101 Ways To Increase Your Direct Bookings

So a little while back I went over to Nashville and I got in front of 1000 people and I spoke to everybody about the power of direct bookings and why you shouldn't build your house on someone else's land. It was by far my biggest talk today and I would like to say it was my best talk today. I had a lot of fun. I met so many amazing people and the organizers, Bill and Mike and Chris was very kind enough to send me a recording of my talk that I could share with the Boostly community. So here for the first time is my full 45 minute presentation in Nashville at the STI wealth event all about the power of diet bookings. And I share 101 tips on how you can increase your diet bookings. I'm gonna show it all in the entirety. I would love to get your feedback, your comments. You can either send me an Instagram message Ostler uk or you can, you can leave a comment below wherever you are listening or watching to this on Now. A big caveat and context is that the competitions that I ran during the event are only for those attendees. So don't try and think that you can enter or anything like that. It was just on the event of the day. So I really hope that you enjoy watching this. As always, my name is Mark Simpson and I give hosts all over the world the tools, the tactics, the training and the confidence to go increase your direct bookings. All right, let's flip this over. The next thing you're going to see is me on stage in Nashville being introduced by Bill Faith, Mike Sojourn of the STI wealth event.

I think you all know how important I believe marketing is as a part of the differentiator in owning and really maximizing our return on investments for short term rentals. Our next speaker, I think the first time I had a conversation with him, we keep referencing Clubhouse. Not that you should like be doing Clubhouse as a platform, but because this is where we all met. You remember the 24 hour? I think he did two of them. Two 24 hour clubhouses. And that was the first time I think I might have had a conversation with our next speaker. I mean, I guess we can call him Mark. They all know who's coming up here, right? Yeah, he has some of the best marketing education, direct booking education. He's awesome.

I mean I talked about it yesterday. Okay, between those two who two hotels alone, they do over about two and a half million dollars a year in revenue. If we're 75% direct bookings, you guys can Figure out that math, how much this dude has saved me in OTA fees. It's a lot of money, all right? And he's directly responsible for that. I consider him a really good friend. He's the only person that I've had on my podcast three times, because he's that freaking good. He's wrote an amazing book. The book Direct Playbook. If you guys have not gotten it yet, get it, because the book, Direct Playbook.

Direct Playbook.

It's literally the playbook on how to do all this marketing. So go grab it. It's on Amazon. It was the best seller on Amazon. It's legit. And again, I am so freaking excited. He's one of the coolest people in the industry. But Bill's got something else that he.

Wants, and then I'll let you introduce him. I'm gonna let you know a little secret. This is the only speaker that we moved our schedule around and cut mine and Mike's time with you guys because he said he was gonna come and he was just gonna do some little fucking podcast over in the corner on his own. He just wanted to be a part of this. But he's so fucking good that we've given him the closing session.

Ladies and gentlemen, get on your feet. I'm not bringing them out here until.

You'Re on your feet. Make some noise for my man, Mr. Mark Simpson. Hello, everybody. You can all sit down. You can all sit down. Okay. So as you can tell from my accent, I am not from around here. I want to test something. I'm going to pass this camera. This is a360 camera. Mike, you can take off me. Just pass it around. Pass it to the room. I want that camera back. I got to take that back to England with me. Just pass it around, everybody. Just pass it around. So, I mean, this is pretty amazing. Thank you so much. I just wanted to say, first and foremost, when Mike first told me about the event, obviously I'm from England, and I was like, listen, you know, I've got three boys under the age of nine. I've got a pregnant wife. I've got a baby on the way. I was like, there's all that Covid shit you got to do to get in this country. I was like, mike, I don't think I can make it. But then Mike was telling me about the people that are going to be here with Julie, with Sean. We've got tj. We've got all the amazing speakers, and everybody. That was Kim today. And I was like, oh, for fuck's. Sake. This is amazing. And then everybody with touchstate and Guesty and all of them, and then I found the people that are coming that aren't even on this stage. We had Tony and Sarah Robinson. We've got Annette, Nettie, Annette and Sarah from the thanks for Giving podcast. We've got all the hospitable hosts. You got to realize, everybody that is in this room today is going to shake this industry up, because this industry is so fucking boring. And it starts with you. You are going to be the people that disrupt this industry. And this is why I jumped on a plane. I booked my wife a spa day. I apologize. I said I'll be back next week. She thinks I've gone to the shops. I'm in fucking Nashville. So it's okay. So my introduction to my talk is a little bit different. This is not going to be a normal event. As you can see, I've got a shot on stage, and I'm going to introduce to you why this shot is with me. So a normal tequila shot is obviously salt shot and sour. Now, I like to create a shot called the Simpson Tequila Razzmataz, otherwise known as the STR shot. You can feel free to take it. But it really does help introduce what I'm going to talk about today and why every single one of you needs to have direct bookings in your world, in your business. So what? I also want to start off by saying, people on the third floor, please come on down to the ground floor and the second floor, come on down if you can, if you want, because we are not going to have a normal talk where you're sat here making notes, writing. We're going to get you actionable. My goal by the time I finish my talk is one of you will have a direct booking. So we are going to make this actionable because I see everybody writing. I've been walking around these past few days. I see all of the notes. I don't want this to be one where you write a note and forget about it when you get home. I want you to take action right now and actually get some money and direct bookings into your business by the time you finish. Does that sound good? Okay, so before we begin, let me explain why I have this shot with me. So I'd like everybody to stand up. So obviously, a tequila shot starts with a bit of salt. So some of you aren't going to like me with what I'm going to say, but it needs to be said, so stay standing. If 90% of your bookings come in from Airbnb. Stay standing, sit down. If not. All right, I need the salt. So congratulations, you do not have a business, you have a job. Brian Chesky is your boss. And the shit thing about having a boss is that they can change the rules at any time. How many of you have seen the Facebook post the last few weeks in the group? So people saying, ever since that Facebook change, I am down on bookings. It's because you are building your house on someone else's land. Now every single time somebody stays to me, I've got an Airbnb business or I'm staying in an Airbnb, a little bit of me dies inside. Because you are branding Airbnb. Do not Uber this industry. Right? You are not staying in Airbnb. You're staying in a short term rental. That salt is just hitting, by the way. I should not have done that. Fuck me. Right, so you can all stand up again. Now, I'm a nice guy. I like to be like. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put the sugar. So part of the str shot, we have salt, but we also have sugar. Now, I have brought goodies. Who likes presents? I have got hundreds of worthies originals from the UK here with me right now. Now, my granddad, whenever I have a Worthy's original, I always think of my grandad. Sadly, he's passed away, but when I was younger, he's always said, mark, one day you're gonna be on stage and here I fucking am. So here we go. Now, unfortunately, I've not got enough for everybody, so we need to play a little game. Does everybody know Rock, paper, scissors. Turn to your left. Turn to your right. You're going to find an opposition partner. You're going to play a game of rock, paper, scissors right now. Are you ready? Play one round. Rock, paper, scissors, shoot. Go. Rock, paper, scissors, shoot. Rock. Yeah. If you won, stay standing. If you won, stay standing. There you go. All right, please pass these around. Pass them around. Open them up. Yeah, open them up. Pass them around, Pass them around. Thank you so much. Pass them around, pass them around. Pass them around. Keep going. Pass them all around. Make sure everybody gets them. I told you, third floor, you needed to be down here. Second floor, you need to be down here. All right, there you go. Thank you so much. Pass them around. There we go. All right, that's the sugar. So now I've got you back on my side. You can all sit down. By the way, thank you so much. Now it's why I do this and why it's so important that you all listen. But most importantly, take action. It's okay. So I have been in hospitality. Oh, where's my clicker? I forgot my clicker. Do a clicker. It's not just one slide. I share the slides. I have been in hospitality since the age of four. I grew up in a farm stay, bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere in England. I remember I said England, not London. There's so many Americans that I meet say, hey, you're from London. No, I'm from England. My family business grew through offline word of mouth. There was no thank you, there was no Facebook, there was no online, there was no booking.com, there was no Airbnb, there was no Expedia. It was all done via word of mouth. And in 2002, on the 4th of June 2002, so 20 years ago, I escaped my little farmstead, I escaped my family business and I landed, bizarrely, in Nashville. I was a soccer coach in a previous life. I came here for six years, had an amazing time, spent six years trying to find a green card. It never happened. So I went back to the uk. I came back into the family business, me and my wife and my eldest boy, Alfie, he was one at the time, now he's nine. And all that we did and all that me and my wife did, we had to get that business online because my mom and dad were still doing everything on pen and paper. It was ridiculous. So we bought it online. So we took that offline word of mouth and we put it online. We didn't spend any money. It was all natural referrals online using, like utilizing the things that we had. We had a website we listed on booking.com, we listed on all of the channels that we did and we grew the business. We worked at it so hard that within 18 months, we were top three rated on TripAdvisor in our area. Our Facebook pages grew to be one of the most popular in the area. Excuse me. And 80% of our bookings was direct. In 2016, I went to my first ever hospitality event in my local area and I met so many hosts who were over reliant on booking.com or on Expedia. And Airbnb was starting to get a bit of traction and so asked them, what are they doing to generate their own bookings? And they looked at me blankly like all of you are doing now. So I asked, who is helping you? Is the local council? Is the local tourism doing Anything? No. And so I started a Facebook group called the Hospitality Community. Please come and join it after this event. It is the most engaged Facebook group on Facebook. It's 91% engagement rate. An average engagement group on Facebook is like 21%. I started it and I created it for the local area of Scarborough and Whitby, where I'm from. But every day I showed up and I was giving help and advice and I was showing tactics, the same tactics I'm going to show you today. I've got 101 to fit in in 38 minutes. So no pressure. And because of that, word of mouth spread. So we had people from overseas from France and Germany and Spain and then Australia got involved and then America. And before I knew it was this community had grown so much. It grew so much. And I was being asked so many questions about all of these things every single day. And I was like every single day replying to messages. So my wife just said, why don't we turn it into a business? And that's. Boostly was created Boost Hospitality, short for boostly. And in six years, we have now got 2,200 clients. We're the most recommended website agency and marketing agency in the industry. In February of this year, I released a little book called the Book Direct Playbook. Hands up if you have a copy. I found out today from the publisher that it is in the top. I can't believe it's top 10% of book sales in the world. And the good news for everybody here, the publisher said to me, I asked her to do it this morning. And it's just happened. It's now we've knocked the price down to 99 cents. It's less than a bottle of water. So I promise you, go and buy it, go download it, go grab a copy. Because it will change your direct booking business, especially those that are 90% reliant. This year as well, I got involved in an amazing project called hospitable hosts. 20 of the authors are here right now. The reason why this book is so important is that every single one of you has a story. I've got a shit ton of stories and I picked the best one. But every single one of you has a story. This book has been so popular that I guarantee Jody Sterling, who created this, will do number two. And I want every single one of you to do it. There's an amazing person in this room called Will Slickers. Where's Will Slickers? Will is giving this industry a voice. My belief is that every host should have a Podcast. All right. And Will is giving you the opportunity to do so. Go check out Hospitality FM between Jody and Will. Every single one of you will be a bestseller, and every single one of you will have a podcast. The Boostly podcast that I started in 2016 is now in the top 1% of downloads in the whole industry, in the whole world, which is crazy. And I started out in 2016. We're closing on 500 episodes. There's over 500 hours of free content that you can go and consume. You don't have to buy from me. I am very proud that my free shit is better than the paid shit that's out there. So go and grab it, go and check it out. And today, what I am going to share with you is 101 tactics on how to generate your direct bookings. And this is why it's important, is that in 2018, I had a conversation with somebody@booking.com they I asked them that, should a host be able to have a guest stay at their property and the next time that guest comes and stays with them again, that that guest should be able to book direct. And the guy@booking.com said, yeah, sure. But they said, the host doesn't know how to do that. The host doesn't want to do that. Brian Chesky was on a podcast last year, the Sway podcast. And the podcast host asked him directly, saying, do you think your hosts, as in you should be able to do their own bookings? And Brian Chesky dismissed it. He said, the hosts don't know what to do. So I'm on this stage to say that not only can you do it, I'm going to show you how to do it. And everything that I'm going to show you today will not cost you a penny. You don't have to do Facebook ads, you don't have to pay Mr. Zuckerberg, you don't have to do Google Ads. Everything that I'm going to show you is free, easy, and doesn't take any time to do. Now, I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to say, born ready. Okay. Are you ready to increase your diet bookings? Sorry, maybe it's my English accent. Born ready. That's what you're going to say. We'll cut that on the edit, right? Are you ready to increase your dairy bookings? I can't hear you. Are you ready to increase your dairy bookings? Well, here we go. Cheers. That was a mistake. All right, we're going to save it for later. Let's begin with number one tip number one and I'm going to quiz you on this. Now, like I said, I saw so many of you writing, writing notes, writing things. Stop writing, get your phones out. You're going to just basically film and take pictures. I'm going to throw a lot of stuff at you in these next 33 minutes. So anybody who wants a copy of the slides, all you need to do is post a picture on Instagram in the next 24 hours and tag me in. It's Ostler UK, if you don't know how to spell. Ostler UK is literally on my tit right here. So you can see it if I make it easy. Alright? And the next thing as well, who here's on Instagram? I'm gonna do a little competition. Whoever follows me in the next 32 minutes on Instagram, I'll pick one person and you'll win a signed copy of this book. You'll take it home with you. Does that sound good? All right, let's go. So number one tip number one of 101 is know your guest. This is so important. If you try and appeal to everybody, you appeal to nobody. This game, this short term rental industry game has changed dramatically in the last two years. This is not 2019 anymore. We are in an industry that is so in demand. We are in the game of creating memories. You've got to remember this in 2019 because we are so in demand. You could literally start a business. You could take a couple of pictures on your phone, upload it to Airbnb and be pretty much guaranteed revenue the next day. That's the beauty. This is the blessing of this industry. The curse is that so many people get over reliant and lazy because they go, it's all right, Airbnb will sort it. But this is why it's so important now. Coming out of 2020, 21, going into 2022 and 2023, you really need to dial down on who you your ideal guest is. There's market in spiel that says guest avatar, but it's basically your ideal guest. So what you need to do is you need to identify, you need to locate and you need to attract. Remember that you need to identify, you need to locate and you need to attract. So identify who your ideal guest is. So where is your property? What is your property best Sorry, where is your location best known for? Who is coming to your area? Then you need to be able to locate them. So where are they in terms of social media? Where are they in terms of Google? Where do they hang out. Is it online, is it offline? And what's yours is going to be different to yours. It's going to be different to yours. You need to really figure it out. Because when you do work it out, everything becomes so much easier. The copy that you write, the pictures that you take, the social media that you do, once you've got your guest avatar, then you're going to figure out so much more. So you'll have a hiring avatar, you'll have a property avatar and it will just all make sense. So trust me, if you do me one thing, know your guest, and if you don't know and you can't figure it out, hands up. Who has had a booking in the last week? Yeah. Amazing. So take that look at your last six months worth of bookings and figure out, well, where are they all coming from? Who are they? What's the age group, what's the demographic? You can pop that down now, Mike. I think we've got plenty. Thank you so much for bringing this back to me so I can take it back to the UK. Okay, number two of 101. All right, these four little words are going to transform your business. And I don't care if you've got one property, if you've got 100 properties, if you're a vendor, if you're the toilet guy in there, the hospitality guy in the ground floor, I said to come out for this. I don't care what you do, I don't care if you're trying to get more properties, trying to get more guests. These four words are going to transform your business. Repeat after me, do you know anyone? Easy. This is what I want you to do. And this is how we're going to hopefully generate a direct booking in the next 29 minutes. You have got so much access to direct bookings in this, you do not even realize, you do not even know in your phone book right now. You've got friends, family members, co workers, ex co workers, people that know, like, love and trust you. But I guarantee 80% of them don't even know what you do. You need to tell them. So here's what I want for you to do. At any time over the next 28 minutes, just pick out your phone and you're going to text somebody that you know, like love or trust and you're going to say, hey, do you know anyone who needs a place to stay? Do you know anyone who's coming to the area? Do you know anyone who needs accommodation? You start with the people that you know. Like love and trust. Because if you cannot ask the people who know you, love you, like you, or trust you, how are you going to do it? Anyway, these people already like you. They know you, they love you. They're going to help support your business. But you're not asking. As a saying that I have always gone by is that shy kids don't get sweets and you don't look to me like shy people. Am I right? Go get your sweets. It doesn't just end at the people that you know as well. You've got social media. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. It's powerful. So many people use it. Go put a post up on social media. Do you know anyone who is coming to this area? Do you know anyone who needs a place to stay? It's phenomenal. Put it out there. Don't just do it once, though. Do it every single day. Ask the question, do you know anyone? The best people to do this on is business guests, corporate guests, traveling guests. Hands up if you've got business and guests that stay with you or have stayed with you. The business world is so incestual. Everybody knows everybody. You send the message, because that business guest that's staying with you, they're not just coming for one time. They come several times a year. And the reason why they may have stayed and booked with you via Airbnb is because they're the PA in the office or they don't know any better. You send them a message and say, hey, remember when you came and stayed with me? Do you? Anybody else in your office who regularly comes to the area, just ask them the question. But always remember this. You always got a dangle of carrot. Just say, hey, if you do know anybody, please set up a group chat, whether it's WhatsApp or whatever to say, set up a group chat, introduce me. If they book with me, I'll give you X. And X could be anything. It could be Amazon vouchers, it could be a bottle of wine, champagne. It could be, I pay for a meal, sports tickets or whatever. Dangle the carrot. Because when you dangle a carrot, people are more likely to act, okay? And it's free. It doesn't cost any money. It's easy to do and you can literally. People are doing it now. I'm going to give away one copy of my book signed to the first person that does that. Do you know anyone? And then comes up to the stage and show me your phone, okay? So as soon as you've done it, you take. You show me the picture of Your phone. And you're going to win this book. You can do it at any point. Just do it. Just come up to the stage, don't be shy and show me you've done it. And you get a copy of this book at any point over the next 26 minutes. Who's coming? Who's coming? Who's first? Ah, Tristan. No, you're vip. No. Come on. Yes. I'm not giving the vip. I love it. Sarah. Give Sarah a round of applause. Good try, though. That tequila shot is starting to hit. Ah, there's my clicker. Right, next one, number three. We've got 25 minutes to get a shit ton more in. Right, text messaging, WhatsApp, Telegram, Manychat, Community. Text messaging is the unhidden marketing tactic that you all should be doing, but nobody is doing. The reason being is this. Email open rates. And I know none of you are emailing, but email open rates is 21% at the moment. Who can hazard a guess of what the open rates on text messaging is? 93%. You know why? To get rid of a text you've got to open and read is so powerful. Now, Telegram and WhatsApp is free. It doesn't cost any money. Again, the tactics that I like to share with you don't cost a penny because you can take the boy out of England, but you can't take England out the boy. We're very tight. We don't spend money in England. So I'm going to show you this. Manychat and Community, they are very, very cost effective. So easy to set up. Now, I can't do a deep dive on how to use those, but if only there was a book that was available that did a deep dive on every single one of those tactics that cost less than a dollar. Trust me. Text messaging, let's go even more old school. Hands up. If you have had a booking in the last 24 hours, amazing. Now, Airbnb, booking.com, vRBO, they share with you the phone number. They don't share with you the email address because obviously they want that data. It's only a matter of time that Airbnb stops sharing that phone number because they want all the communication on the. So I am the son of a Yorkshire farmer and he always says, make hay while the sun shines. It is so old school, nobody does it and I guarantee 99% of you will not do it. But the 1% that will will win hands down. Pick up the phone and speak to your guest. If you don't know who Your customer avatar is the best people to ask are the ones that are paying you money. They already know you, they've already booked if you as a reason why you got to find it. Now I had an advantage when I was in the family business. We had a bed and breakfast and holiday cottages. It was all on land, we lived on site. I got to survey and interview every single guest because they checked in with me and I walked into the room every single guest. How did you stay with us? How did you find us? Why did you book of us? What was the reason for your buying? Why are you coming to the area open ended? Why, what, where, what when? And there's a story why I put this in on the slide and this is why every single one of you should start doing this. So there's a lady that I know who's called Heather Baer. Does anybody know who Heather Baer is? She's amazing. She's got a podcast, she's the OG of the podcast space. You should go check her out. And I had a chat with her, I went on her podcast and we talked about this and she said, you know what, I actually did this. And the story that she told resonated with me so much. So there was a booking that came in and the booking, when it came in, there was a little note that just said, oh, we booked with you because it's my little Jimmy's ninth birthday. And the reason why they had booked with her was because she had properties on a lakeside, it was very popular for fishing. And little Jimmy, the nine year old, it was his ninth birthday, he wanted to learn how to fish, fish. So they booked with her. Now asked a couple of where, what, why, what who questions, open ended questions, didn't mention anything but she meted the guests, she meet and greeted all of her guests on the way to the meet and greet, she went to a local fish shop and bought bait and tackle and a fishing rod. Cost less than $30. It took an extra five to 10 minutes of a day to do it. When the guest arrived at the property, that bucket with a fish bait and a fishing wad was waiting for them on arrival. Now number one guest experience. Five star review. Amazing. Five star, 100%. The social proof all over straight away, Facebook, Instagram, boom, boom, picture, picture, picture. Look at this amazing host has done. But more importantly that guest returned every year thereon in and as well went home and told all of their friends. So social proof and repeat bookings, that $30 investment is untold in how much money came back In. And it all started by picking up the phone and having a conversation with a guest. Hands up. Who phones your guests? You at a 1% are absolute rock stars. Everybody else, start doing it. And if you're going, I'm too fucking busy for that. I don't have the time to do that. Guess what? Hire somebody to do it for you. Is literally, Mike laid the blueprint out. Do it. It's the best thing that you will do. Does that sound good? Are you enjoying it so far? That's good. Where's what it said? The Baha. And you can buy me all the STIs that you want later. Take this STI. Spread the word. All right, next one. And this is one of my favorites. This is Lumpy mail. Now, hands up in the room. Who gives their guests something at checkout, like a fridge magnet or something like that? Who gives their guests a little gift at checkout? Fantastic. I love it. Fridge magnets, whatever. Now that is gray, but it goes in the dashboard of their car and it stays there forever. Try doing this instead. When the guest gets home, like, say, a week later, mail them something in the post. So you can send that same fridge magnet. You can send the same whatever to them. It doesn't have to cost a lot. Where's that booster? Is it you Booster the sdi? Get in touch with them. This is such a fucking good idea. You should all tap into that, because that is amazing.

But.

But you send somebody a gift in the post, right? A week after they get back, it will land down so well. Because nobody sends anything in the post anymore. They're so used to just getting bills in the post. Let's go old school to go to the new school. So you start doing that, it will go down so well. Because as soon as they get in the car, when they leave your property, real world hits. Little Timmy's got to go to soccer practice. They've got all the laundry and the washing to do. They forget about it. Your little gift stays in the thing. But you send a little message. Send a little mail in the post, it'll land down so much better. And again, doesn't cost a lot of money, that Cameo. Does anybody ever heard of Cameo? Yep, yep, yep. So it became very popular during the lockdown because celebrities and Z Lesters and Z Listers and B Lesters or whatever, they had no work. They had nothing income coming in. So Cameo is where you can get a personal video message from your celebrity. Who's that Cobra Kai guy that came out if you all loved, Right? People like him are on his cameo, right? And you can pay him 20, 30, $40. And they will record a personal video message and they will send it and you can send it to your friends and loved ones, whatever. It's really cool. Birthday present. Now, I love this because I put my marketing hat on. Now, if you're not currently getting business guests or corporate guests, they are amazing because they take the Monday to Friday slots all the time, right? And, and say that there's a business or a company in your area that you want to get past the gatekeeper. You know that there's a PA or an accommodation specialist that you want to get in front of, but you just can't get past that gatekeeper. All you got to do, go find them, go stalk them online, their LinkedIn, their Instagram or whatever, and just see who they're following. If they're following a celebrity, whoever it may be, you can go onto Cameo, you can pay for a personal video message and, and send it to that person and just say, hey, the person that you love has a little video message and introducing you and what you do as a business, that's how you get past the gatekeeper. Hands up here who works with influencers. Hands up here who works. Yeah, influencers, right? So how do you get the attention of influencers? And these influencers are so popular. Some guy came up to me today and he said, hey, I stayed with a Toby. I stayed at a place in Belize. And the property that they stayed at is 100%. All their bookings come from Instagram because they work with Instagram influencers who then talk about their business and then they get guests come all the time. You want to get in front of an influencer, find again who are they following on social media. Go on to Cameo, pay $30, $40 and send them a message saying, hey, this person that you love has sent you a video message and it's introducing you as the business Lumpy. Mail Cameo. When everybody zigs, you zag. Do something a little bit different and it will land down 100% of the time. Time number six, we've got 70 minutes to get through a lot. Number six, stay fi. So hands with, you know, stay fi. Now Arthur's gonna owe me a shot after this. I am not an investor, I'm not an affiliate, but StayFi is an amazing company. So when you go into Starbucks, you go to the airport, you want to use the Wi Fi, you gotta give up your email address. StayFi has brought that technology to the worlds of short term rentals and it is amazing. So to use the WI fi in your properties, you've got to give up your email. One of the biggest pain points that so many people say to me is that, yeah, Mark, but how do I get the data? How do I get the email address? Well, you do it by getting their email address to use your WI fi. Now hands up if you've got a property that sleeps more than six people. Amazing. So you've got to assume that naturally when people come and stay with you, it's not just a family, there's going to be a couple of friends, you know, in the larger properties, you're maybe going to have four or five or six people coming to stay with you. It could be work colleagues or whatever. When someone books with you, you just get the lead booker's details right. When you've got StayFi, not only do you get the lead booker, but you get every single person in that party's email address. So even if the lead booker never comes back to your area, there's a very good chance that somebody else in that party will and you're able to contact them. And you may be thinking, well, I don't want to do email. What they've got planned next is text messaging marketing. It's just gone live. And I talked about text messaging rate. What's the open rates of text message marketing? It's pretty fucking powerful. Again, it's so cheap, it's so easy to use. They should pay me money, but they don't. I just love it. Go and use it. Stay fi S T A Y F I I wish I created that idea. It's amazing. Number seven. This is one of my favorites. Again, become the go to. Bill alluded to it. I'm going to give you in a very simple term, who has ever watched the program, the TV show Cheers? Yeah. The whole tagline around that is everybody knows your name. Okay, you need to become the go to in your area. Doesn't matter if you are in the location. I know Americans, you love to be based one place but you've got properties on the other end of the country. I can't get my head around that idea. But you do it. It's amazing. It's not very British but let's just roll with it. You need to become the go to 110%. I know that this works because it A doesn't cost any money. B I implemented it with my family business and C I implemented it in Boostly. Right now you can go in any Facebook group and ask the Question. Hey, who do you recommend to build a website? And I am not in hardly any of the groups since Facebook kicked me off it. Thanks, Mr. Zuckerberg. But I guarantee you that there's going to be at least one person that will mention my name and boost Lee because I, over the last six years, have become the go to and you can all do this. And there's a great example and a story that I'm going to share with you on a hospitality level that you will all resonate with. So I know that you're doing this because I asked in the VIP who's doing this, but do you have in your properties recommended places to go and visit? Like places to eat, places to drink? Say yes. All right. Have you ever, ever contacted the business owner to tell them that you are recommending them? There's a lot less people saying yes. All right. What I did at our family business is that we put down four or five recommended places to visit, and they were all built around our customer avatar. Okay? So. So I recommended a family business. It was a local play center around a farm for families. Our avatar was families. It was amazing. And they were about 20 minutes away. And we basically sent them guests. We said, hey, go check that. You want things to do while you're staying with us, go check them out. We called the business owner and just say, hey, just let you know we've got about a thousand guests that come through us every year and we're sending them to you. First question, what discount can you offer to our guests when they come and stay with you? So first and foremost, a win for the guests. They got a 10% discount. Win number two, the business owner from not having to do any marketing, any Facebook ads, any promotion he was getting. A thousand guests being recommended to go to his place. Win for him. Win for a local business owner. Win number three for us. That every month he would tally up how many people would come from our recommendation and he would give us a cut. He would give us a little. A little finders fee. Anybody's been to Vegas. Every single person is in on it and doing it. So why are we not doing it in our businesses? It's so easy to do. It costs no money. It's about building relationships. And this is the final whim. This farm, adventure, plaything, whatever you want to call it, they started. They started doing weddings. They got a license to do weddings, right? They had no accommodation. When the bride and groom booked the wedding venue and they asked, hey, where do you recommend for our guests to stay? Guess which was the place that they recommended us. Direct booking, booked out, amazing all the time. And that's just one example. We built at least 20 relationships like that. Now think in your area, in your town, in your city, what types of relationships and networks that you can build. And for those of you that are not, got your properties in the area where you live, Facebook groups. Remember our guest avatar. We identify, we locate and we attract. Go into these Facebook groups. Don't sell and pitch, just try and help. Just answer questions, go and support, give advice, don't be sleazy McSleezy and try and sell your services. Just show up every day and support and give advice and add value. And in turn, you will become recommended, you'll become the go to. So when somebody goes into those groups and say, hey, I'm coming to the area, where should I stay? You are the go to. And there are so many people that I have spoken to on the third floor, second floor, first floor over the last few days who are doing that in some way, shape or form. But there are 99% of you who are not. You start doing that, you become the go to and it's all direct bookings. And the best thing is it's bringing money into your local businesses, your local economy. And people love that shit. I love that shit. So start doing it now. The next one is amazing. And I know none of you are doing this. This is offline marketing. Flyers. Now, flyers are so, so cheap to make. You can draft some up on Canva or you can get someone on Fiverr to do it. Go to a local printer and print them off. Now if hands up, if you would love to get more midweek bookings, more contractors, business, guests staying with you. Yeah, you'd all love it. Of course you would. So a lot of you struggle because you just don't know where they are. Well, I tell you where they are. And you can do this really easily. So get a load of flyers printed off and talk about your business. Try and, you know, put down about accommodation or whatever. One night, either you do it or pay someone to do this. Go and drive around your town or city and go to like the budget motels, the. Whatever it could be like in England, we've got like budget motels, Travelodge, we've got pubs, you've got Hilton's marriage, whatever. Go and drive around at nighttime and look in the car park for worker vans, contractor vans, every contractor van, they've got their phone number, their branding on it. If they're staying in a Hilton or a Marriott or a big or big hotel, then that's because they don't know any better. You can go to them and say, hey, you know that you're staying in this Hilton, Marriott, Budget, Motel 8 or whatever. You're overpaying. We can give you better accommodation. They'll have apartment, They've got private park and all that cool stuff. Here's our number. So all you need to do, number one, you take the flyer, you pop it on the windscreen, or you write down the phone number and you call their company the next day and you explain and you introduce your services. Number two, with flyers. There are notice boards everywhere. I was in a cafe this morning having breakfast and there was a notice board right there. Tons and tons of people putting their things up. Not one accommodation business in Nashville had their details. A flyer on that notice board, Go and take your business, take your flyer, go around the area and just put your business on those notice boards. Flyers and offline marketing is crucial. In the toilets, right there in the restrooms, there's those advertisements that you're at the rhino having a piss right in front of you. It's literally right in front of your eyes. You've got to get in front of it. And it's online advertising. And again, it doesn't cost any money because everybody thinks that print is dead. Everybody thinks that nobody's doing it anymore. And because of that, it is so cost effective. All right, I'm going to fly through these because we've only got seven minutes left and I've got a lot of tips to get through. Are we all enjoying it? Don't forget, if you want a copy of these slides because I'm flying through them. Message me, take a picture on instagram, post it on your stories. Ostleruk and I will send you the copy of these slides. Welcome hampers. This is one of my favorites. This is so easy. This is a great way of getting direct bookings, but none of you are doing it. So hands up. If you give free tea and coffee, maybe a bottle of wine for a guest on arrival. Amazing. Hands up those of you that put it in a welcome hamper and make it a thing. Good, good. There's so many of you who don't. It doesn't cost a lot. It costs like a wicker basket. Costs like 20 ducks. $20 at TJ Maxx. And Elise said TK in England was T ask, right? It doesn't cost anything. You put it in a hamper. You put the tea, the coffee, the wine, maybe a little welcome note, put it on, on the table as they come in and just say, hey, thanks so much for booking with us. And I tell you what, you reserve that for people who book direct and it will land down so much better. My goal is to help 1 million hosts cut down on their over reliance on the OTAs. I've got to re educate you and in turn, I'm going to show you how to re educate your guests. Because I guarantee your guests don't know what book direct mean, because barely any of you know what it means, because the questions you've asked me. All right? So if I can get 1 million hosts to cut down on our over reliance and re educate their guests and say, you've got a thousand guests, that's a lot of people. And that is how we get Brian Chesky to pay attention to what we're doing. But you reserve the welcome hampers for those that book direct. You can call it book direct operation. So your cleaners or whoever go in, when someone books direct, they get the hamper out from storage, they put it on the table, they pop it all in there and say, hey, because you booked direct, thank you so much. Here's your welcome hamper. And then you've got something to mention on your website, on your website, on the homepage. People need to know why they should book direct. It's not all about saving money. Sometimes it's the incentives. And if you want a perfect example of this in action, go to marriott.com, go and look at Hilton, Go look at what they do and the perks that they give when you book direct. They do it. They're free. WI fi, early check in, late checkout welcome hampers is the easiest one to do. Number 10 of 101. And this, this is the really key one. So I want you to pay attention to this. So hands up, if you've got a pms, a property management software, you've got owner as guest. If there's a thousand, right, there's loads, right? Why, oh why, oh, why, oh why are you giving your, your key dates to the OTAs? I literally, I don't understand this. There's dates in your calendar that you know that you can sell five times over. Mr. Mike Stone, we've got the super bowl that's coming to Phoenix, Phoenix this year. Fuck me. You could sell yourself 10 times over this year, but you are giving it to the OTAs. Why are you giving them your best dates? Go to your pms, go to your channel manager and block those dates out. Block them out to the OTAs, keep them direct. And then you're going to message, you're going to post on social media, you're going to text, you're going to do whatever you want and say, hey, we've got property in here. If you are coming here, you want to book those dates, you can only book direct. You can only book direct. When you come to me, I've instantly saved you a shit ton of money in commission right there. None of you are doing this. Start doing this. When you get really brave, you will block all dates out six weeks in the future to the OTAs. And the cool thing about this is that you've got to make the OTAs, the online travel agents, work for you and not the other way around. So if you get closer to the date and you play a little game of chicken and you've still not booked those dates out, guess what? Turn it on. It's instant. And then you make the OTAs work for you and not the other way around. Yeah, easy to do. Does that make sense? Can you do that? Are you ready? You weren't fucking paying attention. Are you ready? Okay. Are you ready for the next 101 tips? All right, there you go. So if you want the next hundred tips, you know what you need to do. Booster.co.uk book it costs less than a dollar. Go get those tips. I just want to say thank you so much for having me, for welcoming me. You have been all so amazing with me the last three days. I am jet lagged to fuck. I got to fly back tomorrow. I just want to say every single one of you has been amazing. Every conversation I've had, you've all been so welcoming. Wish me luck. I was nervous as before. I got up here today because I just walked into this room and seeing all of you, it was crazy. But thank you so much for having me. I really, really, really, really hope that you not only pay attention to what's being said today and the last two days, but you take action. The one thing that I attribute to the success of Boostly and to the success of Team Boostly members is that we take action. So whatever you have learned these last few days, whether it's from my talk or any of the other talks, you put some into action on the journey home. Whether it's a flight or whatever, you put it into action. And just every day 1% try and get better. Because if you do that in turn your business and you will get better. The advice here has been amazing. This event is the best event I have ever been to. And it is the best event in this industry. And I really do mean this. Every single one of you is going to change and disrupt this industry. And it starts with every single one of you here. So go home, be awesome, keep being awesome, talk about what you're doing, tell everybody what you're doing, and let's go and get some Derek Bookins, okay? Come on.

He was better than that. Give it up for Mark Simpson, everybody.

I've got one more. I've got one more, I've got one more. So remember about the sour, the sour part, all right, every single one of you, underneath your chair, there's one of you has got a goodie. Everybody look under your chairs right now. There's a little present I left for you. I'm only joking. I'm only joking. Now, that leaves you a little sour. This is really important. The worst thing that any of you can do is over promise and under deliver to your guests, because that leaves a sour taste in their mouths. You will never get referrals, you will never increase your direct bookings. Always under promise and over deliver. So, ah, that's fucking Sarah. Don't do that. Promise me that and you will always win. So thank you very much.

Thank you so much for checking out today's podcast episode. Now, before you head and go anywhere else, before you click to the next episode, before you do that, do me one big favor and go check out boostly.co.uk trust IPRAC are the sponsors of all of the Boostly content. And the reason why I work with them and the reason why we spread the message of IPRAC is that when a host or. Or a company is looking to get more into direct bookings, the main question they have is around trust. As in, will a guest trust that I am a true and real business? Well, IPRAC take care of all of that. And they've got a special offer that is only available to Boostly people. But to do that you need to go to boostly, which is B O-O-S-T-L-Y.co.uk trust you can find out all the information there. You can book in a demo, book in a call and. And then you will get your super special offer that is only available to Boostly peoples. Thank you again for tuning in. Do go check out Iprac. We'll be back again very shortly with another podcast episode, but until then, we'll see you all very soon. Take care.