Concierge Secrets - How Amenities Can Make or Break Your Bookings

If you are not communicating the upsell amenities that you have right when they book, it is a big missed opportunity because when they're there, they only have so much bandwidth and they generally don't want to be looking at their computer or reading a brochure, having a blast.

Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the T is loosely making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you'll better butt direct.

Mmm.

Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes.

Hi, and welcome back to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training, and most importantly, the confidence so you can go out there and get yourselves direct bookings. Today we are interviewing somebody on the Boostly Spotlight series. This is a series where we talk to industry leaders, where we talk to people, interesting people who basically can bring more value to you as our valued listener. Today, I'm super excited. We've got a really special guest and we're going to be diving into concierge amenities. How it can really have an impact, impact on your business, but also on your bookings. And direct bookings, of course, we're always going to be talking about. So let me introduce. We've got Annie Sloan. She's the co founder and CEO of a company called the Host Company. It is an amazing company and you're going to really want to sit and listen for this. It'd be about 20, 30 minutes. We're really going to deep dive into what they do and how you can utilize them within your business. So welcome along. Annie, thank you for joining me today.

Thank you, Liam. I'm very excited to be here.

So, Annie, what can the listeners expect for the next sort of 20, 30 minutes? What would you like them to take away from this podcast?

So the thing that I would love for everyone to take away is how surprisingly beneficial amenities are. Beyond revenue amenities, people think, you know, oh, late checkout. But one, there are so many more creative amenities that as a host, you probably already have in your mind but haven't connected to. Oh, those things I can actually offer. And all of the different benefits of marketing that amenities bring, interesting amenities and also all the pain in the bleep that amenities actually improve from your stay for your guest day and all the things that they can make more efficient and you can operationalize through amenities. You know, people, people think amenities and upsells. They think, oh, you want to sell someone coffee? That's so tacky. And you know what? That is tacky. I wouldn't do that in my own rentals and I don't do that in my own rentals. But having a value add service where you right when someone books can say if you'd like to add any upgrades, if you'd like to add any services, really positioning things as a value add for your users, it makes a world of difference in so many ways. And I hopefully can even cover all of those different ways in this 20 minutes. I'm quite obviously excited about it.

Why is this business or why is this service important to you? Talk us through what made this important for you.

So I'm a short term rental host. I've been a host since 2009, since the early days of Airbnb. Prior to Airbnb, I listed my apartment in San Francisco on Craigslist, which is super sketchy. Don't recommend for anyone. I would say, oh yeah, just send me a copy of your license, you know, and then I'd go to Guatemala for a month. So not great. But I've been a short term rental house for a very long time. And my co founder Michael founded and built a large property management company called Times eight Real Estate. And for years Michael and I talked about the inefficiencies with guest questions that you could not answer. So, you know, it's, it's midnight and you're at a bar with your partner and your guest, one of 10 maybe that evening says, hey, we're interested in a late checkout. Oh, okay, let me leave the table, let me go to the corner, let me text the cleaner, right? Or hey, a guest just asked for a midstate clean and it's 11pm and you're at your kid's recital or something like that, right? Not only is it really inefficient that you're probably taking a lot of time to do that, it's also that you have to then contact other people, right? So not only that, we would have questions for our rentals. Mine are in Joshua Tree, my co founders are in Southern California, also in Death Valley. You get the questions like, hey, it's midnight again, it's Friday, we're out of firewood. We already use the free firewood you gave us. We're 30 miles from a store because we're in Death Valley or the middle of Nevada, right? What do we do? And our whole thing is, man, we should just figure out how to answer these questions. Even if the answer is no. We should take care of a lot of These problems. And also there's a lot of revenue to be made in this space with things that you can't anticipate your guests already needing and asking for that we're not doing. Right. Also because our rentals are in Southern California, there's this joke, you know, people, people throw open the doors and then crank up the ac. It's probably the opposite of the uk, right? They just open the doors and turn on the heat maybe, but it's just a sunk cost. Often after they check in. And we would often talk about the analog of hotels. Hotels, a full service hotel makes about 30% of their revenue from upsells. But they're not positioning. When you walk into a hotel, you don't think, oh, they're starting to sell me stuff. You think, oh yeah, I do want a massage. Oh, you have a chef. Right. All of those types of things that they're actually making money on. Right. So I was in big tech, my co founder was still a property manager and I said, let's build something for our own units for our own properties first and just see if it works. And we put it in seven of our own homes first and it went gangbusters. Right. It's very interesting because I was just in tech, I was at Facebook prior to this. Did not think I would make a left turn into what I'm doing now. But in 2021 I left Facebook and here we are.

You mentioned the hotels and how they make extra revenue all the time. And there's a certain mindset I think around, say when you see a mini bar in a hotel, you assume that if you're going to take something out of it, you're going to get charged. Right. But why does guests assume that if there's something in there, that it's just free because you've left it in there? You know, there's definitely that assumption in my opinion. But maybe a location thing. Is that the same as what you've found, that there's a kind of mindset difference?

Yeah, I think there is a mindset difference because it is a short term rental and your guests are expecting everything to be included. I mean, I think that's also the, the marketing positioning of the short term rental industry has been we're not hotels and we host because we're your best friends. Where behind the curtain you're also, you're running a business, Right. So I think that's, that's an interesting part of it. The other part of that is I always say to our users, don't sell anything under $20. Because you also look, I mean, if you're had a, if you have a hostel or if you have lots of products that you people require. Yes, but you should be including everything that you have in your budget to provide good hospitality. Right. Obviously, if it's an $8,000 a night cabin, Cabin, I don't know, mansion in Tahoe, you should be providing a lot of those amenities because that's good hospitality. Right. Hotels there is, it's a little bit of, it's not a person, it's a hotel. So we're kind of sitting somewhere between, between that as well as we can kind of make it feel a little bit like amenities are from a different company rather than you, which is helpful. But minibars in general, it should be included. We've certainly seen people say, oh, I wanted to sell granola bars. Well, if you leave granola bars out on the table, your guests of course are going to think, oh, what a nice host. Thanks for the granola bars. Right.

The challenge of offering amenities is vast. And you mentioned as a short term rental host, you realized it was difficult. Why is it so difficult for, for people to offer these? I mean, for me, as you know, some of the challenges, I guess. What are some of the challenges when it comes down to amenities in general.

For hosts, the first one is communication. One. I think a lot of us have tried this over the years. I'm going to leave something on the counter and a note that says Venmo me. Right. What happens then is, oh, I tried to Venmo you. It didn't work. You're like, oh, okay, here's my phone number. Oh wait, how much is it again? Oh, oh, can I leave this? It just generates more operational inefficiency and more conversations. So automating communication is the first piece of that. You should. And through the host coach, just basically set it and forget it. Right. The second part of that is if you are not communicating the upsell amenities that you have right when they book, it is a big missed opportunity because when they're there, they only have so much bandwidth and they generally don't want to be looking at their computer or, or reading a brochure. Right. So what we do is we enable any host to have this little digital storefront that right when they book, they see that they can get a late checkout, they can get an early check in, they get a midstate clean, they can get fresh flowers. They're staying for two months. Hey, are you interested in a dog walker? Right. All the way through do you need a parking space? Because we're in an urban area and we've got two parking spots. By letting people know what is available right when they book, it eliminates a lot of those communication problems. And also they can then digitally pay for it as well. But it also creates what I would call that first really huge kind of hidden benefit is people know what's available. So either they're willing to pay for it or they don't ask. So if you have 10, 10 doors, you're going to get eight people asking you for a late checkout. Two of those people are probably going to be willing to pay $30 or $50 for the late checkout. Right. When you let them know right when they book, we have these opportunity upsells for you and they have a cost. You're going to get two people asking who are the two people that are actually willing to do it. So if you just cut down on a ton of questions, same thing for something like firewood or if you have things on site to rent. Right. It's this. It just takes care of all of that communication path with you. It will even text your cleaner if someone wants a midstate clean and say Annie Sloan wants a midstate clean one month from now at this location at this time, can you do this right? And we'll pay you out. So that is the number one thing is the communication. And honestly for my own rentals and I would say maybe for my co founder, I mean the revenue is great, but the efficiency it creates is pretty, pretty great.

Is there anything else that we haven't covered that you want to squeeze in?

You know, the one thing that we haven't talked about which is so funny is revenue.

Yes.

So you actually do amenities can bring you a whole lot of revenue. How it works with the host co is first of all the host goes free to use and we take a small commission on your sales. We also have subscriptions so you keep 100% of your revenue. We have property managers that we are paying out $11,000 a month and they are selling late checkout firewood and an occasional massage. They just have a bunch of properties on a lake. So the revenue piece, you know, I kind of try to not avoid it, but I say there's all these other things it does but it's really great for the actual revenue as well of increasing your revenue. That is not a way that is around your adr definitely.

And I think that brings it nicely. Background as a bridge because we talked about how hotels are making it ultimately you listening to this can be making extra revenue now even if it's a small amount, everything starts to to add up, doesn't it? So it's a super way like you say to make extra revenue as a host. So thank you so much Annie for for coming on to the boostly Spotlight series of the podcast. If you'd like. If you're listening to this and you want to go and check out the links are going to be in the comments or around somewhere. However you're listening to this piece of media on YouTube or podcast, you can check out the links below. Thank you so much for listening to this Annie. Thank you for your time on the podcast. We'll see you on the next one.

Thank you so much.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee because it's so hard and the T is loosely making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.