on all you want to make sure You' got a direct booking website and you want to make sure that you've got a what's called a property management software which is PMS and and that will connect everything so you don't get double bookings so having those car essential things in place is the key having things like super hog your insurance Etc it just means that you're all set up and ready to go w