Automation in the Hospitality Industry: Friend or Foe?

Let's start to set the scene so we talk about competitive advantage. What even is competitive advantage? Vanessa, maybe you could take this one.

Yeah, sure. I mean, I think competitive advantage probably means sometimes different things to different people. But from my point of view, coming from a pms, property management system, booking management system, whatever you want to call us, for me, the crux of competitive advantage is really a business's USPs. What do you love? What are you great at? And then how do you talk about those to the outside world? But also the competitive advantage comes from making sure that your tech, your tools and people all support and translate those USPs. Because if they're just USPs hanging in satellites and not, you know, you don't have an integrated approach to the business, then you know you're not necessarily going to succeed. It's really about shouting about them, communicating them well and feeding them into that guest experience. So that really, in a nutshell, is what I'm talking about. And you might actually need an ecosystem of tools and services to navigate those challenges and opportunities because maybe no one system does everything for you, but the objective in mind is to give the guest experience that lightest, easiest and most unburdened approach to interacting with your business.

Oh, Mark, have you got a different perspective?

Nice. It's exactly that. Well, Vanessa is saying it's, it's. Everything boils down to hospitality. At the end of the day, this, what we're doing doesn't matter whether you have come into this as something passive and you want to find out more of it. This is like you've been, you've come into this and this is like your bread and butter. This is, this is your career. This whole industry boils down to one thing and that's hospitality. You know, you are welcome strangers into your house, into your business, and you are going to be creating memories when somebody interacts with you and they pay you, compared to when they just buy some off, you know, an Etsy or wherever, is that you are creating memories that they will remember from time to time to time. So the more that you can give them the best possible experience, and that's tapping into Vanessa's your, what you love doing, like your unique selling point, then they will go away and they'll become your biggest marketers, your Raven fans. And that's what we're going to dig into today.

Cool. Just touching on that a little bit. 2023, I'm sure will be a more challenging year than 2022 and certainly more challenging than 2021. Given that those years were more of a bounce back from COVID and also along that path, we've also seen a lot more people come into the industry and start offering their homes for rent. And therefore what I'm saying is the landscape does become a lot more competitive. Do you think that the industry is robust enough and there's enough guest demand for people to just go, well, it doesn't matter, there's loads more people in here. There's so much demand here, I can sit back and kind of just like, you know, make hay, or do you share that belief that I have, which is. I think it's still going to be quite a difficult year and it is really important to really talk about what makes you different, what sets you apart. What do you think?

I think it's just the sheer unknown. I think it is going to be a difficult year. We've had the strangest ride ever over the past couple of years. There's been Brexit, Megxit, pandemic, the Russians flexing their muscles, displacement of half of Ukraine, energy crisis over tourism in the uk, the ebb and flow of fuel prices, the ebb and flow of inbound and outbound tourism. And it seems to me that we're in a state of like perma crisis and we're all expecting that maybe something else is going to just come around that corner. So really the challenges, I think, are really trying to stabilize what we have, whether it's our, the industry as a whole or our or independent businesses stabilize but stand out. And I think that's going to be a big challenge also understanding and catering for ever changing guest motivations for holidays. Because in the state of Permacrisis, the sort of the overlap of holidays and business and work and traveling for work, it's all taking place, it's getting fuzzier, it's getting more blended. So there's lots of opportunities, but also challenges in trying to speak to all of those individual guest types.

Yeah. Mark, what do you think?

I mean, in terms of. Of challenges like Vanessa hit the nail on the head. There's always seems to be something. It's like different shit, different day. And if we as an industry can survive 2020 and just like cast your mind back to then there's like a shutdown, like people were not allowed to travel outside of a certain zone or a region. And those of you that have been here since 2018, 2019, you've then gone through 2020. 2021 was obviously a bounce back and it was like a Sweet spot. And everybody discovered dynamic pricing and you know you recovered any losses that potentially were in 2020. 2022 is what 2022 is. And now you're coming into this year and if you're specifically say you're based in the uk, there's the threat or the risk of legislation that could be like national, it could be more close wide. There could be a crackdown on short term rentals. So it's always feels like there's something. But with all of this being said, people are still traveling, people can still book for the first time ever, people allowed to leave China for the first time. So you're going to get guests and potential. Your avatar that was read in 2019 could be coming back again. So there's always going to be people traveling even with the threat of whatever could be around the corner. And my advice to everybody with this is you focus on what you can control, like block out all of the nonsense, block out all of the things that are going on that you can't control and just focus on what you can. And what can you control? Well, if you've got one property and let's just say you do like a minimum of like a week stays, right, you've only got to fill let's say 50 weeks of booking in 2023, that's only 50 customers that you need to have, that's 50 heads on bed, so to speak. You haven't got an unlimited amount of inventory. You've got a small focus. And more than ever there are people now that have been made aware of short term rentals through all of the things that have been going on. And a lot of people are still back in short term rentals. Even with this whole hotels versus short term rental things going on and people saying I'm back to the hotels, there are still a lot, a lot of people are looking to book and the challenges will be really homing down on what you can control. So what can, can you control is making sure that you don't try and appeal to everybody, just to try and appeal to a core focus, a core audience. So try and go right, so like Vanessa, what is your, what things do you love? Who is your ideal guest? What's your unique selling points? And you talk to that and you use that and you capitalize on all the tools that are amazing for that to make sure that if you've got a property that is ideal for this certain type of guest and that guest can find you and book of you and stay with you and just block out everything Just focus on what you can control. And there are loads of challenges, prices going up and all of that jazz. But I truly believe if you just focus on giving your guest the best experience, making sure that for from the moment they book to the moment that they leave, they can go, that was amazing. I want to go tell everybody about it. And if we can focus on that, then we're going to be fine. And you'll be fine.

Yeah, I think going back to those basics and just kind of thinking holistically about, as we've said, who you are, who you want to reach, and then just thinking carefully about enhancing every stage of that guest journey, as you said, from the booking to the welcoming to adding value to the insta experience, but also capitalizing on their sort of enduring post day feelings, their warm feelings, get those reviews, remarket to them, get offers, recommendations, loyalty. It's that harboring of loyalty that's really important this year. So maybe just go back and just look at remarketing to people who have stayed with you already, finding out what they enjoyed about you and try to hook them in with some sort of offer or, you know, reminder of what they enjoyed when they stayed last time. So that could be something to focus on.

Oh, I mean, okay.

And I just add on to that very quickly. Is that touch day anytime, Bruce Lee. Right. If we, when we created our companies and we wanted to find customers and members and people to buy into what we're doing, there wasn't one website or two websites that we could go and list our services and pretty much be guaranteed revenue. With hospitality, it's different in that respect because there is so much pent demand and you've got airbnb, you've got booking.com and in America more so you've got Verbo. You could literally start a business, you could throw it up on one of these sites, even just have iPhone quality pictures and you could be pretty much guaranteed to get revenue coming in. Right. And, and that has been 2021, that's been 2022. That's why so many people are coming into this market because you've got landlords and you've got property owners that were focusing on long term rentals. So tenants, they could see all of the social medias and all of the Tiktoks and the videos of people saying, hey, I'm doing this short term rental gig. Look at the returns we're getting instead. And everybody bounced into it. Right. But what we've got to realize now, 2023, we're sort of going to go back to 2018 numbers where you know you had to, you had to brand your business, you had to build a personal brand, you had to do the market research. Like what Vanessa saying they had to like speak to guests and find out what they like and what they don't like. That's what Touch Days had to do. That's what Booshis had to do. That's what anytime had to do. So it's now sort of learning from other industries things, thinking, okay well this is, this is my property, this is what it brings and, and doing all of the things to sort of really turn your focus instead of just being reactive. I. E Waiting for a booking to come in. Are you waiting for the ping on your emails or your phone to say hey, you've got a booking to now proactively every day doing 30 minutes of new business to try and proactively bring in, bringing us bookings. And Georgina put in the chat here, she said do you think it's regional? I. E There's people that she's spoken to and they're already booked far out where other people are struggling. And I guarantee it, it's those owners, hosts, management companies that are proactively tapping into their email database, their guest list in January, reaching out to people, messaging them, calling them, texting them, email and just saying right what are you sorted for your holiday this year? Sort of your vacation for those are focused on corporate. It's like do you need people to get stays in? Those are the people that are booked up. So now it's just getting everybody on that mindset. It's like re educating everybody to go right this is what we need to do on a day to day basis. Just like what people at touchday and anytime at Boostly are doing every single day. The first thing that we do, it's new business is contact and host to make sure that they are aware of what we do, how we can help and if so these are the two offerings that we provide. And that is literally what every business needs to be doing. Doesn't matter whether you've got one property, 10 properties or a hundred.

And it's not just creating the brand. I think you kind of need to create a bit of a brand promise that goes with the brand. Whether it's a big gesture like you know, come and experience your greenest holiday or we're the most relaxing detox hideaway or if it's something really specific like we are nearest to the beach or you know, we've got an alpaca trail like no other. It could be anything. Just make sure you deliver on that. You know, you can't say you're nearest to the beach and then people turn up and there's no view because there's another property blocking it. You know, it's. You've got to really deliver on your promises.

Yeah, on the deliver 100%.

I mean, gosh, there's so many threads that we could go down here after that discussion. But I think one of the things that resonated most with me is that it has been a difficult year. And Vanessa, you clearly articulated the reasons why, and we all know those. But it's also the opportunity to remain kind of very optimistic if you're very sure about what it is that you deliver differently to anybody else. Because if you're in that lucky situation where you have a clear offer like you stand for something, you're not just renting a studio apartment, but you're renting a studio apartment in this location for these kind of travelers, and you deliver this kind of experience, then you're in a really, really solid footing because then you can talk about capitalizing on what I still believe is a really, really strong desire, despite the cost of living, for people to get away. The news is continually negative, isn't it? You just open up the. Not the newspaper, we don't do that anymore. But turn on the TV and look at the news. You know, seven out of eight of the headlines are negative. And with that context, people do need some positivity in their life. They do want to escape. And travel is always one of those things that people will cling onto and will make sure that they get that travel time. And I think, therefore, cost of living crisis, desire to travel equals finding a place that I know I'm going to get really good value from. And value doesn't have to be about price. It means about getting the best possible stay, which is what I was talking about just now, which is you have a studio apartment in this location directed at this traveler, and you offer these kind of guest services. Then as a guest, I understand if I go and spend my money there, I'm going to get a real nice amount of value. And I think that's the important thing here, is really distinguishing yourself from everybody else in this market and remaining positive. Like, there is that real strong desire, like I said, for people to get away and travel. So I think with that, we should probably track into how people identify their unique selling points, their USPs, because that to me seems like the way in order for you to like you said, Mark, if you want to go and hustle and try and get business without relying on the OTAs, you're going to need to clearly define what you stand for and how you are different. If you're going to do a social campaign or email your newsletter or whatever, you need to have a story, you need to have a hook, you need to tell people why they should be interested. So how do people identify those USPs, those unique selling points? Is it that I have a swimming pool or is it that I offer an experience, the intangible? What is that usp in your opinion? Maybe. Vanessa, we'll start with you.

I think it's a combination of those things. I think the most important thing really is to evoke kind of an emotional attachment almost immediately. And I think in order to do that, you need to sell the experience, not just the swimming pool and the access to the beach. So it's really about tapping into values, I think, to kind of backtrack slightly. I believe there's been a real erosion of trust generally in things like government, business, media. So you mentioned the word cling earlier. In terms of people trying to cling onto a holiday. There's that cling and that community and that sense of coming together and a meeting of minds and a meeting of values and a meeting of things that are important to you. So I think if you speak honestly and you know in a very human, natural way to your audience about what you have on offer and how, you know the experience that they can achieve with you, I think that's really where you start to win, where you can start to build that community, build that trust. I think they call it horizontal trust now because the vertical trust gone. So you're looking for the horizontal trust and experience the values in the community. And I think that is going to be more important in the way we speak to our audiences these days.

Yeah, I mean, before you even do that, you got to focus on there's three key parts to it. And I talk about it a lot in the book Direct Playbook. You've got the identify, you've got to find the time, and then you've got the attract. So what I basically means, number one, you got to identify who is coming to your area, where your property is, which is really key because so many people start a business, start a property, deck it out in what they think will suit. But then if they're decking it all out for person A, well then person B is the one that's coming to the area. Then it means nothing. So first things first, you've got to do a bit of market research. So find out who is the type of guest or the type of avatar that is mostly coming to you. Because your could be different to Newquay, would be different to London, that would be different to Glasgow or Edinburgh or wherever your property is. So do a bit of research and again, if you don't know what that is, then there's amazing tools now like chat GPT that can help with that. Free tools, right? If you're not comfortable talking to a robot then just go and have a look, go to like tourism meetings and, and do do that sort of thing. So do the research first. So when you figure out what is the type of guest that predominantly comes to your area, then you base your property around it. So you're not going to try and appeal to everybody. Again you try and appeal to a specific few. So your property, where is it, where is it near? So for example, if you want to appeal to health care workers because you want to tap into medium term rentals instead of short term rentals, is your property in a one direct bus lane to the hospital, right. Or is it a walking distance away? And then it's okay. So then you look to your property itself, what are you providing to fit in that avatar? So you're going to appeal to health care workers that are going to come and stay with you, then what are you doing? So have you got blackout blinds? Have you got all of the things that a potential health care worker would look for when staying at your property? And when we sort of have this conversation it's people get worried because they go, well, if I do that, am I eliminating X? Again this is the problem because we're trying to appeal to everybody. When I asked the question who is your avatar? You know, I always get the psyche response back saying whoever gives me money. And that is such the wrong answer to have because you're trying to appeal to everybody. When you do that, you appeal to nobody. So really figure out number one, who is the typical type of person who is coming to your area. And then number two, what is my property providing to speak to that individual. And then what you need to do is once you've boxed out and you know who that is, you go down that exercise. You've got to go, well, where are they spending their time? How can I get the attention of that person? So it could be that that person is maybe on Instagram, or it would be on Facebook or LinkedIn or there'd be somebody that wouldn't even check social media. They're more offline, print magazine or whatever. Or it could just be that again. Healthcare workers, how do you get their attention? Well, you've got to make the connections and build the relationships with the people that are placing them in these traveling whatever. Right? So you find out where their time is best suited. So then you've got your ideal guest with your business and you're in front of their eyeline at all times. So when they need to make that booking or make the decision, then it comes to you. And then the final one is attract. And this is the key. This is where marketing comes into play. It's what can you do or what can you portray online or portray offline that will grab their attention and attract them to you. So if we're talking About Airbnb or booking.com or VRBO, a listing site, is that first image, the unique selling photo, the USP as I like to call it. That image will speak to that person and then if you can manipulate the text and the copy on that first line, then you speak to them. So I'm working with somebody at the moment and we really want to attract in contractors that are coming into the city, like in the busload. So the Airbnb title headline that we're doing is, it speaks directly to contractors and we save that in the, what, 50 characters that, that we have. And then once they click into the listing, the description is talking to that person. The six pictures that we then get is, is literally spelling it out why we are the best contractor, best accommodation in the area. And then you bring it to your social media. The post that we put out on social media is talking to that. Your website talks to that straight away and that is how you do the, the attract. So by following those three things and again, I've given you like a five minute sort of overview, you can go check out the book and it gives you a full deep dive into it. Well, that is exactly how you discover who's coming to your area. You lay across what your unique selling points is and then that's how you attract them.

I think that's fantastic. I think so many people think of usps, like I said, you know, it's maybe a swimming pool or your walk to the beach or whatever. But in fact, what you're talking about here is thinking about what your unique selling points are for your target audience, like who is your ideal customer and that idea of appealing to everyone. You're right. It's just a fool's mission. Because you'll end up appealing to nobody and you'll get the wrong kind of guest, frankly. And that's when the problems start. You want to really be clear about who you want to attract to get that right guest in the door so you don't have any problems. Tiffany's asked, what if you have different groups at different times of the year? So we have family groups with dogs and then we have corporate as we're in a great area for both close family dog friendly tourist sites and to international conference center. So she's got this kind of mix of guests. How do you possibly talk to both of those very different audiences?

So it's, it's, it's again, it's quite simple, Tiffany, what, what you need to do. And we get a lot of people that come to us that have got, are in ski resorts that have this problem because obviously in the winter lots of lovely snow, in the summer it's bone dry. And so there's two different types of guests that are going to be visiting at two different times. The beauty of the Internet and the beauty of what we do compared to say the old school newspaper advertising. I always used to remember in our family business, it got to January, we'd get the, the phone call from our newspaper rep saying hey, you got to get your advert in. And that is literally you for the, for the year. It's like, right, whatever advert we put out now is going to be solid for the year. And then you're thinking about the whole of that 12 month calendar with the Internet now you finger click and it's changed. It's, you know, you can change it in an instant. So when, when we're talking about this example or we're talking about like a ski resort example, right, what you do in the summer, okay, because in the summer you're very busy with your summer guests, right? You're not going to be talking in the summer about summer stuff. What you're going to do is you're going to flip your listing around. When it gets to sort of the end of July, start of August when people start to think about their winter holiday, you all of your pictures on your website change. All the pictures on your listing sites change. Especially if you booked up. Obviously if you've got no guests and you want to get guests, then you're going to be a different mindset, but you're going to then start talking about your winner. And right now in January when we're filming this and you know you've got, you know, your ski Season sorted. You're booked up until, you know, March, April time. Then what you do is you flip it around and you put on your summer picks, right? And you start talking about the summer and all of the cool things and the activities that you do. So you've got two sort of avatars, with Tiffany's example, and again, you've got the conference season. So conference season, again, I don't know the context, but I assume that conference season, because we've all been to conferences, they don't just go 365 days flat out all the way through the year, they sort of break down and there's two sort of seasons or maybe one season of that. So it's the same, same, it's just different types of guests and tourists. So when it comes to your marketing and how you, you go about it, I would say you focus on the 8020 rule. So, Tiffany, what is the 20% of clients that you get, guests that you get that bring in 80% of your revenue, right? And that is what you focus on for the most of your social media. Anything that you push and promote out on your website again, once you've realized. So is it the tourists that bring in 80% of your revenue or is it the corporate, Right, So your website, your main website that you have, whatever your core is, that is the first impression that everybody gets. But you can have a sub section, a sub page on your website that speaks to anybody that is looking for corporate, right? Because what you'll need to do if you want to fill out these corporate times and if it's conferences, you're really lucky because if you go to a conference. So for example, we're all going to be in London very soon for a conference, and it's a yearly thing, you can pretty much guarantee that anybody who's been in 2022, 2021, if they're running, or 2019, and they're going to come back for 2023. So you will have your database. So the marketing that you do there is more offline, it's more phone calls, it's more, hey, you know Vanessa, you came last year for this event. Are you coming again this year? Do you want your accommodation? And if Vanessa goes, you know what, we're not coming back this year. Thank you very much. We go, do you know anybody else who is. Do you try that do you know anyone? Tactic? And then now, flip side, say that, you know, you, you figured out from looking at Your reports that 20%, so 80% of your revenue came from 20%. And that 20% was the corporates. Then you would flip it all around and what you would do is you call, you put your base main of your market in your base of your website, speaking exactly to it. And then what you do is you fill your calendar with tourist bookings either side of it. So there's a little bit of a deep dive that you need to do here. Tiffany, something that we can't do on like a 30 minute Zoom call. But once you figure it out and you go down your route of your avatar and whatnot and you figure out what your 8 year 20 is, then the numbers will tell you, you know, what gets tracked, gets measured and your numbers will tell you where to go.

I think what's interesting as well there Mark, is given that most people are seeing the booking window narrow, you're able to talk to guests in a more real time way. Probably finding guests are looking for things later in the window is what I'm saying. So it does enable you to really identify if you've got those two types of guests to be really targeting those at the time where you know they're going to be booking a lot. Vanessa, anything different you want to add?

Just you could leverage some of the basic functionalities of your PMS to accommodate like Mark was saying, if there's an actual week or a couple of weeks or a season where you know, you get very booked up with conference bookings, not leisure bookings, you could always, you know, manipulate the way you've set up your rates or you could, you could block off at particular dates in your calendar, for example, because you know that you'll get your conference bookings there later. So you don't open, you know, you don't expose those dates to be booked as holiday dates online. There's all sorts of little tricks you can do within your, your PMS system to, to enable you to sell differently to two separate groups.

And I, I also think that probably there's, there's one thing here which is where you've got a website. Mark, you touched on it earlier where you were sort of suggesting that people focus in on that particular avatar. But a website's a great opportunity for also to flag things, you know, so you could zoom in on an avatar but you could have like somewhere on the menu or just slightly below the fold, you know, by the way we cater to business travels or are you a business travel looking for conferences? And you can say click here and it goes out to a page where you talk purely about how you offer business travel services. So I Think with a website, you've got a lot of opportunity. You'll probably do it in the OTA listings too. It could be like, you know, if at that moment you're advertising, you know, your ski season, but you. You don't want to alienate people who maybe are thinking about summer. Then you could have a little line that says, you know, are you looking ahead to the summer? Scroll down and there's a section at the bottom which talks about you're off for summer. So I think you can play around with that a bit.

Yeah.

You can use landing pages on your websites and if you are going down the route of Google Ads and things, you could always point a, a conference kind of Google Ad towards a conference landing page within your website. So there are various things that you could do.

Yeah. Something that you can all do right now. So, Tiffany, for yourself, say that you've got your main Airbnb list in your booking.com list in your verbo listing, and say that it is very, very much set up with Instant Book on, connected into your pms, talking to travelers and tourists and whatnot that are coming for the. For the leisure. You can always get clever and have a duplicate listing for the same property, but it's for inquiry only, so it's not Instant Book. And you speak specifically to conferences attendees, because when somebody's doing the search for conferences, and if they're coming in, a lot of the time it's not just them flying solo, they're going to bring a team with them and they're going to want to ask questions. Okay, so if you've got the inquiry button on, it's not Instant Book. Someone sends you a message, then you can chat to them there and say, hey, well, actually X, Y and Z, we can do all of this. These dates are available, we can book in more and da, da, da, you can work out an offer. So you'll have two listings for the same property speaking to different people. The one that's on Instant Book, the one that you will get your leisure bookings in, that's fine, they're bread and butter. But for the conferences, they want to ask more questions. And the one thing that has come out of the last couple of years, what we've noticed more than ever before, people have got questions. People want to ask a question before making the booking. And that's why it's really important to have a live chat option on your site, whether it's linked to your WhatsApp or to a team member or whatever. Have an FAQ section on your site. These are all really, really important. And someone put in the Q's and A says, I'm doing all of these things, but I haven't got a website. Am I missing out? I just put Y. So one of the first things that everybody needs to do is go and get yourself a website. Build a place that you can send people to that you can answer all these things. Because last time I checked, Airbnb have live chat, you know, so you've got the option to take someone from an Airbnb listing as long as you brand yourself. Right. Like we're talking about Google Ads, you know, bid on brand. You know, I've got a full video on that and how you can do bid on brand. So drive people back to your site, have the option, get them into your mousetrap and then they'll book review, direct. It's just, you know, there's clever little things you can do.

Yeah, I'm glad you talked about the website there, Mark, because I think a lot of people historically have thought, why do I bother with the website? Because I can't compete and get people to come to my website. But what we're talking about here is there's so many more tools and so many more places and ways that people search now that if you have a web, like, you could run a social media campaign and use your website, most importantly, you can have a newsletter audience that you've built up over the years, past guests, you use your website there. And I think that a website is. It's. It's fundamental. Even if you feel like you can't be Airbnb on the search search terms, that's not what your website's there for. It's there to do those other things that I mentioned. So just wanted to clarify that.

Yeah. And you know, you know what I do if I do a search for holiday in Norfolk and a whole load of Airbnb listings come up, or booking.com listings come up and I find. Find a nice property. I then scroll down and find it its own website further down. I kind of skip position one and two and the OTAs and I go and look them further down because I like the direction. That's maybe that's what our business is about, trying to drive direct bookings to people's websites. So, yeah, different people search in different ways.

Yeah, good call. Just want to address that one question that we haven't got to yet from Georgina, which is she says her demographic is pre retirees and retirees, so it's somewhere between 65 and 75 age group that are in walking distance to a beach town. Amenities, we provide a high service quality and great accommodation. The problem is few of them are digital savvy. So how do I reach them? How do I reach that high disposable income group and bring them to me? Tough question.

It's easy. It's an easy, easy answer. Right? So for them, they're not tech savvy, right? So think about anybody that you know that is 65 to 75 retirees. What are retirees doing? Right? It doesn't matter where you are in the world, it's all the same thing. So if they're not online, go old school and post them something. Post them something in the, in the mail. Christmas time. Perfect time to do it. We did it all the time. Every November we posted off Christmas cards. We put a little coupon code that can call us and say, hey, book with us with this and you get a discount off your stay. Fantastic. Also as well, you've got the email address, you've got. So not the email address, phone number and you've got the postal address for the person. Send them a load of your leaflets in the post and just say, hey, you know, your local balls club or your local stitch and bitch or whatever you do for entertainment now that you're retired, go and take our leaflets in and spread them around like, put them up in like the notice boards or whatever. If you could do that for us, that'd be. We really appreciate it. If anybody books off the back of, you know, seeing this leaflet or whatever, then we'll send you something in the post to say thank you or we'll give you money off your next day. So it's all about, again, it comes to identify where do they spend their time and attract for you, Georgina, where do they spend their time? They're not going to be scrolling on TikTok, looking at silly dances and whatever else is throwing up on that site. What they're doing is they're spending their time with other people who are enjoying their retirement. So how do you tap into that? Balls clubs, fantastic one. You know, any sort of community club type thing, right? But you got to get the, get the postal address and send them some in the post and then you can build that relationship up there. It's all about creating your superfans and you'll be amazed at how well this works. Trust me, we did it. And again, we talk about newspaper ads and magazine ads when it comes to that demographic as well. They're reading the Newspaper, they're reading the news, like getting the magazines, like we would advertise in Farmers Guardian or the Farm Stay magazine for years, because we knew that the people that were picking it up as the people that we wanted to see it. And they see these ads and they respond to them. So it's super simple. It's just knowing who your avatar is. You've nailed the avatar. Fantastic. Now it's about where do they spend their time and how do you get in contact with them. That's how.

Yeah, Mark's absolutely right. It's okay to go old school. You know, we've got all this technology around us. Sometimes we feel like, I don't know, it's a backtrack if we go back to old school. But sometimes it works to send something in the post or to pick up the telephone. So, you know, we mustn't forget that that's how we used to do business.

You know, and is the new new school. Definitely old school. Is the new school like one of the things that I've just recently did to promote the next book launch that we had back in December, we use billboard ads to promote it. And it went down. It went down really, really well. Because that is a more old school tactic. Seriously, the old school is the new school, so what can you do to tap into it? And it's so cost effective now compared to what it was 20 years ago. Because everybody's thinking Facebook ads, Google Ads, TikTok ads, Twitter ads, when really the things that you can do offline will be much more effective than what you could potentially do by fighting in the quagmire of online.

Yeah, I like that. The online space is becoming crowded, so utilize the older school. And I like the phrase old school is the new school. Right. Just quickly, a couple of questions which I can just head off straight away. So Georgina has asked, do you mean two websites, Mark, or a separate page? I think she was talking about here when you set up an inquiry only listing. So that's on the actual ota, you could do a separate page on your website. Of course you could, where you talk to that other type of guest, but that's kind of what that was. Tom has asked, if he does put up a secondary listing, does an Airbnb algorithm get a bit angry because you're declining 99% of those inquiries? Or does the algorithm only work if you're stopping bookings, not if you're stopping inquiries? That bit I'm not sure about. So basically he's worried that if he gets an Inquiry only page on Airbnb. A listing on Airbnb. And people are sending in inquiries all the time. And he's not fulfilling those bookings because each time it's just answering an inquiry. Does he get penalized for that?

The Airbnb algorithm is an amazing beast. And normally people can actually figure out what's, what's going on with it. But what you've got to remember as well is that you've got two listings running, right? And the first listing is yet your bread and butter, right? That's the one that's got Instant Book turned on. So Airbnb love Instant Book, you know, because they obviously want people to. Well, they're trying to take on booking.com and verbal. They've done that. They're beating them, Right. So they turned on Instant Book for that tick, tick of the box, right? And that is your bread and butter. So people can land on your site, speaking to your avatar, clicking through and booking. Great. This second one is just a cleanup. This is. The second one is the conference one. It's like the, the, the sub one, Right. It's one that doesn't matter if it works or not. It's just there because it's there. Right. And you're not going to rely on that because obviously, like I said, when it comes to conferences, it's a different beast altogether in how you get the attention and how you market that, that property. But you've got to have it on the sites because it's just another option where people can click on. And again, if all of your area has got an event going on. So, for example, the super bowl is coming to Scottsdale, Arizona very, very soon, in a couple of weeks time. Right? 90, 95 of US properties are all fully booked. But you're going to get the fomo. You're going to get the last minute Larry's, who are like, I want to go to Scott Sell for the Super Bowl. I haven't got a ticket, but I just want to be there. And even if your listing and your optimization and your algorithm is shocking from simply being the only one available, you're going to stand out and people are going to come onto your, onto your listing. Right? So it's, it's not the bread and butter. I wouldn't worry too much about algorithms with this. It's just being there. That's why we have it.

Yeah. Okay, cool. Really interesting question from Nicola here. Thank you, Nicola. And to the others, by the way, if you do have questions, you see what's happening here. We're now answering questions. So if you want something answered, put it in there and we'll answer it. This is where the good part of webinars comes in, because you get to ask your question. So Nicola's asked my question, but from a customer point of view, from a guest point of view, when looking for accommodation as a guest, she prefers to book direct, but she finds it really difficult to find places that book direct because the search terms, the search, the Google Pages are dominated by booking.com, airbnb, etc. Etc. So sort of a slightly different way of asking that same question earlier. How would you advise any accommodation owners get themselves found in a simple manner, given that they can't compete on. On page one?

Yeah. Again, there's a full chapter on it in the book. Go and get the book and it will basically break you down. So what you need to do is you need to do what's called the Waffle House tactic, right? So Waffle House got really famous and they, they made a ton of money by whenever in America a Walmart opened, Waffle House would open up really nearby, pretty much in the same car park. Because they know that when a Walmart opened in a small town or a small whatever in America, people would flock to it. And while they're flocking to it, a Waffle House was there. Then snap up all of the foot traffic. Right? So what you need to do for this when you're bringing it into the world of hospitality is you've got to set up your listing, okay, to be that marketing tool. But when someone lands on it, let's just say booking.com or Airbnb, you've got to brand your business accordingly so that it makes somebody goes from Airbnb from booking.com to try and find your website direct. All right, now there's a really cool new website that is. Alan Egan is back from Vacation Soup. He's back with Hai Chi. This is starting to do this and it's bringing it into a big scale. So basically, Hai Chi, a guest will find you on booking.com or find you on Airbnb. They'll load up high Chi, paste in the link, it will do a scan and it will let the, the guests know exactly where's the best rate, how to book direct as well, which is good. But you can do this on a singular level that you can control. Again, the first thing that I said, focus on what you can control. So you've got your images on, on Airbnb, let's say the top six try and somehow in those six images, get your logo, your brand logo watermarked into those images. Because then, first things first. When somebody lands on your Airbnb listing, they don't know you as the business owner. They just assume you've got maybe one property or this is like your second home. And this is a hobby, right? You need to get across instantly that this is your. This is your business, this is your professional. And you're a professional doing this, whether you're doing the management company, whether it's own terms, short term or whatever. So by putting the watermark in, which is easy to do, then it's getting across to the future potential guests. Well, hang on a second, let me go and try and find out more. And then in your profile on Airbnb, so you've got an Airbnb profile, the first line of copy is key to go, hi, my name is Mark, I'm the founder and owner of Insert business name. Check out our online reviews, they're really good. Or go find us on ig, which is short for Instagram, and then put your AT and your handle. So what you're doing is you're getting people onto your listing and then what you're doing is you're encouraging them to go and find you online. Okay? So when they go and say, again, it's really important to get your business name in the location you're at. So for our family business, it was the granary in Scarborough, right? So when somebody goes to Google and types in the granary Scarborough, there's only one search result that's going to come up, and that's our website. Even if booking.com, airbnb, Expedia, TripAdvisor tried to bid on our brand name on Google, which they did. We came up on the map search, we had our website, and we also as well bid it on our own brand name on Google. Again, that's really complicated to explain. I've got a full chapter in the book. But because you're bidding on Google or with your own brand name, you do pennies instead of pounds, which saves you a ton of money. But the ultimate goal is to get them to the same place, which is, which is your website. So very quickly, you've got to do it in a very quick amount of time. When someone lands on your listing, you've got to establish yourself as a proper business, not just a hobbyist host. And you've got to make them know exactly what your brand name is. Okay? So give yourself the identity and if you don't know what your brand name is. Say you've got free properties and you're doing like the rent to rent management model or whatever and you're just going by whatever, establish it very quickly what that's going to be. And another little hack with your Airbnb profile, change the profile pic to a picture of your logo. Another cool little hacktick and tip to do because then it shows that you are a professional at doing it. And in turn it just drives people consistently back and then when they do land on your website and it's the biggest mistake I see so many people make is on the website, on the homepage as they're on the scroll, you've got to explain to the guest why it benefits them to book direct. 90% of people don't do this. So it's, it's a separate column on the homepage, on the scroll. Every single boostly website has this, this is why you Book Direct. It could be better rates earlier, check in, late checkout, welcome, hamper whatever it is that you need to do. Because we need to re educate the guest here. As much as I like to re educate hosts, we have to then re educate the guests about what is Book Direct, you know, and, and this is how we achieve it. And the best thing you can do with your pms, go onto your pms. Now you've got your base rate and then the rates that you load off to Airbnb, the rates that you load off to booking.com, the rates that you load off to VRBO, mark it up by 10, 15, 20, 30%. So when someone does land on your site and you say best rates, then you can like fulfill that. Because your best rates are on your website when they book Direct because they will be doing a comparison, they have got 20 tabs open, open at once. Because we see this with our stats of our websites. We can see on Crazy Egg how many times where people are going on all of our sites. And we know that from the, from the guest. What they're telling us is they have so many tabs open and they are doing price comparisons. So take advantage of that and you'll get direct bookings all the time.

One thing to add to that, Mark, is I think a really important part of when someone lands on your website from an OTA in the way you've described and you explain what Book Direct is, consider the idea that Book Direct is more than just price saving or best price. Because people these days, and I know this from experience because I've been through it myself with my own Kids, people are looking for a reason why they should stay with you over someone else. Price is the kind of, the first thing they'll set a budget. But after that it's like, well, should I stay with this or should I stay with someone else? And that's where you really need to talk about why it is, what is different about staying with you? And that can be about the what does book direct mean? It could be, Mark said, the welcome hamper. But anything else that you do from an experience point of view or from a little value add that your guests will go, oh, that's different. That's the clincher for me. It's so, so underrated, that psychological trick of making the guest feel something, feel an affinity for you beyond the price. But I get it. People start with price, but they have a lot of decisions to make after that. Vanessa, you're nodding. You think something similar.

Yeah, it's good. I was saying much earlier that really it's got to go far beyond a transactional thing now. It really is the immersive experience and how you talk about your business in that sort of inclusive way that will really make you stand out.

I've got a real tangible example I can give you. It's a bit of a foray into a recent as a family, we're deciding where to go on holiday this summer and I've got two kids, despite my young looks, they are 21 and 19, 18 rather. And they've got an opinion now. They really haven't. When they were younger, it was like, you're going where we're going. They have an opinion now. Okay. And their opinion, I think, is an important thing for us all to take account of this Gen Z culture. They are the ones who three years ago, four years ago, when Airbnb started gaining momentum, they're the ones who've got used to Airbnb. They're now the ones that are becoming bookers. They're the ones that are actually traveling. They're the ones that have influence. They are the ones that are looking for reasons more than price. They're often looking for ethical stuff. And I know this because we looked at, we looked at a place abroad which my daughter, my 20 year old, 21 year old daughter said, I'm not going there because of these reasons. And at the time I dismissed it. I was like, what you're talking about, we're paying, you're coming. And she was like, no, it's these things. And when I researched them, she had a point. And I went back to the host who I was thinking of booking, who's a Touch Day customer, and he was brilliant. He explained all his reasons for it and I think you really have to pay attention to that extra deeper level, the Gen Z attribute to holidays. They're about price too, but they're about experience. They're about going somewhere that's ethical, somewhere that gives back a bit. So keep that in mind too. I think that's something that so far in the conversation we've missed a bit. That. That is an audience that's growing in power. They're all over TikTok, by the way too. A couple of things I just want to answer. Henry Collett has asked, could you have a live chat option on touchday app or would that be the search button? Don't to go too much into Touch Day, but there is no live chat. There is, there is WhatsApp icon coming soon so people can initiate a WhatsApp conversation with you. There is a search bar at the bottom where they can tap search and search for their question. My observation here is that you don't necessarily want to engage people in lots of questions once they've already booked, which is what touchday is for. You want to allow that product to answer their questions for you. So that's where I think getting a bit more into how you could use touchstate is key there. But I won't go into that now because we've, we've not got long enough. Much as I love to talk about Touchstone dynamic pricing, can you please explain it and is it worth doing? I mean, I can explain it. It's basically trying to get the best price for the right time of season for you. The logic of the thing is it will make the price the most beneficial rate it can be. Is it worth doing? My opinion, 100%. Yes, it is. And people say, but I don't want the algorithm to like book me out at 50, 50 pounds a night. You've set floors, you basically make sure that it can't do that. Vanessa, do anytime customers use dynamic pricing?

Not currently, no. Mainly because the majority of our market is the camping market, the outdoor market, and whenever we talk to them about dynamic pricing at large across the board, it scares them a bit, I think. I'm not sure the market's quite ready for it. I could be speaking out, turn there. There's probably a campsite manager listening right now going, we want it. It's certainly on the cards for the future. It's just not deeply embedded into our system and the way we manage Rates right now, it's very much. The business owner sets their rate according to what they think they want to charge.

Yeah. Cool. All right. Yeah, I think it's probably slightly different to the. To the, to the. To the short term rental market, which. Which I've seen in the last year or two. You probably have two mark. Lots of people getting to grips now understanding the dynamic pricing is their friend, not their. Their enemy. Yeah. Anonymous attendee. Am I penalized if I reject bookings from Airbnb and take it directly on my website? No, Is the answer. Ellie's asked, do we risk being removed from Airbnb if we brand too blatantly Include. No. No.

I just don't. Just don't put in web links.

Right.

Everybody assumes that Airbnb is a sophisticated company that is, like, got all the. The eyes on every single listing. They haven't. Right. The only way it will get flagged if you go www.or HTTPs Instagram.com. no, what you've got to do is be smart and be clever. You do ig, which is obviously short for Instagram, at, and then put your handle in. That is absolutely fine. If you go around going, don't book on Airbnb. Book with me direct on your Airbnb listing. Then.

Yeah.

Expect to get an email from Airbnb going, don't do that. Don't be silly. Because you're, you know, at the end of the day, you're in their house, so you've got to abide by their rules to a certain extent, but, you know, don't. Obviously, then think of a sophisticated machine that knows everything and sees every single listing. There's too much for them to do that. Just, you know the rule that I always go down, Never ask for permission, but beg for forgiveness. And that's how you get absolutely fine.

Okay. Georgina's asked another question. It's sort of playing a little bit on what we've already covered. I think it's probably a bit too much to get into in the remaining time now. But, Georgina, please do drop me an email and we'll get the question answered. If it wasn't clear from what we've done so far, Karina has asked. A lot of outdoor hospitality is seasonal anyway. Okay, so that's validating what you were saying. Vanessa, Laurie, could you please explain dynamic pricing? I've heard of it, but I've never heard of it.

Go and Google Price Labs. Just go and Google Price Labs.

There you go.

And then go check them out. Book a demo and they'll explain it explain it all and then obviously touch, they need to do a dynamic pricing webinar.

We definitely need to do that.

Yeah.

Cool. All right, well, we've run out of questions, so that's good. So anyone else got any questions? Please do. We've got some more time on the webinar so please pop them in there if you need to. You've seen that we engages lots of, lots of discussion, but the things we haven't sort of talked about so far is how we kind of manage that guest to stop that guest becoming a real pain in their you know where. And guests have questions and I'm talking now after booking because I think we've covered the booking stuff. We've covered how you interact with guests and sell yourself from a booking point of view. But once you booked that guest, how do you kind of put it on autopilot and go, you know what, now I can relax, I've got that booking, I don't need to burn my time anymore in dealing with the guest. Clearly I will say touchday is there to achieve that for you. So we don't need to talk about that. You all know who touchday is and if you don't go and check us out, the point of that is to enable your guests to serve themselves. And our customers almost always say that that is the reality that the number of questions they get reduces. But I think here there's a question on like how much tech to embed in your versus how much to remain human. And you do sometimes need to have that ability for guests to contact you. What do you think on that balancing, Vanessa? How do you think people can strike that balance between tech, automation and being human?

Well, I think firstly the PMS really kind of sits at the heart of that micromanagement removal because it provides some really critical functions controlling the inventory, pricing, availability, the booking through the website, as we've just discussed. But first, I think you can actually create more value and add value through the actual booking system and the post sale communications that it can cope with. So you can directly upsell things like additional goods and services, or you can add your free extras to bookings that would be provided in any case, but adds value to the guest. You can push policies and booking rules to minimize future questions. You can gather as much information through the whole sort of booking process to gather information about the party members, the arrival times, number plates. If you've got a barrier system, so much automation can sort of deal with a lot of those repetitive and time consuming sort of guest queries. But Conversely, and we've learned this through our own processes, with our own CRM for any time, et cetera, there's a danger that sometimes automation can kind of kill creativity a little bit. So whatever templates you're using that have been provided by Anytime, pms, Touchstay or whatever suppliers you're using, make sure that you really do adopt your own language, your brand style, that you revisit your content. You really make sure that you're current. Quite a few people we've noticed are still talking about COVID 2020 as if they were still in 2020 in some of their templates. And it's like you've got to constantly review them to remain fresh. Yeah. Because you just, you need to make sure that the automation is there to alleviate the admin, but not strip out the actual humanity. It's a fine line.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that the humanity point there, I think that when you use automation to send stuff to your guests and expect them to consume it, you're on a hiding to nothing. Use the automation, that's the tool there. But don't expect them to consume it or read it. That's where the human aspect comes in. So think about you as a recipient of that communication. What is going to get you to read it, to open it, to act on it? It's not a long whole number of paragraphs or things that are on a single email. It's bite sized bits of content delivered at the right time, with humor, with style, like, convey who you are, don't put Dear John, thanks for your booking, we've helped. It's like, hurrah, we're so happy to see you. Did you know when you stay with us, you get this, engage that kind of like, oh, I'm going to watch this, I'm going to read this, I'm going to act on it and then deliver what you want them to do because they're engaged. And that point.

Exactly. I think you really need to get into the pit with them, as they say, and walk in their shoes and really understand what would drive them and engage them to book with you and enjoy their stay and therefore, you know, become a super fan and an advocate of your business. So, yeah, really important.

Okay, cool. So Jennifer's asked what's the best way to basically convince owners that they need to step up and stage a house properly? Like, I guess put the good stuff in there, replace that crappy old washing machine, that kind of stuff.

All right, so it's all about Avatar, right? And as a, as a management company, you've got a couple of avatars. You've got to figure out who is your ideal guest avatar. And also as well, you've got to find out and figure out who's your ideal property avatar and your ideal owner avatar. Now, when you're a management company and you're getting going and people are coming to you saying, hey, Jennifer, can I, can I put my thing on you? I've heard about you, you're really good. Can I give you my property? Yeah, yeah. You say yes to everybody. But the trick here is to start saying no, because for every no, you open a yes to something else. And what you're going to develop is you're going to develop your guest avatar, but you're going to develop your own avatar and you're going to have some very awkward conversations to have in 2023 because you're going to have to sack any clients. You're going to have to sack some of your clients. It's just bare bones of it because if you've got properties that aren't up to scratch and don't fit your overall brand, don't fit your overall, what you're doing, you need to get rid of them. Especially if you go to them saying, hey, right, what you need to do, Andy, we need to do this, this and this. Because this is what the research we've done. This is the guest that we're attracting. This is the guests that we appeal to. 4 out of 5 of our owners that we work with have catered for that your property isn't because of X, Y and Z. And if they come back to you, say, I ain't got the money, I ain't got the time to say, well, sorry, we can't manage you anymore. And you sack them because when you say no to them, you're going to open up yes to somebody else. So that's what you need to do. It's going to be a hard conversation to have, but you need to get rid of them.

Yeah, totally. You know, no guest in this day and age is going to put up with, with lousy stage properties. So, yeah. Wendy's asked as a small site with Vanessa. Did you want to say something on that?

Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, as business owners, just remember what it is that you hate and what you love. When you go on holiday yourselves. I think it's just sometimes easy to forget that you're, you're too concentrated from one side only. I mean, I stayed somewhere at Christmas where I went to use the Washing machine, it was still full of someone else's washing. And I was just like, this is. This is nuts. I don't like this. So you don't. It's just remember your own experiences and what you, what you want, you would want to avoid and what you wouldn't want to pass on to your own guests.

Well, if someone else is washing, that's, that's, that's not. Okay. So Wendy is saying she's basically just got 10 out of 10 on booking.com and how do we use that as an advantage?

Well, I know Wendy. I can literally see her out my window. We are very close.

Okay. Mark will tell you after, so come and find you.

No, no, I can give this. This is super simple. So, Obviously, Airbnb and booking.com are very clever with their marketing, right? And there's, there's three times every year that Airbnb send out, congratulations, you're a super host, and they want you to then share that on social media. Your brand in Airbnb and booking.com are the same this time of the year. You'll get a little certificate through the post saying, Congratulations, you've got 10 out of 10, 100 on, on booking.com. please stick this up in your property. So every time a guest walks in the door, you are branding and marketing booking dot com. So the question is, how can we use this to our advantage? Because obviously, getting an award is lovely, it's nice to be recognized, but you've got to do it the right way. So instead of going, hey, we've got booking.com 10 out of 10, you'll just say, we've recently been ranked and rated, you know, 10 out of 10 for our service and our customers in 2022 want to find out more is at our website. So there's definitely ways to go about it. Create your own award, create your own certificate, create your own stamp that you can stick up. But don't brand Airbnb and booking.com as you're doing it.

Oh, good. Victor's asked a question which is a bit of a sales opportunity for you, Mark. He wants to move to you from his current website.

So, yeah, if anybody wants to find out more and you know Victor, please do go to boostly.co.uk have a chat with our team. They'll walk you through everything. If you feel like, yeah, that's a good solution, and then we'll think that will work well with you, then. Absolutely. We'll. We'll go down the next steps. If not. And we feel there's another solution out there. We'll point you that way. So yeah. Boostleigh.co.uk B O O S T L Y.

Okay. And because we're the only ones that can see the Q and A, not the attendees, Georgina, I should say to everyone, has said good choice, Victor in caps. So she's an advocate. We've covered a lot and I didn't get to a couple of the questions on my sheet, but I think that means that we spent time answering the questions that the attendees really wanted to hear. So we're going to wrap it up now. Any closing thoughts, either of you want to make?

Vanessa, One thing I read this week that really stuck in my head was respect the skill set of your end users. So some guests will master navigating your website and using your online booking forms and will be able to open and read the digital guidebooks. Others won't. So I think let's all just be patient. One size doesn't always fit all, but the time that we save in the automation of some of the guest experience should give us that space to be helpful. So that'll be my parting tip.

Wise words. Thank you, Vanessa. Mark.

My parting tip is everybody go pick up this copy of the blueprint.

The book.

Yes. Which touch day was part of last year.

I can't. It doesn't show up well on my mind.

The reason why it's important is everything that we've discussed today and much more. It is covered in this book. So we've got 10 partners from every different realm of the world of hospitality, short term rentals and a big part of what we talk about today is hospitality. So how can you still incorporate hospitality while bringing on board automation and doing all of those things? Do go pick it up. It's literally The Kindle version is 99p. So there's no excuses. And it will, it will help answer a ton of the questions that that have come in. Absolutely. So it's called the book Direct Blueprint. If you don't understand my my English, I'm sure it'll be sent out in a link later from the team.

Yeah, we can do that. And Victor has said he really liked this webinar. Thank you, Victor. And he's asked if we're going to do another one. Well, maybe we could think about doing that. Hester, what's it called? We answer that question. Tiffany, thanks. So many great ideas. Cool. All right. Seems like we hit the Mark. Thank you everybody for attending. Thank you, Vanessa and Mark for being such amazing participants and really great ideas. And I think for certainly for me, I can tick that box of saying yes, we did bring value. If there's anyone listening still here who thinks I was hanging out for something else and you still haven't answered it, please email me. We'll make sure we get it answered and maybe we can include that kind of stuff on the next one we do. So with that, thanks everyone. Have a great rest of your day. And finally, thanks for attending.