Book Direct Blueprint: Creating a Direct Booking Strategy

My top tip for 2024, all that is going to be explained in this video. Now in this video I brought on Maddie from Mount And Maddie has grown to be one of my good friends, man, my biz besties in the industry. And her company, Mount is going to be one that you need to get into your lives in 2024. If it is not part of your business by the end of this year, you've got to give your head a serious shake. Try saying that five times fast. Rentmount.com is free, absolutely free. And you can get a cut of every sale that comes from it. And also all your guest reviews will go through the roof and you will turn your guests into super fans. And I explain all in this video presentation with the Amazing Maddie from Mount so thank you for tuning in. We had 40 odd people tune in live with us for an exclusive view and if you would like to be part of those exclusive viewings in the future, then go to Boostly. B O O s t l y.co.uk.

I C A L Good to be here. As Mark mentioned, I'm Maddie. I'm the CEO and founder of MOUNT and we're doing a joint webinar today to really talk about what it means to create a book direct channel and how to keep it going and flourishing and really take it to the next level. So that's what today is all about. And you're going to see some sneak previews on kind of what Boostly and MOUNT are also doing together to really drive this initiative forward. Before we get into that though, wanted to do a quick intro because I'm not just some random girl coming and talking to you. I have been in the short term rental industry for about two years now on the vendor side, but have been a traveler since I was quite young and traveling the world. So that's really why my company MOUNT exists. We're on the traveler side and we are really trying to get people to travel like locals, authentically, responsibly, come stay at amazing properties and then also have amazing experiences because we believe 2024 and onward is going to be the trend of experiential travel. So people not just coming for the place but really because they have a bucket list item they want to cross off other weird fun facts about myself. I started the company when I was 12 years old. I know I probably still look pretty young, I'm 26 now, but it's been a journey and a half already and it started in the lock bike lock scooter space. So I was Actually working alongside Bird and Lime when they were companies, when scooters were a thing, involved in that industry and then found myself in the short term rental industry after that and have raised over $4 million for my company to date. So looking to take it to the next level in 2024 and hopefully looking to, you know, excited to work with a lot of you on what we're building. For those interested, the photo here on this screen in the black and white, yeah, that was me when I was 12, winning that competition that sent me on my entrepreneurial journey. So excited to be here and I really appreciate all of you joining. Mark, I'm going to turn it over to you.

All right, thank you very much. Well, my journey, I've been in hospitality pretty much since the day I was born. I grew up on a, on a farm, stay, bed and breakfast, 200 acres up in the, in the northeast of the, of the UK and did my best, my very best to try and escape this world of hospitality. I want to be a soccer coach. Traveled the world, being coaching, soccer, traveling, doing all those cool things. Ended up in London working for a company called Quip that was later acquired by Yelp. And that's where I learned everything, marketing and sales and social media and all that cool stuff. And then in 2011, it just dragged me back. In 2011 we moved back to the, to the family home. I'm the oldest of four and my parents were wanting to retire quite simply and they were like, right, one of you is going to take over this business. And I was the oldest and me and my, my girlfriend, who's now my wife, we set up on getting that business online. And my role was to take the 25 years of offline customer base and word of mouth and bring it online. And we did it with social media, we did it with emails and we're always around about 75 to 80% direct bookings, which was amazing. And then in 2016 I read a book called the Four Hour Workweek by, by a chap called Tim Ferriss and I set upon learning everything about Tim Ferriss. I learned about the art of delegating, about not having to everything yourself and all of those things. And so we started to implement that into the business, discovered virtual assistants and all that cool stuff. And with that extra free time, I was able to go to meetings in the Scarborough and Whitby area, these tourism meetings. And was at those tourism meetings I met some amazing people, but they were struggling with marketing, they were struggling with social media, with email, website, you name it, they were struggling and they were sort of complaining and moaning about booking.com, and it's this little cheeky upstart called Airbnb. And, and so I just said, well, what are we doing to, you know, drive your own bookings? What, what, what are you doing? And it looked at me with a blank expression and I just, you know, you get those light bulb moments. And I was just like, right, well, let me have a look, let me see who's doing this, if, if anybody's doing this. I went to the local council, the local tourism board and they all said, we've got no funding, we've got no money. I looked to see who else was online and the nearest person I could find was charging, you know, £12,000 a year for their services. And I was just like, well, you know, most people can't afford that. So I, I created a Facebook group, which I think majority of you, a lot of you are in, called the Hospitality community. And I'm proud to say seven years later, it's still thriving and going strong. It's one of the most active Facebook groups out there with about 92 engagement rate, which is amazing. And I'm very fortunate that now, after seven years of doing this, showing up every day with YouTube and podcasts and blogs and you name it, social media, I get to, I get to travel the world and speak to amazing people, speaks on amazing stages, wrote a couple of books and last year, 2023 boostly websites. In total, our 2,500 plus clients were able to generate over £50 million in tracked direct bookings on our website, which is a huge milestone and one that we've already set on doubling that in 2024. So that's me. Thank you very much.

Awesome. Thanks, Mark. That's a huge milestone. If people could clap right now, I feel like you'd be hearing a lot.

Of celebrations in the background.

Here's to 2024. Excited to see how you break out of that and double it. Let's see what else is up here. So this is the thing that we wanted to introduce and we kind of alluded to in the registration, but Mark and I, and Mark, I don't mean to speak for you, but I feel like we've had enough conversations where I can confidently say that the, the vendor market and just the tech stack, that is the short term rental space is super fragmented. You work with the pms, potentially guidebook, company, book, direct website, somehow furnish it all. Like there's just a lot of moving pieces and it's Hard to know exactly where to get the best information from. So what Boostly and Matt have decided to put together and grow over the course of the next few months is the SDR co op name pending a better one. But basically what this co op entails is it's a community and group for you guys to get the resources you need whether you're starting, you're wanting to level up or really just become the best in the industry. And it's going to be the cornerstone for all rental, short term rental entrepreneurs where we can all learn from each other and grow. You're going to be able to get deals on tech, figure out which the optimal ones are operational strategies, expert level, expert LED webinars. So ones like these, hoping to continue and do them monthly and just basically a place to make sure that you know if you are evaluating new tech or want to bring on new vendors you haven't heard of, like this is the place to get all the information for that. So hoping to continue driving that forward. It's all free. It's just basically kind of a value add to everyone in our community. And so we'll keep giving you guys our time to see how we can grow this and so more amazing companies coming to the table that you know, you probably have heard of or you haven't and this is going to be the way to discover them. So Mark, how do you feel about that?

Yeah, amazing. Ever since you, you came to us with the idea, I was like yeah, this is fantastic because there is a lot of choice out there and I feel like if we can get together brands that are similar in the thinking of, of what we're in and we can couple them together then it just means that the, the STR host will be able to then go fantastic. I know that I can go to these and it's going to be perfect for me where I am in our journey because I feel like we're all, you know, I'm not naive. I know that we are very good with, with hosts from that 1 to 20 to a 25 sort of property mark. And after there it's, they want to grow and they want to move on to more customized services etc, that's perfect. But we're, we're here to get them to that 25 property mark and, and I feel like if we can align ourselves with other brands in the industry that perfectly suited for this niche of the, of this industry, this huge industry then I'm, I'm all for it. But yeah, I'm, I'm excited to See what we can do with it. I'm excited to get everybody's feedback. And yeah, to, to, to, to the expansion of the STR Co op name Pendant.

Yes, exactly. I love it. Awesome. So that's kind of the preview there. We'll have more information coming soon. So make sure you follow both Mark and I on LinkedIn because I think that's where we're going to drop a lot of the news there. Keep everyone on their toes. Now we get to dive into the meat of what's actually going on. So we're going to give you guys some Context on just 2024 travel trends, what to be prepared for and how you can roll that into book direct strategy. And then you'll hear from Mark on exactly what a book direct strategy is and, and how to get that going. Just some stats to throw your guys way so you can get prepared for this upcoming travel high season is really our opinion is that the way we travel is changing. It's not so much about finding the best room for the best price and staying and figuring out what to do. It's really trying to figure out how to take an ethical trip and a sustainable trip to the tune that 91% of travelers are starting to see the importance of taking these ethical trips and being responsible when they travel and not wanting to get caught in a tourist trap. And you know, if they're spending the money, they want to have really that great experience that they're going to remember for years to come. Additionally, on the planet friendly sustainable side, this is a great stat for you guys because it really plays into how you can market. But 70% of travelers right now are actively saying that they will book accommodations and seek out accommodations and if they know that property is planet friendly, has a sustainability act baked into it. You know, just kind of really trying to preserve this travel ecosystem because as it stands right now, tourists and travelers produce twice as much waste as locals. So, you know, actively trying to change that and you guys can play a part in it. So that should see kind of, you know, if you're able to market that way, a lot more bookings driven your way. So that's the stat there. And then this is kind of where we get into the interesting take on how travel is also changing and that travelers are wanting more than just a place to stay. I can't see your faces, so I don't know if you're able to raise your hands or not, but our take is that you're getting asked a lot of questions from your guests. Just you Know first of all how to check in, what's the WI fi code. But past that really they want local recommendations. So they're probably going to ask you what should they be doing, where, where they should be going, eating, drinking, the full works. Because they look at you as their guide to having an amazing vacation and that could be one of the reasons they're actually trying to book your property. So that gets me here is that the way travelers are searching for accommodations is absolutely changing. I'd argue it starts these days either on TikTok or Instagram or somewhere you can see visually what the property and that market is all about. I want to say the travel destination for the summer was all around Italy, Portofino, all of those Lake Como destinations because they blew up on TikTok and everyone's like, I absolutely need to go there. And it drove so much tourism that way. So people are visual, they want it in short content bites and that's really going to drive their booking decision making process. So it's going to start with what they want to do, an idea of where they want to go. It's going to lead them down this path and at the end of that path they'll eventually find the accommodation that fits their agenda. It used to be in the past, you know, let's find a place and figure out how to get there. Then we're going to figure out what to do. And it's totally 180. So just keep that in mind as you are trying to put together a book, direct strategy, because this is absolutely going to come back into play on how you really start marketing yourself, your brand and your properties.

Could I just add something quickly and on that slide? So it's, it's, I think everything is changing the way people search for something. My, my 8 year old the other day was humming this song and as he walked down the stairs and I was like, what is that Charlie? And he said, oh, I was just watching it on YouTube shorts. And what it was is this, this young artist called Jake, he has built his brand first on TikTok and YouTube shorts and now people are discovering through short form content. And this is a musician and I know from my own personal experience when we go, when me and my family, we travel to a, a new city, we won't really start our search on Google to find somewhere to go eat or something to do with the kids. My wife who is a big tick tocker, she will go search on Tick tock for things to do in London with kids and there's just A vast amount of short form content and then she picks a place to go, eat or drink on the back of that. So it's in the past the booking journey would be start on Google, put your search in and go down that traditional route. But now, so many people and it's not just, you know, Gen Z's, this is like everybody now. This is millennials and Gen Ys are starting their search on this short form content. And before you start to roll your eyes and go, oh, I'm gonna have to become tick tock famous. No, because like Maddie's just said there that the destination is the one that are going to first and then building it around experiences or things to do. So this is, this is what we're going to come back to. But it's like everything is changing right now, so please make sure that you pay attention to this because this is, this is going to be big for this year, next year and the years to come.

Absolutely. I also know Jake. He's a. Yeah, he's a, he's a cool artist. I found him on TikTok. There you go, big presence.

If you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boostly and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only your niche, but could be in your location as well. Boostly has helped over 2000 hospitality businesses all over the world increase their direct bookings. And if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to Boostly. B O O s t l y.co.uk call and book in an appointment with one of our sales team.

This is just some stats to back up our claims in that 83% of travelers right now are actively seeking out and paying for experiences. So this is basically once they get in your property, they have a lot of exploring to go do and they're going to go surfing, they're going to go hot air balloon experiencing, they're going to go run with the bulls, you know, whatever it may be, because your property is just the starting point to their adventure. They're going to have a whole week, a few days to really go experience what your market and your destination has to offer. And so, you know, you should be putting yourself at the forefront of that. But there is a massive disconnect because right now less than 10% of bookable properties Short term rentals, glamping experiences, boutique hotels, whatever it may be, you guys are not offering these bookable experiences. You might offer a word of mouth recommendation, some guidebook recommendations, but really nothing you get to benefit from financially. And these travelers are spending a ton of money. It's $9.2 billion being spent every year just on transacting experiences. So getting a piece of that pie absolutely has the ability to change your business for the better. And it's where 30% of revenue from hotels come from. It's from really transacting experiences and having that concierge type aspect. So that when people ask you, what should I be doing and where should I be going? You have an answer that's going to generate you some revenue. So that's absolutely happening. And so you know, where we're going to dive into now is some actionable steps you can take. And then Mark's going to really show you how to take that into your book direct strategy. But if you want to go about looking at what experiences you should be setting up, we're going to go into knowing your guest, which is also important for book direct strategy. Putting together experiences and then using some software to automate it all. So if you want to start taking notes, I'd say this is where it is, where it is happening. So basically, when it comes to knowing your guest, you probably have a lot of this historical data or an idea of what your guest avatar is. But I would look at their average age, you know, who they're traveling with, so the group size, are they coming and it's all a group of girls or all a group of guys because they're coming for bachelorette and bachelor parties. Are they coming with their family? Is it just their significant other? Is it a solo traveler that really can start to clue you in into why they're coming and what they're going to be doing in your market. And then also, why are they traveling? Is it for a quick weekend trip? Are they coming to stay for an entire week because they want to go exploring? Are they using your property as a launch off point and they're going to explore like two hours outside of the area and every day and come back and sleep? Like, really, why are people coming? And this really can start driving your marketing strategy. So once you really start to figure out and know your guest, you can start to put together some experiences. Good clues is like, are they asking you, you know, hey, is there a bike rental shop down the road? Is there a place to go kayaking? I really want to Go hot air ballooning. Like are they asking you for recommendations? That's a great clue and a good starting point. And then because if you have a guest avatar, you can start to put together packages for them. So if you know it's a couple that's coming, you know, put together a romance package, start offering them a bottle of champagne when they arrive. You know, electric bikes is another great option. Surfboards, golf carts, then you have experiences with local businesses. I think the misconception here is that you have to take on the owning and the management and operations of running these extra add ons and upsells, if you will, for your property. And that's absolutely not the case. I'd say in the majority of instances you should be able to contract that out to existing businesses. Tourist operations that have already been set up like a bike rental shop, hot air balloon experience business that's already been running. Like these absolutely exist in your market and they are basically, you know, wanting to jump off their seat to work with you because you have the guests, you have their customers and you just need a way to connect to them. So I would also look at who's in your local market that you want to work with because that's a really good starting point as well, and then figure out how to work with them. So that's really what it looks like to put together your experiences and start benefiting from that. When we look at software automation, I think there's a few objections to wanting to start to work with these either local businesses or even, you know, offering these amenities at your own property. I think one of the, the big items is like if it is a experienced provider that's in your market, you know, how do you work with them? What does that contract look like? How do I know if my guests are going and purchasing? How do you track it all? There's absolutely software for that. One of the options being mount, that's what we do. But you could, you know, there's others out there as well. But basically you get connected to all of the local businesses so you can start selling their inventory so your guests can actually purchase with you three tickets to the amusement park down the road, you know, whatever it may be. We're going to get to the marketing piece in a second. That's what Mark's all here to talk about. And then honestly, you got to make sure you have an online booking and fulfillment carrier as well. If someone buys something from you, you do not want to be the one having to fulfill it. If you sell, if you sell Amusement tickets. You don't want to have to be running down to that park, buy the tickets and give them to your guest. Like, it absolutely needs to happen online. So make sure there's some booking software in place that can do that. Another thing that we do as well, so good options for the software as well.

So just very quickly with. With Mount, so we'll just go back one, if you don't mind. So with Mount, how does it work in terms of what you. What you do? So if somebody signs up and take the payment, do the market and do the. Do the online booking and fulfillments, how does it work? If we were a property that's in, say, Manchester, and there's like five things in and around us that we think that our guests would like to do. How do we make it so where they get on Mount? So then you can then offer it to the services via the MOUNT software?

Ooh, yes, that's a good question. So basically, we call everyone in our world concierges. So you would sign up as a concierge and you'd get immediate access to your MOUNT account. And basically what you do is you input your market. So for you, Mark, that would be Manchester. And then our software is basically going to tell you, if we already have experienced vendors we're working with in your market, that you can immediately start selling. We'll tell you that. And then if we have none, because it's a new market to us, we'll also tell you that. And if we don't have any, there'll be a big red ad button and that's what you click. And all you need to tell us is the name of the business you want to work with. And then we reach out on your behalf and contract with them, get them set up on the software so that you can sell their experiences. And then from there everything gets populated into a mini marketplace, which is basically an online landing page that shows the experiences. It has a book button. If the guest clicks book, they can actually book the date, pay for it, do everything online. Essentially a marketplace of experiences. And you're getting about 10% commission from everything you sell. So it's become very easy, I think, to start. Start this process and start essentially upselling, but I don't know if I'd call it that.

Yeah, well, it's providing a solution that people are already doing and, and it's, it's, it's a. What I love about is it's a win, win, win. So it's a win, obviously, for your guest, because they can Have a very smooth booking process with an experience and then it's a win for the supplier of this event or experience because it's free marketing for them and it's a win for, it's a win. It's a win for you because you're able to get these experiences onto these sites then get a cut of the percentage without having to do any other work apart from say hey Mount, we're in Manchester, we're in York, we're in wherever, we're in Devon, we're in Cornwall, Scotland, Italy and there's no experiences on this site. And then you'll reach out and obviously it helps if you can if, if, if, if Brett's watching now and Brett sends to Mount five people that they know would be really cool for the site. That would obviously help you.

Right, yeah, that would absolutely be super helpful. We'll get them onboarded in about a week or two so then you can start selling their inventory too.

Amazing, amazing. It's a, it's a fantastic, fantastic service. So we'll give the links obviously you've got rent mountain.com, you can go check it at any point but this is Automations and like, like Maddie said when so we used to do this in 2011 at the family business. So I'll tell you all the story and this is why everybody should do this. So what we did and if you want to go on to the next slide I can build this into what I'm talking about. But what we did was we identified very quickly who our ideal guest was. So as Maddie put on the slide, know your guest we identified very quickly and our, our business for those who don't know and you can go and google it, it's the granary in Scarborough, the granary farm stay. It's in the middle of 200 acres working farm. So we had cows, sheeps, goats, hens that were so annoying cuz they woke me up every morning. We had all the shebang but on the other side we had accommodation. So it was the usual, you know, we had 14 bedroom guest house, we had three holiday cottages and we identified who our guest avatar was very quickly. So our main image, our hero image, our unique photo if you want to call it on any of the listing sites was the image of the, of the building. We had a nice pond in front of it and we got a picture of our Highland cow and Highland cows who don't know, they've got very shaggy hair, big horns and it just stood in the pond as my dad was passing, passing it One day, took a picture and it was beautiful. It summed up everything about what our experience was staying with us. It was peaceful, animals, countryside, and it was ideal for families. Families older generation just wanted to come away and relax. So that was our avatar. And then the second thing that what we did is that we started to build a database. Now if you want to know a real deep dive on this, I've literally recorded a video and it's on the YouTube channel now of Boostly how to do this. But we set up a Google form and what we would do when every booking came in and our PMS when we were at the farm was with free to book. So within our. Within free to book, you can set up an automated messenger service. All of the PMSs provide this, right? And at the point of booking, an email would go to the guest if they had booked via the platform. It would pop up as a message on Airbnb or booking.com and in the message it would say, hey Maddie, thank you so much for booking your stay with the granary. Please make sure that you read this email or read this message as it's very important about your stay. And it would have the normal check in date, checkout date, price, how many people, etc. And then it would say to make your check in as smooth as possible, please fill in this short form. And it would go to a Google form. And a Google form took five minutes to create. But on that Google form was the key bits of information that we needed. Number one was name, email, phone number, email address, which if anybody has booked via an ota, you know, we don't get our email. So we got the email and then we would ask two questions, which comes back to what Maddie was talking about. It was why are you coming to the area? As in, are you celebrating? Is it whatever? And then it was how many people are in your party? And we would also add in a third, which was what made you book with us. So what was the deciding factor on why you decided to book with us? And those three questions, although we amended them over time, they were key to us because we were able to figure out why people will come into the area. So why were they coming to Scarborough? Why did they book with us? What was the main reason? And also as well, we're able to figure out how many people are in the party or it was what are they looking to do? So we were able to gather the exact reasons why the majority of our guests were coming to stay with us and what they were coming for. And we built this database up, and bearing in mind, we've got 14 bedrooms, boutique hotel, free holiday cottages, and, you know, we're open pretty much year round. So after a year, we've got a lot of data right here. And because the guests were staying on site, obviously, we got to engage with them, we got to meet them, we get to know them, and we also got to find out where they were traveling to while staying with us. Now, there's a stat that Alan Egan always used to tell me, and it always used to hit home, and we always assume the guest is in our property 100% of the time. The guest is only in our property about 10% of their stay. For the 90% of it, they're out and about and they're exploring. Now, what Maddie is talking about with Mount it's up to you to find out where the majority of your guests go. Because again, if you know where your guests are going, the majority of the guests, like, let's say 80, 20 rule here that where are the 20% of the places that 80% of your guests go to when they come and stay with you? If you can narrow them down, and if you go on to Mount and if they say, oh, these aren't listed on us, and if you know the majority of your guests are visiting there, whether it's a cafe, a tea room, whatever, it may be this experience type thing, it could be kayaking, it could be cycle tours, it could be yoga, it could be whatever, Then you pass them to Mount and say, hey, get them on the site. And then you can message those business owners and you can say, hey, I've reached out to Mount. That'll make sure that you can get. Get booked easy for our guests that are coming to stay with us, because our guests have told us that the majority of our of our guests are coming to go and check you out when they stay with us. So that's a win, win, win. That's how you create that database. And the reason why I tell you this story is that back in 2011, I had to do this ourselves. So when we were doing this, we found that there was this one adventure place that all of our guests were going to. Everybody that I talked to were like, we'll go in here, we'll go in here. And it was a. It was a farm visit, so you could go, you could feed animals, you could ride the tractors, do all those cool things. And it was. It was ideal for families. And so after about six months, I plucked up the courage and I went to the Owner of this place. And I said, hey, we've got thousands of people coming and visit us and the majority of them are coming to visit your farm. Is there any coupon code that we could get to give to them? So they get a little bit off and they gave us this cool little coupon code and on it was a very clear marker if it come from us, from the granary. And after a year, he called me up and he had stacks of these coupons and he was like, listen, whenever you want to come and your family wants to come and check us out, you never have to pay. It was a win for us. We never paid when we went to go there for a day out. But after a while, what happened was, is that we were passing so much customer his way and we never asked for anything in return. One year they turned their business and they pivoted a little bit and they started to offer where people could get married there. Now, they had no accommodation. So when the bride and groom sat down with their wedding planner and they were talking about which places did they recommend for accommodation for their guests that are coming in from out of town, guess which was the business that they recommended? It was us. And the cool thing about a wedding is that you're not talking just one or two people. We're talking the whole farm was blocked out for a weekend at a time when these weddings were booked up and they were booked in advance. And the cool thing is about that is that they pay in advance as well. So we were able to collect so much direct bookings upfront and it was literally a year in advance, so we could really track our PNLs. And that was just from setting up one partnership. Now, once we had a track record with that, we went to the other businesses as well, and we did the same thing. But the annoying thing for me is that, A, it was manual, B, we didn't get any cut at a ticket, and. And say, yes, we saw the win, but it was. It was a long way down the line. So something like this, what Matt is talking about with mine, with mount, you get the win, win, win. And you also get the cutback as well, way earlier, which is really cool. But we got that from building a database. So I guarantee now everybody who is tuning in to this live, you are on your way to knowing your avatar. Whether you read the book, Direct Playbook, whether you're part of Boostly, you've done our training, or you're giving it a good stab yourself, you know who your avatar is. Now you've Got to start building that database. And the sooner you can start, the better. We did a very free Google form, but there are providers out there like Stay Fi, that can help gather this information for you and collect our bits of data. And the cool thing about Stay Fi is that not only do you get the lead booker's information, but you can get the whole party's information and you can ask those questions as well, which is cool. And then the final thing of what I'm talking about is the after effect of when your business can start to be not just a place that they go and stay, not just an Airbnb, but an actual brand is once you have this in place, once you can start to offer experiences and create the ultimate guests inventory for your stay at your places. And I'm talking about not just experimental stays here, experiential stays, sorry, not just farm stays, but I'm talking city stays, midterm rentals. The whole shebang here is that you will turn a guest to an influencer, to a super fun. And I won't go too much into this because I'm going to develop a separate talk about this, but if you can do this properly, you'll turn just a guest into an influencer. And what I mean by that is that when a guest arrives and they've booked experiences via Mount, via your platform, and so they've booked it via you, any stay, any experience that they do, whether it is a walk into her or whatever, they'll associate with your stay. And think about the main time when you truly post anything on social media, it's when you're on vacation, right? The reason being is you want to show off to your friends and your coworkers back home that you're having a great time on holiday. And if you do this right, your friends will be posting on Instagram, posting on the TikToks, posting on Facebook or whatever, and they'll be tagging in your business, your brand, your Instagram, your TikTok, your whatever. And so they instantly become an influencer because they are tagging you in and sharing it to their social network. Doesn't matter if they've got 10 followers or 10,000 followers. And because we're so nosy, they'll see that. They'll see that story, they'll see that post and they'll click to see where they're staying, okay? And that's them being an influencer. And then if you do the next step, right, which once you've got that database, you then use it in terms of Email marketing, text message marketing, producing good content on your own social media. What will happen is that influencer, that guest, will go home, they'll go tell everybody about you, and then they'll rebook and stay with you. If not next year, the year after, and then they'll keep coming back because you're going to stay top of mind, keep emailing, keep doing a good social media brand. And if you want to know more about this, I've got a podcast coming out in a couple of weeks with a chap called Isaac French who had Live Oak Lake. He had it for 18 months and he's just sold it for $7 million. And one of the main reasons why the company that bought it is he had a very strong social media brand and he had a very strong email list. And he was a prime example of turning a guest into an influencer, into a super van. And when you do this correctly, that's what you create. This is exactly what we created at the granary. But it number three would never have happened if it wasn't for number one and number two. So however you put that into your world, you can easily do it if you do one right and if you do two right, you're doing number three. And this is why a combination of boostly amount and the other collectives that we create in this co op will be the prime for every single person who's watching this video now. Doesn't mean you're going to exit for 7 million by the way, but it just means that you'll be on a very strong, successful business.

Absolutely. Couldn't have been said better, Mark.

Thank you.

Did you want to take this one or did you want me to?

I'll let you take it. My voice is a bit going outside.

Awesome. Well, this is just bringing it full circle because if you have your direct booking strategy now set up based on what Mark was talking about on the last slide, this is really how you start to leverage it with SEO, Instagram, TikTok and really start to put together your marketing strategies. We now know after this presentation that every single traveler out there is really starting their search with experiences. They want to see what other people are doing and where they're going. And so highlight your experiences in your direct booking website, in your blogs, in your videos, like this call out of title of experiences in your listings. All of this is going to rise you in the search ranks. If someone searches the northern lights in Iceland and your property is in Iceland and you now have a northern lights experience, you best believe that you are now going to be at the top of those search results. And now that person searching Iceland northern northern lights not only found their experience, but they found their accommodation. So they're going to show up to your property pretty happy in that they didn't have to do a lot of research to get what they wanted. I'd say also what amazing thing people do is they start adding photos of not just their property but these experiences in their carousel. Because again, people are visual learners, they soak up content that way. And if you can visually convey, you know, it's not just a property, there's experiences attached, that is probably going to also rise you in the search ranks. So there's just a lot of optimization you can do there when you pair a direct booking strategy with an experience strategy.

Cool.

Mark, we did it. 41 minutes. We are to the end of the presentation now. So this is a MOUNT QR code. So if you want to scan that, set up your free account and see what experiences we might have in your market, go ahead and scan that and get started. It'll also get you in there. So if you want to chat with me or anyone else in the mountain team about kind of your strategy in general, happy to do that. And then Mark, if they want to reach out to you, what's the best way to do that?

If anybody wants to reach out to boostly, just go boostly.co.uk but you missed a little thing. What? Maddie said that a free account. So if you're not all scanning this code right now, please make sure that you get your phone out and scan it. Or if you just, if you've got your phone, you're like, I can't scan, I'm on my phone. Just type in rent mount.com Go ahead, check it out, get started for free and make sure that you all implement it into your business in 2024. I can't stress this enough. One of the the key trends for this year is going to be building in multiple revenue streams to your business. And this is one of the easiest, simplest ways to do it because MOUNT do all of the hard work for you. If there aren't any experiences in your area just yet, you know what to do. You go on, log onto the dashboard and say, hey, we need to this one. And then MOUNT will go out and reach and help them get set up. It's all about creating the win win wins. So yeah, it's, it's amazing. This is not going to be the last that you hear about Mount in 2024. I guarantee that we're talking behind the scenes of syncing it all together between Boostly and mount with our APIs, which is very exciting. So there's going to be a lot more that we're going to be doing, but you all need to get on there and go and engage, check out, chat to the team and work with them because it will be. You will be ahead of 99% of your competition in your area, I guarantee it.

Absolutely. Well, thank you, Mark. I appreciate it. I would say exact same things for Boostly as well. Awesome. Well, that's all we have for you all until our next co op meeting.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much to everybody that's tuned in and I know as people tune in in the UK and it's nearly 10 o' clock at night, so thank you. And if I was in Europe, it's nearly 11 o', clock, so really, really do appreciate it. And if you are going to be coming to Nashville in a couple of weeks time, we're going to be both at the STR wealth event. We're going to be booth buddies next to each other. So come and have a chat with with either or both. We've got some cool things planned. With that being said, thank you so much and we will call an end to today's presentation. Thank you very much, Matty.