Airbnb cannot beat you at this ONE thing

Welcome to the new and improved Boostly podcast. And as always, my name is Mark Simpson. I give hosts just like you the tools, the tactics, the training, but most importantly, the confidence to get direct bookings. And in today's video and podcast, I want to give you a little tip, and this is a bit of encouragement. This is the one thing that Airbnb doesn't have in its arsenal when it wants to try and expand and grow in an area. And that's the connections. That's the local network. That's the chance for you as a host to, to go and do what Airbnb can, which is become the go to in your area. It's an Airbnb booking.com Saunder VRBO. You know these big companies, Sykes, they're massive. They're huge. I've got call centers all over Airbnb, one of the biggest OTAs out there. But when it comes to your local area, your local network, your local chambers of commerce, your local BNI meetings group, your local tourism groups, they can't be in there. They can't get in there. You can. And when you start to become the go to go to guy, go to gal in your area, then it's so powerful. The networks, the connections, the bookings, the relationships that you can build by just sitting on a couple of meetings once a month or once a quarter is so powerful. Just imagine if you were able to go to four out of the 10B and I meetings over the course of the next three months, or if you can maybe go to your local chambers of commerce or your tourism, depending on where you are in the world, and just sit at these meetings and just meet other hosts, meet other business business owners in your area, start to build, build those connections. The power of referrals and building an in business to business network is so, so powerful for your business. And if you doubt that, all you need to do is to go into the hospitality community and ask the question. There are so many people who years and weeks and months and days are full with referral business from other local hosts from other local businesses. Sometimes you can get a big contractor booking because simply by knowing the people associated to that deal, they sent bookings to you. So if you do me one thing this year, please make sure that you try and build a local network. I call it the Becoming the Go to. You can call it what you like. You can start by joining local Facebook groups. You can start by going to your local business network Institute meeting, otherwise known as BNI. Just go to bni.com find your local one. I know it's hard when you're first starting to think, how am I going to fit it around life and business and, and all of that, but if you can spend that little bit of time of growing these networks, growing these relationships in your area, in your local area where your properties are, in one year's time, your business will be so different. As always, I throw the mic over to you, I throw the podcast over to you. Jump into the comments now and let me know what you're doing, what you're doing to build your local network in your area. Tell me the means that you go into Facebook groups that you're a part of and let us know the results and let's see if we can have a little brain dump discussion about this. I'll be back very soon for another boosted podcast episode. As always, please make sure that you're subscribed and you share this with hosts all over. If you haven't yet downloaded the audio version, jump into Apple or Spotify right now. If you're not yet on the YouTube channel, go to Booster K, YouTube, or on Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, you name it. My goal is to help 1 million hosts cut down on their over reliance on the OTAs and boost their direct bookings. If you've not yet picked up a copy of the book Direct Playbook, please do so. It's on Amazon right now. Bestseller on Amazon, bestseller in Kindle, bestseller in print, and soon to be bestseller in Audible as well. Let's please keep it at the top of the charts. Keep it above all those Airbnb books and let's go and boost your Dara bookings. I'll be back very soon. As always, thanks for stopping by. Let's stay proactive. Don't be reactive. Let's go and get some direct bookings.