4 Quick Fixes For Empty STR Calendars

When it comes to Airbnb businesses, I've seen it all over the past 10 years, I've worked with nearly 2,000 short term rental hosts, reviews close to 10,000 listings, and help property owners maximize their bookings. I've seen the common mistakes, the quick wins and the strategies that separate successful hosts from one struggling to get direct bookings. On top of that, I've sold over 200,000 copies of my book, Direct Playbook, which teaches hosts how to take control of of their business instead of relying solely on platforms like Airbnb, VRBO and booking.com. airbnb is a great tool, but relying on it 100%, that's a dangerous game because they control one, your visibility, two, your pricing, and three, your rules. If Airbnb decides to shut down your listing tomorrow, you lose everything. And that's why you need to build something that stands on its own. And that's exactly what I'm going to break down for you today. So if you're ready to take control of your Airbnb business, hit that like button and let's dive in. All right, so the first thing that everybody needs to be doing doesn't matter whether you are at property one, property 100. If you're a week into this or a year or 10 years into this, you've got to be building a guest database. And it's not so much of just getting first name, last name, check in, date, checkout date, email. You've got to be getting so much more. What I recommend that you do is first and foremost, if you have the budget, go and look to invest in a company like Stayfi, basically install a little router in your property. And if a guest wants to access the Internet, they have to give up their email and all their details to be able to do so. This is a really great way of not only getting the lead booker's details, but also getting all of your guest details. So if you've got a place, for example, that sleeps 10 people, imagine not just getting the lead booker's email, which you normally do if they book with you, but you've also got the nine other guests that are in there as well. I know so many hosts who use Stayfi and they've gone from having one email address, one bit of guest database, to having a thousand after just a year. So. So it's definitely worthwhile to invest in this tech if you're starting out. And if you don't have the budget, then a simple Google form or Jotform can be done for next to zero in cost. You would put the Google form or the JOT form in front of the guest after they have made the booking. For example, I've shown people in the book Direct Playbook and on the debussly YouTube channel the exact places where to implement this in the automation just to keep this short. And you can go and watch that video on the Boostly YouTube channel. As soon as the guest books the first automated message that goes to the guest, you're going to ask them to fill in a short form that will help speed up their check in process. Obviously you and I both know it doesn't have anything to do with your check in process, but for the guest they don't know this and they are more likely to fill it in. And at that point you, you can get the details of the guest that you really need. The bits of data that you should be looking to get are first name, last name, email, phone number, that is obvious but obviously as well check in date, checkout date. If you've got the date of birth, fantastic, because then you can send out automated messages when it's their birthday and so much more. If you can start doing this today, even if you have just had your first guest come in, and if you can consistently start to collect this database over the course of six months, a year, you'll be sat on a lot of emails, phone numbers, etc. But it's not just a case of collecting the data, you have to do something with it as well. This is why the next bit of advice that I'm going to give you is to make sure that you are regularly sending communications to the people that are on your database. Now, if you have got a tool like Mailchimp, which is one of the most easiest CRMs that are out there, CRM is customer relationship Manager. If you want to know more about that, if you've got mailchimp already, and if you're looking for something a little bit more, there are tools like go high level, activecampaign, HubSpot, you name it. But when you've got these tools, all of the data that you are collecting gets stored into fields. And when you are a host and when you're a business owner, and when you can start to tap into the data that you've got and you start sending out regular communications, then you are going to be top of mind of the person that are on your database and the people that are in your database, they're going to start to eventually fall into two categories. One, those that have already been Customers of you, those of you who have signed up to a lead gen or just signed up to receive a newsletter or more information on your website, social medias and they're thinking about doing business with you. Now, obviously the communication and the emails that you send out to those two lists are going to vary. The most easiest ones to send communication out to. If you've never done this before at a bucket of people that have already done custom with you, they've already been your guests, they've already stayed with you, they already know your brand, they know your property and they would like to find out more about you. The communication and the emails or the texts that you send to them are going to be way more different to those that you have never ever communicated with or they've never done business with you in the past. If you would like templates on what to send to the guests that have already stayed with you, then all you need to do is comment the word newsletter or template and I will make sure that you get in your inbox the file that we use at Boostly that we give to our 2,000 clients and they're using on a day to day basis. Now, the bucket over here of guests that have maybe signed up to a lead gen or a newsletter or have heard about you on social media, but they've signed up to find out more. Obviously in here you're going to be sending totally different types of content to them. This is what's commonly known as lead gen or tripwire, however you want to define it from the world of marketing. And again, the communication that you send them is so different. I have done a full video on this over on the Boostly YouTube channel and if you click here or look in the description, I'm sure we'll be able to take you over to there to find out more. Now the cool thing about what I'm saying to you now, and you may be watching this going, oh, that sounds like a lot of work, is that once you've set this up, a lot of it can be set and forget. You can pretty much leave it to run in automation because you will have guests booking with you 24 7, you'll have people signing up to your newsletters or finding out more about you 24, 7. And, and all of this can run in the background as long as you've got a CRM that can do this for you. Now of everybody that when they join Boostly and they become a paying member of Boostly, we give you a CRM that you've got all of the email templates built in, all of your social media content built in and so much more. So if you are part of Boostly you know where to go. If you're not part of Boostly and you would like to find out more, just head over to boostly.co.uk. now for those of you that don't want to join Boostly and you've got your own CRM like I said mailchimp Go high level HubSpot activecampaign There are lots out there but you will know when you have these tools. It makes it so much easier to stay in communication. Now if you want to grow your business and if you want to do this on your terms, if you want to make sure that you are not dictated by search algorithms or air DNA, the number one thing that you can do is start to grow your database today. So if you want to find out more about all of this, all you need to do is click on this video because YouTube has recommended that's the next one that you watch.