Direct Bookings For Hospitality

Welcome back to a very special episode of the Boostly podcast and I've got something really cool to show you. So last night I recorded a very cool roundtable all about direct bookings with Damien Sheridan of the Book Direct show, with Vinnie from Uplifting and Leo from Super Hook. Us four combined, we just chatted to shit, talked all about direct bookings, about trust, about what we need to bring into our websites to get turn a looker into a booker, and it was amazing. So if you want to find out more about Super Hog, check out super hog.com, the Book Direct show, and obviously uplisting. IO uplisting is a PMS. The Book Direct show is an event that is going to be in Miami in October and obviously Super Hog is the verification service. I've got to go. As you can hear. Let's pass it over to the four of us as we chat all about Dara bookings.

Hello, everyone and welcome to the Book Direct Masterclass. Today I'm joined by industry experts Damien Sheridan, Mark Simpson and Vinnie Breslin. How are you, chaps?

Very well, Leo, thank you very much.

I'm very well. And it wasn't obvious that you're reading that at all, so well done.

Can I just say, while we're here, guys, and we were supposed to be joined by Cindy Darling and unfortunately she had to drop out because she's not feeling very well. So she was actually the only one genuine industry expert that we asked to get involved today. So she's a big loss. Big loss.

I'm sure we'll struggle. I'm sure we'll struggle.

We really will.

Okay.

And as you're all here, it'd be great, it'd be great if you could introduce yourself. So, Vinny, let's start with you.

Yeah, I'm Vinny Breslin. I'm founder or one of the founders of Uplisting, which is a property and channel manage, sort of property channel manager. We operate all over the world, have members from 5 to 500 properties and we help you list across multiple OTAs, but also launch your own direct booking engine or get started at least, and lots of automation features to help you put your business on autopilot.

Brilliant, Vinny, thanks for, thanks for telling us a bit about that. And I'm going to ask you more about this direct booking functionality that you help people build. So I think it's very interesting. And then, Mark, tell us a bit about your.

So, my name is Mark Simpson. I have been in and around hospitality since the age of five. Born in a little bed and breakfast in just off the Scarborough and Whitby in the Yorkshire coast. 2016 started helping hosts to generate direct bookings and I've just been talking about it non stop since then. This year I authored my very first book which was the Book Direct Playbook which I'll get on screen now on Amazon. You can go check it out. And yeah, very fortunate.

There you go.

Nice. Thank you. So now, very fortunate to have met some amazing people over my years of doing this. Obviously Damien, Vinnie, Leo and so many cool people that I've met doing and talking about Derek bookings and so being part of this is, is awesome. Thank you very much for the invite.

Brilliant. Great intro. And you didn't reference being a Liverpool fan, so even better. And now my brother in arms as fellow Man United fan Damian Sheridan. Tell us a bit about yourself.

Hey Leo, thank you for the invite. Team Super Hog. Yeah, as Mark says, look, over the last few years I've met some great people including your good selves. Damien Sheridan. I am an SEO consultant in the short term rental industry. Been doing that for about eight or nine years. More recently being the host and director of the Book Direct show which is an event specifically dedicated to short term rental hosts and managers to help them get more direct bookings. And also a more recent conference that we're now hosting called Scale Rentals which is in Barcelona later on this month. So yeah, that's me. Great.

I never know if you really need to introduce people because essentially, you know, you've probably read the blurb, you probably, you know, you probably recognize the names but you know, it's nice to do it anyway, isn't it? So for anyone who doesn't know, I'm Leo Walton, I'm one of the co founders of Super Hog. Super Hog exists to make the vacation rental industry safer. We always say prevention is better than cure. And we tackle the issue of rental fraud bad guests party bookings in many different ways, namely advanced guest screening with financial protections. And we're interested in again, how can we make sure that property managers aren't always on the back foot and don't always have to have their hand in their pocket to pay for damages. Guys, what a great lineup we've got. Let's dive straight into in to the questions. Mark, can you start us off when we're talking about a direct booking, what do we mean?

Well for me, when you say the word direct booking, it means that you're getting a booking that is on your terms, as in your policies. I think A lot of people sort of misconstrue direct bookings with saving money, as in you don't have to pay the commission costs. But for me, the main benefit of whenever somebody books with you directly and not via a third party is you don't have to play in somebody else's stamp. It is literally on your terms, your policies. So if something like, I don't know, a global pandemic comes around, you're not then having your whole revenue, your whole year dictated by somebody else. And I feel like for me, I don't know, people may have different definitions of it, but for me, that's what direct booking means.

Perfect. Very, very interesting. Damien, what are your best tips for managing direct booking successfully and efficiently? I know you work with clients regularly on this. What are you advising them on this?

Leo? There are. Well, there's so many ways, you know, well, apart from just looking at SEO, which we might address later on, you know, even if we forgetting technology for the moment, the good old telephone is an amazing way to communicate with our guests. You know, a lot of people forget this. There are many thousands and millions of people out there who actually still want to speak to somebody. They want to know that there is a person there at the other end. You know, fraud is rife in our industry, so that helps in terms of our credibility. We're there to answer the phone. But look, you know, in terms of all kinds of new technology that there is available, if we're looking at an actual book, direct website or website, you know, more simply put, you know, things like WordPress or CMSS for me are the way forward in terms of driving more bookings, driving more traffic and more interest in your particular brand. Booking engines obviously help. Communication tools like WhatsApp are great, but in terms of like managing the bookings themselves, look, I think the majority of people who are going to be watching this probably have a PMS of some sort like, like Vinnie's Tools or a CRM, you know, to, to manage their communication with their guests. So I kind of. Things are really important, but overall it's the communication, you know, opening up that communication and harnessing the steps all the way through. From point of inquiry, booking during the stay and post booking.

Interesting point. And I think you mentioned what Vinny's doing and obviously we'll let you talk speak on that, Vinny. But it seems to me like we've, in this respect, we've maybe got it the wrong way around because as property managers often you start by approaching channel bookings, seem to be the first port of call. I'd be really interested. What? I'm sure you guys may have some stats on it. Like what? Typically, Vinny will be able to tell us, where do property managers start? Are they starting with Airbnb? And then eventually they realize they need to branch out? Like, what seems to be the path?

Yeah, definitely. At least for the vast majority of the members who sign up to our platform, who are typically, they've been around for maybe a few months. At least they've got a business operating and they're looking to professionalize or streamline their operations. It's kind of at the point where they would look to use uplifting. 99% of our members are on Airbnb. So they're starting off in Airbnb and they're thinking, okay, how can I branch out? What other booking sites should I be looking at? Whether it's VRBooking.com, google vacation rentals or whatever it is. But also they're familiar with threat bookings as an option and they're kind of looking to explore and start that journey, basically. And we kind of. Yeah, that's what it comes to us as.

Yeah. And do you find that that's something that everybody's asking for straight away? They say, hey, build me that direct booking website.

I need to start that process.

It's a mixture. Some people are really, really into it. Some people are, I think we'll talk about this later. But scared of the prospect of starting to work with direct bookings. So if we're thinking of how we kind of advise people to start with direct, very much trying to explain to them it's a journey, you don't need to start off with all the bells and whistles. So direct bookings is a journey. First and foremost, getting a position where you can take a direct booking and process a payment before you have a fully bespoke direct booking website that Mark may provide, for example. So we recommend starting off with R. We have a one click solution, then uplifting. So just click a button, have a direct booking website connected to Stripe and start taking payments today. Then looking towards where am I getting bookings from? That's the second question, like, where are these people coming from? The lowest hanging fruit for people starting out, I think, is previous guests. So having a simple email SMS strategy to educate existing guests, first of all, just educate them that you can book direct next time and just use your post checkout message as a way to do that. And then once you get the momentum and you start thinking about how I can get better at direct bookings and looking at things like SEO that Damian can help with and a more advanced threat booking website that Mark can help with. Sort of you kind of get into that phase as you grow out and learn more about direct bookings on that kind of journey that you're on.

Yeah, very interesting point, Damian, Omar, anything to add to that?

No, I think he's nailed it. I think with people that are coming to uplifting, obviously they're going to be majority of the time on five properties and around five properties. So it's like by the time they've got to five properties, they've already will have been listed. On the OTAs that have been listed on your Airbnb, there may be linking calendars here and there, so they know the process. I speak to a lot of people that are just literally getting started. I do a lot of clubhouse rooms. Clubhouse is still a thing. And on, on the clubhouse rooms, there's people that are literally getting started with one and they just would love just the comfort of Airbnb. But I feel like it's my job to say to them, listen, don't just settle for one platform, go and get everywhere. And then once you've got everywhere, then you can go and tap into the amazing resources of Uplifting and all these other PMSs that can give you the tools to sort of link it together. And then like I say with Uplifting, a one click website that you then got your direct booking website. Fantastic. It is so simple. The main thing that we have to do as vendors is we can't overwhelm the host, we can't overwhelm these management companies that are just getting started because when they get overwhelmed, they just go, right now so that I'll go back to Airbnb. So that's like, I mean, that's our biggest challenge is why we're doing things like this, to sort of help educate and just show that it doesn't have to be a massive step.

Yeah, I would concur with that. You know, and I think both of the guys have touched on this.

It's.

It can be quite daunting to start off with this journey, especially if you're looking at suddenly leaving the safety net of a secure ota, which is taking all your payments for you, your damaged deposits. They'll make sure if there's any issues with the guests, that they will pay you a million dollars or whatever like this, and then suddenly you're on your own. That's a really daunting step for a Lot of people. However, it's not as tricky as you might think at all. And there's so many great tools out there to help, Super Hog being one. But there are so many tools out there that make these processes so simple and, you know, give us such reassurance in the background. But it's just that first step. I think we all need to. We've all been there, you know, we all just need to take that first step and then, you know, and then away we go.

I think you did right, Damien, especially with that point you made about Superhole. That was really. That was a really good point. The people are going to turn around and say, but it's expensive to invest the time and effort into this. I would assume that. Mark, I'm looking at you here. How easy is it to implement these strategies? Is it going to save you money quickly?

As far as how easy it is to implement, it really is simple. And there's companies like what I've created with Boostly, and obviously everybody around here. We're always trying to re. Innovate and we're trying to make it as simple as possible. Because this is the one thing that Airbnb in particular have done really well is their marketing message. If you look at their marketing message, it's click, sign up, and you can have a listing on Airbnb within the next 30 minutes. They make it so simple. And when, like Damian said, you've got somebody that is maybe got one or two properties or maybe even five properties, and they're now looking at, okay, right, they've looked at the commission costs, they've looked at all of the things and the profit margins aren't the best. And I go, well, how can I get more profit out of this? Well, they hear about this beautiful thing called direct bookings, but then they get overwhelmed because they think of security, they think of all of those things that Airbnb do for them. And so this is exactly what I've been doing for the last five, six years. Everything that we do here is to try and make sure that it is as simple as, like Vinnie said, one click and you've got a website. Or it is as simple as putting a book together like this for less than $20, which has got a hundred tips on how to get your own direct bookings. Vinny mentioned one of them about how simple it is by just messaging guests that already know like and love and trust you. It's a case of showcasing those little things that I've done and everybody here has done and all of our team Boostly members have done and it's by consistently showing them and showing them and showing them how easy it is to do it. For example, now with our websites, our WordPress websites, we've created one where it's literally 80% done. All they have to do is add their pitches, add their text and boom, it's ready to go. So we're always trying to re innovate and trying to make it as simple as possible. So if we keep doing this, hopefully the message will spread and these more direct bookings and more companies will start to, to get on board sooner rather than later.

I like that point, mark the 80% point because that's what I think all three of you are working on in your own ways. You're making it incredibly easy for people to make that switch. Damian, one thing I think you can speak to, certainly with more gravitas than I could, is you're collecting your different bits of data from guests, you're retargeting people, you're putting things in your email signature about booking directs and all sorts of stuff. But then you still need to draw that traffic to your website. Can you talk to us about the importance of SEO and sort of initial tips for how you can get started there?

Oh my. Well, it's a long process, Leo. It's not something to be entered into without a long term strategy here. This is something that you are not going to see significant milestones for many months, if not even beyond a year. So it's something to consider. However, in the long run it's going to pay off handsomely. SEO, Search engine optimization for those who don't know, it's all about essentially structuring your website in a way to please search engines and to make your domain into a platform of expertise and authority. So that's about building up the whole site in terms of fresh, relevant and authoritative content in your given area, your types of property, but also in blogs, events in your area, you know, new things that are going on and just, just really building up that, that level of authority in your area. In time it will happen, but it's not a quick process. So it is something to be, it's an investment of time once it you start to please those search engines whilst also pleasing your guest, might I add, because if you write too much for search engines, you have, you know, if you write very robotically and just stuff keywords in there, it will not work very well for your guest engagement, but it will, you know, you will start to climb those rankings, you will start to appear on the first page for certain keywords that you might have researched and you're targeting. So it's. Yeah, it does. The rewards are there. And, you know, and I work with clients and myself and the simplest things can pay off amazingly. You know, I've spoken about this with Mark before on videos, webinars, but I've, you know, from my own side. I did just a simple page on bars to watch the football in my local town. And, you know, it's little things like that that nobody necessarily writes about, but people do search for and, you know, whilst you may not necessarily get a booking from those straight away, it's like, oh, yeah, I remember that, that brand because they answered that question, you know, and it's just little things like that to get your brand into people's mind. So copywriting and you know, Mark, and I know Louise Brace as well, she does an amazing job on, on this kind of content that's relevant for your local area. This is all the kind of thing that you can build up for your business. And then your, your direct booking website that works wonders for SEO. But as I said, you know, I don't want to go on about it too much, but it does take time.

Good on it. There's a disclaimer there, isn't it? Look, sign me up. But it takes time.

I like that.

Yeah, I like that. Well, it seems to me that there's lots of little elements to this, aren't there? That when sort of accumulated, it become your strategy.

Right.

Which I'm sure is the point. You've got to do all the little things really well to make sure you're not missing an opportunity. One of those things is making sure the website is super enticing. Vinny, you can probably speak on this a bit. What tips would you give people to make your website enticing so it can compete with that, The OTA experience that a lot of guests are used to being.

Yeah, well, I mean, there's. Mark touched on price there. That's an obvious one. You can have lower prices, so you got about at least 10% margin to play with compared to what guests are seeing on OTAs. So you can use that, you can give a 5% discount, you give a 10% discount, whatever it is you want. That's one obvious way to do it. We make that really easy in uplifting. We have custom markups that you can, if you enter $100, for example, on uplifting and lots of other software, it marks it up or down based on where that is going. To so Airbnb might be higher, booking.com might be even higher and directs are lower. Loyalty programs is another one. Can be really as simple as just member only. Writs doesn't have to be a really complex system. And then you also have more opportunity through a website like Mark My provides to have additional content and guides and videos even that. You're limited on Airbnb or booking.com to what you can display to a guest. But on your direct booking website you have a lot more room to play with. So I think there's the. Those are three ways that you can stand out from OTAs.

I just want to just touch upon that. I think the main thing that every host, everybody that's got a website, everybody that has a direct booking website, you have to re educate your guest, you have to re educate your future potential guests. Because a lot of people don't know what direct booking means. I mean we, in 2016, when I was still based in Scarborough, there was a local news crew came down and we did a, a piece together. We went on Scarborough Seafront and we interviewed 20 people and tourists like, how did you book your stay to come to Scarborough? And majority of them said booking.com and we asked why and they spouted out the same old thing. It was, oh, we got better raise, better cancellation policies. And it was like, now you get all of that when you, when you book direct. It's just really good marketing. So us as hosts or around this table right now, this virtual roundtable, we're like having to re educate hosts, but hosts have to re educate their guests. And the best way to start is on your website, on your homepage. Every single one of our websites, we have a benefits of booking direct section. And it's not in big fancy paragraphs, it's just icons. It's just icons saying, you know, best rates, better incentives, et cetera, et cetera. And that really is a great place to start. And it doesn't just end at your website. It has to be everywhere. Every social media channel that you have, even in your property or properties, you know, you've got, you've got amazing key parts of your property like your fridge or your front door where you can just reemphasize best rates when booked direct. And I see so many people, one of Vinnie's customers, Ryan Luke of Luke's days, he's branded his pillows right now. I've seen his pictures on social media. He's branded his pillows, we've branded saying best rates when you book direct. It's all about re educating your guests and it start with your website.

Fantastic. That's really good advice, Mark. I just hope Ryan Luke's face is not on those pillows. We can all hope for that. I'm going to stay with that. I'm going to stay with you, Mark. Clearly there is the otas play a big part in people's booking mix and they're not going to be able to sort of overturn that straight away. So, you know, what do you think though? And this question probably goes to all of you afterwards as well. What's a healthy mix? So you're not overly reliant on them?

Well, as much as I say you can go 100% OTA Reliance and you can't go 100% direct bookings because you've got to use the might of the OTAs and the marketing message to draw the attention. And so I mean, if you just go on the, the basis of a 50, 50, that's, that's beautiful because then you've got a nice healthy mix. That's the, that's the starting point. I know so many people that are still 80 plus reliant on Airbnb or booking.com or VRBO or combined bringing in their bookings. That's too many. Let's try and first and foremost, let's just tweak it a little. I, I, ideally our family business, we were always 80% direct and then we use the OTAs for that 20% when we needed them and it worked really well for us. And it's been the massive shock to me since like coming away from being running a day to day hospitality business to now helping hosts and just to see how much reliant they are on these OTAs to bring in their bookings. And March 2020 proved that you shouldn't be doing so because literally like that day in March, everybody can remember it had a hospitality business. Literally, Airbnb just sort of went, doesn't matter what your policy is, anybody can cancel. And it really messed up so many people, so many people didn't make it out of it. So let's just say if you're more than 80% reliant, you need to be listening to this podcast, this interview and doing something about it to sort of start to tweak it back to at least 50, 50.

Really good advice, Damian.

Yeah, I would, you know, there's no right or wrong percentages here. You know, we carried out a survey last year and one of the questions was, you know, approximately what percentage of bookings of Yours generated are from OTAS and are direct. The average probably was between 15 and 20%. So across the board, generally it is still quite low, but growing. And I think in Europe, perhaps we're a little bit better than our North American cousins on this, but it's still. This is something that's still growing. Guests still, for the most part, are not aware of these benefits at all. So as has been touched on before, the education is hugely important and it is our job to do that. You know, email marketing, as Vinny had pointed out, for speaking and communicating with our guests and letting them know, hey, do you know what, There is another option out there. I'm sure we all have pals out there who their first point ofreference is booking.com and they book a hotel there and they don't even dream of actually trying to search for the hotel or the short term rental property itself. It's just not even. It's not in their mindset. So we have to change that collectively in order to move forward. But we are. And guests are becoming more. A little bit more savvy too. So it's our job to get that brand in front of them, to get them to remember that brand as well.

I think that's a really good point, Damien. And I guess another use of the OTA is to get one booking, isn't it? And then retarget, which is a lot of about what you've been talking about. And back to Ryan Luke's pillows.

Right.

It's a smart move. It definitely is. Vinny, obviously you've probably got a good insight on the movement towards direct bookings, data wise. What are you seeing with your clients generally? What's the mix for them?

Yeah, well, I have over the entire. All bookings and uplifting and that's hundreds of thousands. What have I got here? I got some numbers. So the first few months in 2022, 14% of our bookings are direct and that's compared to 55% on Airbnb, 26 on booking.com 2020. Just to give you some history, 2020 was a bit of an outlier. We had 22% of our bookings were direct. That was Covid related. But 2019, it was 9.5%. So there's definitely growth there over the past few years, at least on our platform, we see a lot of.

A lot of.

We've got some members who do direct bookings incredibly well. So we've got a few very large operators like Ryan Luke in the service accommodation space in the UK, like up to 500 properties. And they will. And they're very much, you know, their corporate stays are a big part of their bookings. And you'll see these repeat bookings every week with this same guest in the corporate stay. So some people do incredibly well, others not so much yet. It's a total spread. I always say aim for 30%. That's just based on something I saw one time years ago, I think in the hotel space. But yeah, we're not quite at 30% yet.

It's a young industry, isn't it? In many ways. And I do think that we're all finding our feet. Someone touched on, I think it was you, Mark. It was the COVID crisis. I mean that's the first for a lot of people in this industry, the first big travel crisis they've gone through, whereas the hotels have been through 9, 11, lots of countless things before which stopped people traveling and moving around. And I think that was a wake up call for everybody in terms of realizing that 100%.

It was a real trigger for sure.

And obviously the tools you guys are talking about. Vinny, I think you mentioned it, the idea of a loyalty program and I think this is great. Can you be a bit more instructional in terms of that, how someone could set out to do that?

Well, it could be really simple. It's just a list of email addresses and you offer a promo code to members to book again. If they book multiple times, you can keep track of them. Say they've booked five times, they get an extra night free, for example. So you can keep it fairly simple and manual, but then you can build that out. And to be a much smarter kind of solution, we don't have a built in loyalty program with uplifting at the moment or just yet, but you can definitely build something out on a Google spreadsheet or airtable or something, something and keep track of how you know how many, how many nights someone's staying. It doesn't have to be too complicated.

Not yet anyway. Not yet. It's coming.

Everything's coming.

It can go a step further. It can go like a little step further. And this is something that we did at our family business and it worked so well because as much as you dangle, you know, the carrot, you got to give an incentive. Like you got to say, like, listen, if you do this, there's something in return. So what we did at the farm is on our family business and bearing in mind this is 2011-2016, so it's not recent. So it's like the technology is there to make it even easier to do. But for every guest that recommended us, so they went home, they talked to their friends, their family, they put a picture up on social media, they talked to the co workers or wherever and if they recommended us and somebody booked and on their arrival form if they mentioned their name, then what we did is we sent them Amazon vouchers or we sent them something in the post to say thank you. People love to get like a little thank you for sort of recommending and most people will recommend you and not expect anything in return. But we would always offer that as an incentive and we found that people were much more likely to do so. It's amazing for marketing because if any market is watching this like cost per acquisition and all that stuff, cac, all that numbers that people geek over, it was simple, it was literally recommend us. Thank you very much. Here's a whatever, Amazon voucher or whatever it may be, bottle of wine, whatever you want it to be. And it was, it was such a cool little way because social proof, out of all the selling out there, especially in this industry, social proof is the biggest driver. If you've got a friend that's saying I went there, I stayed there, it was amazing, they're going to go, oh, I'm just going to go and check that place out. Done. Don't even need to do all the research. They know that their friend who they like and they've got a similar setup in like family and whatnot. They had an amazing time and they're going to be your best guests. So it's so easy to do. You don't need to have all this fancy dancing technology. That technology is here and it is usable and people like Vinnie and myself are trying to implement it into what we do on a day to day. But it can be as simple as recommend us and you'll get X and it can be done really well and easy.

Yeah, on that. One thing that we're seeing a lot of is people going to influencers and provide them a promo code. So you can basically build a promo code say summer 10 or something and when they book direct they get 10% off and you can then as a host or as a property manager see how many redemptions there have been from this influencer. It's another way, it's not quite a loyalty program but kind of touches a bit more on what Mark's saying there another way to attract direct bookings.

If you want to look at an uplifting client that is doing that really well, it's Shamil in May Vella. So go check out Maevella on Instagram is an uplifting client and he works so well with it, with influencers, influencers I say, and people on Instagram and like he does it so well and it's so easy and again it's so easy to implement.

Leo, if I can just refer back to the point about loyalty here, I think this is an area where we are really lagging behind hotels and the OTAs because we, you know, look it's going to be very hard for us to compete without the OTA experience anyway. You know, so many people booking.com they know they're going to get their genius discount. That'll be the first point of contact. They, you know, they're not going to come generally to short term rental, you know, direct booking website and think I'm going to get a great loyalty program there and I'm going to go back and back and back. You know it's going to be very hard for us to compete with those, those OTAs and you know, if Airbnb does introduce one themselves, you know, it's going to make it extra difficult for us. But also hotel groups, you know, the Marriotts have absolutely nailed this and people do come back, you know, stay upon stay. So I think we're, there's an opportunity there for us but we, it's, we are lagging behind. There is a big gap there and I think this is a, it's an unfortunate one for the short term rentals because I think otherwise direct bookings be, the numbers would be significantly higher if we, if we could somehow get that, that loyal, those loyalty kind of programs in place.

It's, it's simple. You just juice what you offer on the OTAs and reserve them for when guestbook direct. And this is something I've been saying a lot for the last three months. I went to Liverpool recently to watch a Liverpool game. Amazing team and what I stayed.

Can we meet him?

No.

Fine.

I stayed in a, in a, in a short term accommodation in Anfield, really nearby. And we walked in and it's amazing place, brand new, lovely. And they offered literally free teas and coffees, gave us a bottle of bubbly, et cetera. But it was just there, it was just literally out and there wasn't a song and dance about it. And I said to him, literally, go to your B and M, go buy one of those wicker hampers and just have it stored away and just make a note to the cleaning team that when a guest books direct, you get that welcome hamper. You get the coffee, you get the tea and get whatever else you want to do to make it look nice and put it on the table when they arrive and say, thank you so much for booking direct with us. Here's your welcome hamper and just have that as a welcome hamper. When you book direct, you're not having to spend any extra money, you're not having to go and do all these new systems and processes. They're already doing it. Just put it in a little wicker hamper and call it your book Direct welcome hamper. It's simple to implement. We're just trying to think in our heads, why are we making this so hard? I'm literally on the premiere in website right now. So the premier inn budget chain in the uk, they've got the premier inn loyalty program and it's as simple as when you book direct with them, you get free Wi Fi. It's like it's so easy that we can do this. We just have to think a little outside the box. We've got to just implement it into it. And even if you just want to give it a name, like we had the granary VIPs or the grain Reacts and all I did was I created a, a Facebook group back in 2014 and we just invited all of our guests into there and we called it the Grainery vip. We made people feel special and we built a community around our business. And I feel like looking at uplisting, looking at super looking at my community and like the community that Damian's creating. We're creating a community and the community then promotes our business. Right. And I think that's what every host needs to start doing. Build a community around your business and the people within your community, they will sing and dance and tell everybody in the world about how good you are and whatever you want to do around it to make it beneficial to book Direct. You just got to re educate. So whether that is a welcome hamper, whether it is a bit earlier check in or a bit of a late checkout, it's super easy to do. You just got to start to put some things in place.

Thank you, Mark. All really good, simple, offline things as well. That's important offline stuff, Damien, anything to add on that, marketing wise?

No, no, no, no. I think that they're great perks to get people to book, perhaps. I'm just thinking in terms of, you know, if we can give people a reason to know that our brand, they can come back again and again and again. And we'll get rewarded, you know, and they're great examples of very simple ways to do it. But, you know, perhaps I think there's, there's a more kind of official way that we can do it, perhaps on our. And make it, and make it a little bit more obvious than, hey, you know, you're going to get another bottle upon arrival or something like that. You know, I think there's, there's ways, but we, as Mark says, we need to think out of the box. But make it more obvious.

I always go back to this thing. So my entry into the vacation rental world as a, as a punter was that we used to go to Devon every year as kids. And I probably shouldn't reveal this, my dad might get in trouble, but I'll reveal it anyway. I think the only reason we went to Devon was because he could expense his petrol with his job. He's retired now, so it's fine, but I hope he's not listening. And anyway, we used to go to Devon and what happened is they'd find this place in a magazine and then they'd meet the host and then they'd go back year on year. So the repeat rates must have been incredible back in those days because people so hard to find something decent because search was so challenging that actually you'd just go back.

He would definitely be expensing his petrol at the moment.

Leo.

Yeah, I think the familiarity goes a long way, you know. And in my place in Spain, we have probably about eight or nine guests come back every year because they love the familiarity. They don't want to go to the hassle of trying to find a new place because they know that one place is special, they know it's there, it exists, and that they're gonna have a great time, you know, So I think that is. That's almost half the job. If you provide a great guest experience, or at least a decent one, you have a pretty good chance of getting these people to come back again and again.

What Damien's just nailed down 100% is that you've got to know your customer avatar, you've got to know who you're appealing to, because people that travel to a place in Spain may be different to the people that are going to travel to a Birmingham city center. So you've got to first and foremost look at your property, look at where your property is located and figure out exactly who you're appealing to. Because when you figure that out, this all becomes so much easier because. And it, you know, it's really is a bit of a challenge to do this. This is something that you're going to need a bit of advice and guidance around cough $20 book is there. But then once you've figured that out, and once you've figured that specific bit out, you'll know who comes to the area, how often do they come back, why are they booking their booking motives. And then you can work with someone like Louise Brace at Rental Tonic and then she'll be just be able to pin it all together and then you'll have a beautiful looking website and the words are actually speaking to the people that you want to attract into your property.

Perfect. I think you're dead right. This is some really great advice. Can we talk about trust and safety for a minute? I don't think you'll all let me talk about that for a second, I'm sure. Won't you? Like, one of the reasons why people are a bit addicted to the. Well, I think, you know, they perceive the OTAs as safe is because they feel safe from a insurance and a security perspective. Mark, how would you answer that one?

So, yeah, I mean, we're talking about Airbnb Air Cover. It was very widely promoted at the back end of last year, just like they would do if they're going to do something like this, they want to sing and song and dance about it. And it's really funny, many that recently booking.com are trying to play catch up now with something similar. But I mean, if you look at it, and this is why Damien mentioned right at the very start, people get in their little blanket and they don't want to move, they don't want to leave, they don't want to go to like the direct booking side because they feel like Airbnb is covering them. But all Air Cover is, is just really good marketing. That is literally it. Because as somebody on this call with us right now, they have a company that offers the protection and the safety to guests and owners, which is exactly what Air Cover is offering. And I feel like if host just did a Google search and just had a look and just saw what was out there, they'd realize that everything that Air Cover gives you is there and available in direct booking terms. And this is why, you know, I love Super Hog. I talk about it all the time on clubhouse rooms and just wherever and the amount of times that I say. And this is what's really must be encouraging for you, Leo. And the company that's behind you is that, that I mentioned it so many times on Clubhouse rooms And I still get people messaging me after saying, what's that word you said? Because they don't understand my accent, even though I spell it. I talk about it so much, and I'm having to type afterwards. Afterwards. I literally should be a shareholder in this company. I talk about it so much. But, yeah, it's there and it's available. Just stop being lazy, Do a search or just go to them directly. They're literally in my left of me where I see on a zoom window.

And I think, thank you, Mark. And I think it does add that point, doesn't it? What we've talked about through this call is do your research and try lots of different little things, lots of different techniques, and part of that is making sure you've got your own trust and safety process. It leads me on shamelessly to ask all of you the next question, I think, which is, what do you advise people when it comes to damage deposits? How are you telling people to tackle them? Damien, let's start with you.

Oh, Leah, there's only one answer to that. You know that. But, you know, I think we touched upon this with Airbnb, how people feel safe in that bubble, and we need to make them realize that actually, it's not that difficult. And there are tools now out there that not only help you take a damage deposit, but actually help you not to have to take a damage deposit, which make a direct booking even easier. Because we all know we've booked on Airbnb and a lot of these listing sites where sometimes the deposit that they hold is ridiculously large. It can be more than the actual cost of the rental itself. So, you know, that can put people off in itself. So I think we need to embrace all of those extra tools and really just, you know, just come out of that safe little bubble that we think is safe. But in actual fact, when it comes down to it, if you're going to have issues there, you know, these. These policies are not necessarily going to cover you at all.

Yeah, I think that's fair, isn't it, guys? I think we've kept our audience long enough. Absolute masterclass from you three. And again, sorry Cindy couldn't have been with us. I'm sure she would have added her own element to it as well. Any closing thoughts? Let's go around. Vinny, anything from you, closing thoughts on direct bookings.

I mean, the market's booming for SDRs, direct bookings. It's going to become, I think, more and more important as the market professionalizes. You need to have your own brand you need to be really standing out. And direct bookings is critical. I think as part of a long term, short term rental strategy, we can see it growing on our platform. We're going to do $30 million this year in direct bookings for our members. That was 14 last year. That's a lot like it's huge growth, at least within even our own community is huge.

So, yeah, direct bookings, it has to.

Be a part of your strategy. You need to get started and you can get started today, you can have your first direct booking tomorrow if you wanted.

Thank you, Vinny. Mark.

Yeah. So one thing to close on and this is something that we're noticing in our community, it's been mentioned a lot, is that on the back of the pandemic people, and this is your future potential guests, even if they're on the actual credit card section of your direct booking page, they are still wanting to ask questions, they're wanting that personalized experience. So it's really important on your website. This is something that we're implementing as of yesterday is we're implementing live chat tools on every single one of our, on our websites because even, even at the point of booking, the guest is still wanting to ask a question. X, Y or Z. It's sort of going back what it was 20 years ago. 20 years ago when there was no instant book. You had to inquire, you had to like sort of chat to the host before making a booking. We're sort of going back to that where everybody wants to ask these little questions before actually pressing the book button. So if my one bit of advice to everybody would be have some for some of live chat on your website. Even if you just send in someone to your, your WhatsApp number, have that in place and if you are not wanting to do the extra admin, hire somebody. It's so easy now to hire a virtual team member. There's so many amazing resources to do so and that would be the one thing that I would recommend. And if you want to get a direct booking right now, open your phone, find 10 of your contacts, people that know like and love and trust you, and type them four little words. Do you know anyone, do you know anyone that needs accommodation in X? Send that out consistently over the next sort of 10 days to 10 different people and like Vinny said, you'll easily get a direct book and they're there. You just need to go and work for them.

Brilliant advice, brilliant advice. Damien.

Yeah.

Echo what the guys have said. I think for me, probably the main message for anyone who's on the cusp of, you know, jumping into this. This whole new world is that it's not. It's not as daunting as it may seem. We get bombarded by tech out there. You know, your tech is great, by the way, Leo, but we do. And, Mark, all of your tech is fantastic. But, you know, it doesn't need to be that daunting. Take it one step at a time. You do not need to implement all of these bits of technologies exact same time. Do what's right for you to start off with. Work with your website or whatever it is. You need to take that first initial step, and then, you know, you can look at tacking things on. But just one step at a time, I think is important so you don't get too daunted by the whole process. Says brilliant.

Well, thank all three of you for some fantastic advice. I'm off to get some super hog pillows made.

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.