Mark Simpson (podcast/YouTube) summarizes lessons from Season 6 focused on short-stay hospitality and service accommodation. He contrasts traditional small hospitality (B&Bs, small hotels, farm stays) with service accommodation operators and highlights a weak reliance on direct bookings among the latter. Key takeaways: many service-accommodation operators receive only ~5% direct bookings (owner/website/email/phone), rely heavily on third-party channels (Booking.com, Airbnb, agencies) that charge 15–35% commission, and often neglect investing in an effective website and basic marketing (social media, email collection/marketing). Simpson recommends prioritizing a quality website and capturing guest emails to increase direct bookings and repeat/referral business.
Questions this video answers
An owner booking made by the guest calling, emailing, or booking via the property's website (not via a third party).
Approximately 5% of bookings are direct.
About 30% to 50% (with ~20% as a low-worst case example).
Between 15% and 35% commission.
Around £400 to £800 per month (examples given: £400, £600, £700, £800).
Chapters
We've got so many free downloads as part of last season, from Trish's Cuddle checklist to Abby's book. Paul and Gordy all had books to sort of give away, which was fantastic. Adam was offering out some 15 minutes free calls. And, you know, that's just off the top of my head as there's so many more in there. But again, I recommend you go and check out. So that's everybody. All 14, 15 people. If we include David and Amanda, who both joined us in the next part of this podcast, is to give you my takeaway. What I have realized, and this is the main difference between hospitality world and. When I say hospitality world, I mean bed and breakfast hotels, small hotels, small rental properties, you know, farm stays. That's my. That's the world that I'm coming from here. And now that. Bringing in more people from the service accommodation world, one of the big things that I have noticed and the big problem, one of the big questions I ask is what is the level of direct bookings that comes in now? That should be on average, maybe about 30 to 50%. You know, at worst, you're sort of talking 20%. So 20% direct bookings. Now, what I was noticing, and when I say direct booking, I mean an owner booking, not one that a third party brings to you. So a direct booking, somebody calls you, emails you, or books via your website. That's a direct booking. When I was chatting to service accommodation people, the average of direct bookings coming in is 5%. Just 5. 95% of all of their bookings are coming in from a third party, whether that is booking.com, airbnb, an agency that they are working with, whether it is Silver Door or any of those sort of things, somebody that they're paying commission to. And bearing in mind that when you do the service accommodation model, you have to pay rent to the landlord, and that could be anywhere between 400 to 600, 700, £800amonth. So your profit is being heavily cut into by these third parties that you work with. And these parties charge anywhere from 15% to 35% commission. So this is a big key thing that I want to be helping service accommodation people moving forward. Is there direct bookings? And a big way of doing that is by having a website that will work. I reckon 95% of the budget goes towards that. And then they always think about website and marketing last, which, if you think about it, this should be one of the first things that they think about, because it's all well and Good. Doing the training, getting the property, buying all the things to make it all epic. But at the end of the day, if you've got all the gear and no idea and no one's booking your property, then you're gonna be up Schitt's creek, because then you've got bills to pay, landlords to pay and you've got no bookings coming in. And when it comes to a website, they either just don't have one, which is a massive no, no, or they're just relying on the free websites that they get with their channel manager. And again, I'm not singling anybody out but Toki Kygo or whoever. They've got a free website and at the end of the day, you get what you pay for. If you're going to pay nothing for a website, then you should expect zero results back. And again, this is what I'm seeing. I do a lot of marketing reviews. I've probably spoken to 100 people doing about 20, 30 marketing reviews and coaching calls for people in SA when it comes to the website. And I ask, okay, so how many bookings are you getting from? Are you using Google Analytics? It's zero. No, haven't got a clue what Google Analytics is. What are you doing? And again, if you want to be going from 5% direct bookings to 10, 20, 30, 40, 50%, it begins and ends with your website. So that's number one. The big thing that I would say to anybody who's watching, listening back or watching this from Service Accommodation World is invest in a website. Invest. But not only do you need a decent website, you need to be doing a lot of the other right things, as in being present on social media, building up your email list. So when a booking comes in, doesn't matter where it comes from, you need to be doing everything in your power to be getting the guest's email list, getting permission, and when you've got permission, actually use it, and be sending emails to encourage them to refer you to other people or to come back and stay with you.
