Mark Simpson explains how to build a direct booking business for short-term rentals. A professional website signals trust to guests, education and persistence matter more than luck, and reviews become your most valuable asset once you stop relying on booking platforms.
Chapters
You're thinking about how you start a book direct game and you don't really know what is your first move. The first thing I would say is you need to educate yourself. You can't get stuck in education mode. You have to educate and then you need to act. So you need to learn about book direct strategies. You need to learn and then you have to actually put them into practice. Sometimes some strategies work better for different markets and different types of potential guests. But you just have to start. And if you spend too much time in that research mode or thinking that somebody else has a secret that you don't have, I'll tell you right now what the secret is. It's hard work, it's persistence. It's about consistency. That is the real secret to all of this. Hard work, persistence and consistency, all of that kind of stuff. But you have to have just that benchmark of that beautiful well run website so that your company can continue to function with our company functioning and our website bringing in revenue. That takes that burden off of me so that I can focus on spending my time in the place that I really want to. And that's being with our family. Now that we have a really well designed, well running website, I don't feel embarrassed sending people there. It's sort of like our digital calling card. And I know that if anybody is going to our website, if I'm giving them our address or anything like that, they're gonna go and they're gonna be impressed by it. And that is such a relief. It helps us feel like we are definitely a professional, well run company. And no, I'm really proud of it. And I actually get a lot of questions from other hosts who find our website. They check it out, they message me, your website is gorgeous. How did you do it? And I always tell them, I have a boostly website and if you want one that looks like this, this is the way to go.