Airbnb is Hard Until Hosts Build Systems Like This

Have you spent hours optimizing your listings, dialing in your pricing, and building up your reviews, only to find that your bookings are still all over the place, even though you're working harder than ever? Well, after helping over 2,000 hosts achieve over $1 billion in bookings, I've seen the exact same problem at every level. Most hosts don't have the same systems, and it's the one thing that keeps them overworked, struggling to get consistent bookings, and one cancelled property away from giving everything up. So in this video, I want to show you the 3 Airbnb systems that take you from one bad month of bookings away from disaster to having an STR business that runs without you and you can eventually exit it one day. Let's start with System 1, which if I knew sooner would have saved me hours at the start of my STR journey. So have you ever felt like you're just guessing at the changes you need to make to get more bookings? The truth is, without having the right system underneath your properties, you can't actually tell what changes will make you more money. So you end up spending more money on the wrong things like new sheets, fancy welcome packs, or upgrading the Wi-Fi, whilst the things that actually grow your bookings you don't even know about. So how do you systematise your properties so you know what to change? Well, back in 2011, when I joined our family business, The Granary, based out of Scarborough, my parents had been running the business, but we had a big problem. We had these beautiful old barns that guests love staying in, but the plumbing was built backwards. If you stayed on the bottom floor, you got perfect hot running water, but if you wanted a shower on the top floor, the water temperature flip-flopped between Wim Hof levels of freezing cold and water so hot you could boil your pasta in it. For years, we just thought we were getting the odd grumpy guest leaving a bad review. We had occasional complaint about the shower, we apologized, and we move on. But the reason we couldn't actually see this problem with the plumbing was that back in 2011, my parents had been running the property business on paper. The crazy thing was that they were still handwriting all the bookings on a clipboard. The pricing strategy was just whatever they thought sounded good, and our reviews process was non-existent. So my first job was to modernize this. The first thing that I did was replace the pen and paper with a project management system, is otherwise known as a PMS, and everything moved online. Bookings instantly went up and business got so much easier to run. But the biggest win wasn't just the money. It was for the first time we could see what was happening in our business and what we needed to do to make more money. Because once the PMS started to capture every review, we saw that the pattern was sitting right there. And 7 out of 10 guests on the top floor were complaining about the same thing. And guess what it was? The water. Now listen, I've always said for every 10 reviews, If it's just one person talking about it, it's a personal preference and you can ignore it. But if 7 or more people are mentioning the same thing, that's a real problem and you have to fix it. So we waited until the off-season and we fixed the pipes. The bad reviews disappeared almost overnight, and we started to see more repeat bookings for the top floor in the barn. And that's when I realized that the PMS isn't just a tool for taking bookings and managing those payments. It's a feedback loop that helps you decide what to fix next in your business. Without a PMS, You're just guessing what will increase your bookings, working off vibes and spending hours fixing things that won't actually grow your business. So how do you actually get started with this? You're sat there, you're listening, you're watching, you're going, Mark, well, what do I actually do? Well, the good news is there are over 1,000 different PMSs to choose from. The bad news is, is there over 1,000 different PMSs to choose from? So here's what I recommend as the easiest way to get started in your PMS journey. First, just use the PMS that fits your scale and your business today. Most of these platforms make it easy enough to switch later if you want to try out something new. You are never married to your PMS. Second, just plug your data in and you'll have all of your bookings, all of your calendars, all of your reviews in one place. Finally, what I would do is once a month, just sit down for maybe a half an hour and actually go through the data. There are amazing tools right now that you can plug that data into Claude or ChatGPT and just look for what these 7 outta 10 patterns are. Because if you can't spot 'em, I guarantee AI will. And if you go to boostlyconnect.com, we help you do that for absolutely free. And the general rule should be whatever's showing up the most, that is what you fix next. That right there, my friends, is the feedback loop in action and how you stop guessing what will actually grow your property business. The harsh reality is without a PMS, you're not running a business, you're just funding this expensive hobby. There's nothing wrong with that, but this channel isn't for the hobbyists. Which brings me on to system number 2. If you've got gaps in your bookings despite working all hours and replying to guests at midnight, you're not alone because it's the exact same problem I had when I first started. Back in the early days of building up The Granary, we had no control over our bookings. This meant that if the weekend was warm and sunny, we were fully booked. If it was cold and out of season, we were dead. The problem was when bookings dipped in different seasons, we had no way to actually do anything about it. So we just had to wait and try and survive this quiet season until our bookings picked up. In 2024, I started a little Facebook group called the VIP Grain Reacts. Every past guest who stayed with us got an invite to this Facebook group. And over the next few months, the group grew to hundreds of people. At the time, nobody else in our space was doing anything like this. The best part was having this group meant that anytime that our bookings dipped, I could post a special offer or a discount in that group, and it got people to book in another stay, and our calendar became quietly full. After that, we never had another quiet stretch, even in our off period, and I knew that I had a reliable stream of guests that I could reach out to at any moment. Now, I appreciate building a Facebook group in 2026 might not have the same effect as it did back in 2014, but the principle still works. Now, this is 100% the most important thing I'm going to mention in this video. If you don't own a method to reach your past guests, you do not actually have a business. You're probably only a few quiet months away from collapsing. And I should know, me and my family, we've been there ourselves. So here's what I wish I did from the start. Just pick one channel, whether it's Instagram, an email list, it could be a WhatsApp group, a Slack channel, whatever you think your guests might be on, and start trying to fill that platform with guests. The goal is simple: when a guest wants to come back, they can come back to you. Which brings me to the final system that you can use to blow up your property bookings. Have you noticed that your Airbnb bookings quietly dropping over the last few weeks? Even though you haven't changed a thing? Well, most people don't know, but over the last 6 years or so, Airbnb have quietly been changing their rules and making it harder and harder for hosts to get consistent bookings. The fees have gone up. The algorithm that decides if you get ranked in search keeps changing. And God help you if you have a dispute, because Airbnb are 99.9% likely to side with the guest and never with the host. So it's clear to me, and for thousands of other hosts I speak with every single year, that Airbnb just isn't the same platform as it was 10 years ago. And if you're still relying on Airbnb to send you bookings, you're leaving your business and livelihood in somebody else's hands. For some reason, this seems to hit the US hosts the hardest because most of the US hosts I talk to have built their entire business and their entire livelihoods on Airbnb, and a lot of them don't even realize that there are any alternatives out there. So when Airbnb put the fees up or they change the algorithm or side with the guests in a dispute. These hosts get hit twice as hard because they don't have anywhere else to send their bookings. I've spent the last decade trying to convince American hosts in particular to build their own direct booking system, and the same pattern shows up over and over. They wait until Airbnb really hurts them and then they make the switch. But the moment that they finally do, That's the aha moment for every host I work with. The day they stop working for Airbnb and Airbnb just becomes one of the many places that is bringing them revenue and bookings. Because right now Airbnb is just a ticking time bomb. And the only host that I see sleeping well at night are the ones who have already moved most of their bookings off it. So how do you set up a direct booking website yourself? Well, the good news is building a direct booking website is way simpler for most hosts and operators think, and it comes down to free simple steps. First, you need to go and get your domain. The best one to use is just your property name with a plus.com or a.co.uk or a dot whatever after it. This usually costs about £10 a year, but it takes just 10 minutes to set up. Secondly, you want to pick a booking website tool that plugs straight into your PMS. So my company Boostly, we do this for you because we have got 27 premium partner integrations into your property management software. Unfortunately, Nobody else really has this capability to do so because of the relationships that we have built with your PMS companies. So if you're struggling to have a smooth booking flow, and if your website is only converting at a 0.2% industry average, then come and speak to Boostly. The link is in the description below, or just go to boostly.co.uk. Finally, you want to use that email list or social media group that you built in System 2. Send your previous guests and contacts to your direct booking website and give them a 10% or 5% or 7% 10% discount for booking directly. We often find that when you do this, most of them will switch on the very next booking. I've got loads of videos on this channel more in depth on how to build a direct booking website, but if you want to skip all of the hassle doing it yourself and have me and my team just build it for you, click on the link in the description to find out more, or just go to boostly.co.uk, click and book a call with our team, and we will let you know if we think that we'll be a good fit for each other. But even though you now have these systems in place, none of it is going to work if your pricing strategy is wrong. And let me tell you, that is the number one mistake I see hosts make. It's the same mistake we made at The Granary for years, and it's the reason we left thousands on the table every single season. So watch this video next, and I'll show you exactly how to price your property to maximize revenue without scaring guests away. I'll see you all there.