Helping Tudor Farmhouse Hotel Get More Bookings During the Coronavirus Crisis

Foreign. Hospitality podcast season 8, episode 18, recorded on Wednesday 8th April 2020. We are now looking at exit strategies. And what do I mean by that? When all of this is over, what are we going to be doing on the other end to increase our bookings, get heads on beds, increase our profit, increase our income, not only surviving through this time, but thriving, thriving on the other end. And it all starts now. And it all starts today. From here on in, for the rest of this series, I'm going to be sharing with you actionable advice that you can be doing right now. And it starts with a marketing review. In the last episode I talk about audits that you should all be doing, the downtime that will help you when it gets to the upturn. But today we delve into one specific hospitality owner, Harry and Colin Fell of the Tudor Farmhouse Hotel, which is in Gloucestershire in the uk. We have a look at their website, we have a look at the social media, we have a look at the Google first page and we pack them off with some really solid, actionable steps. A lot of them on the website, a lot of them with the social media. But I want for you to watch, I want for you to see where they are, to see how much they are spending every month on commission costs. I want you to compare it, I want you to contrast with what they're doing, what you could be doing, and I want you to put a plan together at the end of this episode. What I want for you to do is put in the comments section on the video below exactly what you're going to be doing and then we can hold each other accountable over the course of the next month and see where we're at. I want to say a massive thank you to Harry for Colin for putting up their name to do this. I also want to say thank you to Hostfully. Who are our podcast sponsors? You can go find out more about them@hostfully.com digital guidebook one free digital guidebook. It's amazing what you can get for free. If you want to upgrade, you can do boosted 2M in the coupon code, you get two months free. And also as well the other podcast sponsor which is the book Direct Membership, the Boostly Book Direct membership 9.99amonth, you get access to all of your social media content, one that you actually get to see live. In this episode, you get access to tutorial videos that are going to show you how to do Google bid on brand, which will save you a lot of money in commission cost. Again, you'll see that in this episode and also as well, you get listed on the book direct map. Please, please, please watch. But most importantly, implement what you see in this video. I'll see you on the other side. To give you a quick overview of what a marketing review is before we get started. Every week, what I do is I ask hospitality owners where their biggest pain points are. I ask them with a form of an email or on a blog, or on the website or in the group. The answers that I get back vary. And then what I ask is if they'd like to have a marketing review done within the hospitality community Facebook group. They fill in a form and I'm going to show you that form in a couple of minutes. What we do on the back of that is that I do what's called a marketing review. So I take the answers, I look at where they are now, I look at where they want to be and I look at what's in the middle. So what's stopping them from getting from where they are now to where they want to be and where they want to be varies massively. It can be they want to get more direct bookings, they want to just get bookings in general, they want to learn more about different skills. Maybe it's email, maybe it's X, Y or Z. Then what I do is I take a look at what they're currently doing now and we do a mini audit. So an audit. If anybody watched the last episode, it goes through social media, it goes through Google Search, it goes through your website. Now, I don't get access to Google Analytics, I don't get access to Facebook Page insights, I don't get access to your booking engine, But I can see a lot from the forward facing point of view. And the forward facing point of view is important because any errors or any hurdles that I can spot, guarantee that your potential guests or potential DARA bookings can spot as well. By doing this and by recording my screen and then by showing the owner or the host, then they can go away, take away those actionable points and then they can put it into practice. And this helps them in the short, it helps them in the medium and it helps them in the long term. Have a look at what they put down, have a look at where their struggles, what their pain points are, where they are, where they want to be, and then have a look at what we're able to pick out. And then always have half a mind on your business, your marketing, your website, your social media, how you appear on Google and then have a look at what you could be doing. Although we touched upon it last night and loads of people jumped in the comments live and today on the replay. And, you know, there's people that are messaging me on Instagram about things that they've picked out upon. What I want for you to do is to figure out what you need to be doing and most importantly, what you're going to do, because then we can come back, we can check in in a month's time and we can see if you've actually done it. So, first and foremost, I just want to say a massive thank you to Harry Fell. Harry and Colin Tudor, Farm House Hotel, Clearwater, Gloucestershire. They actually won this marketing review. Like I said, I do opportunities in the hospitality community, Facebook group once a week where you could potentially win a marketing review. So what we're going to do first and foremost is we are going to go back on what Harry filled in on the form. So if anybody's ever filled in one of these forms before, and as you can see, we've had 1,511 people fill them in. You will the questions that I asked. So we're just going to go through them again for people that may be tuning into this for the first time. Moving on. So what do we have here? So Harry has obviously got the Tudor Farmhouse, Clearwater, Gloucestershire. They've got the business for 16 years. The type of business that they have is a B and B and a hotel. So I'm giving everybody super loads of time to hit that shared button. Tell me about your business. What is your unique selling point? So, friendly staff, boutique rooms and 20 mile menu. I don't know what 20 mile menu means, but a big menu sounds good. What is the breakdown of your guests? So is it leisure or is it corporate? It's 50. 50 both. What is the average night stay at your property? So at the low end, it's one to two. Which of the following best describes how you interact with your guest? They are hands on, but the staff also take the lead in communication. I am not always at the property. Facebook business page URL that we're going to go check out facebook.com tudorfarmhouse we're going to go check out there. We've got the website address that we're going to go and check out as well. Who designed your website? I paid someone to do it for me. This is important. We talked about this in the previous episode. How many visitors do you get a month to your website? More than 500. When was your website created? It was last year. Do you have access to Google Analytics for your website? Yes. Which is really key. So not only does Harri have Google Analytics, which is a plus. We spoke about this yesterday. She also knows how many people are coming to the website every single month. Quick question to everybody watching, do you have access to Google Analytics? Yes or no or don't know. Are you happy with your website? Key question. It could bring me more bookings and I think right now everybody's website could bring in more bookings. But this is what we're going to help achieve. Which of these companies do you use for your online booking engine? Your pms? And we've got a full list of them there. They use Guest Line. Which online travel agents are you listed on? Booking.com, expedia, Airbnb, and again, if you're listed on booking.com Expedia Airbnb, let us know in the comments below. Let us know where else you are listed on these OTAs. So which OTAs have your information? But those are pretty much the big. Do you pay to be listed on any websites? If so, which ones? Sodes, Google Hotel, sorry, Good Hotel Guide, Local Tourism association and Iscape. I spoke about this in the previous episode, but specifically on the ones that you're paying to be listed on sodes, Good Hotel Guide, Local Tourism Association. I escape now, if these are just listing sites, then what I would be looking to do is going on your Google Analytics and seeing which of these are actually bringing traffic to your website or go into your pms. And if any of these have got a API or an ICAL and they hook up to guestline, how many of them have actually brought in bookings? It's a really good audit to be doing right now. If, for example, Saw Days was bringing in, say 10 bookings a year, easily covering its cost, but the Good Hotel Guide hasn't brought a booking in for the last 18 months, then this is an easy one to be cutting. Do you email your guests after they stay? Yes. Which software do you use? Mailchimp. What is the overall occupation for the previous 12 months? Obviously, let's not put in March, but what is the overall occupation? So a very healthy 66 to 75%. What percentage of your total bookings are direct? Really super solid, healthy 51 to 75%. So I just want to say a massive well done to Harry and Colin for achieving that. Let us know in the comments. What is your percentage? Are you in the 0 to 25% of direct bookings? You in the 26 to 50%? Are you in the same bracket or you actually 75 to 100% direct bookings and then caveat that with your occupational rate for the past year. So not for the year coming up for the previous year on average, how much money do you spend in commission costs per month to third parties? So even though they are doing crazily well in here, they're still paying a chunk of money in third party in commission costs to third parties. So it's round about 30, you know, 30 to 60 grand a year in commission costs. So my goal from here is to get this knocked down into this bracket. So if we can help save, you know, 10 to 20 grand a year, this will be a massive win for Harry, for Colin and just for me personally. Looking to see what we can do to help with this. How would you say the majority of your new bookings come in phone call or email? Which is great. Which of the following marketing channels have you attempted in the past? Facebook ads, Google Ads, email marketing, Worked with a PR agency, which is interesting. Which of these do you wish you could ever go out but just don't know how to do? Influencer market. Pretty new, but again one that's really effective. What is the one bit of advice that you wished you had received before you started up your business to save more for the unexpected? Think carefully before increasing the workforce. I think this is now more than ever the time when you will think about this. Everybody always says to have six to 12 months of a war chest for the unexpected but until it actually happens, you never really do properly think about it. I'm personally guilty of this and I know so many of us are thinking this. Wave of magic wand. How would you like your business profits look like in 12 months due to COVID 19? I'd be happy to break even if it wasn't for that in six months time we would have a good size nest egg aside to get rid of winter, where do you feel that you struggle to most when you achieving your goals? Consistency. Biggest pain point is obviously coronavirus right now. I think everybody that is watching this live watching this on the replay. Please join in the discussion. Please join in in the comments. You know what is the one advice that you wish that you would receive? Put advice and let us know. Wave of magic wands. So just put one. And how would you like your business to look like in six months? I don't think I know what a lot of answers will be even before we get to there and then as well. Where do you feel that you struggle the most when trying to Achieve your goals. Just put, achieve and put what you feel that you are failing at or struggling at when it comes to it. And obviously Harry is failing thinking as feeling it with the consistency now with the website, this is the first thing that we see now if you all remember what this is called, this is called above the fault. Now this is super important. This is the first thing that the user or the guest is sees. What I like is that the website designer that created this for Harry and Colin has gone for the full screen, which is important. If we drop it down quickly, have a little look at what it looks like on mobile. Yep. So it is responsive. I like how the book button very visible at the top and obviously Farmhouse, the Tudor Farmhouse Hotel is not just a hotel, but it's also a restaurant as well. One thing that I will say, one thing that really impressed me when the page loaded up is that there was a pop up and the pop up was obviously very current. It says, sorry, we're Temporary closed until 22 June. Read More where it goes to a blog post. But also as well, this, we have set up a savings for support crowdfunder. Please click here. Your support now means big savings later. And we will go on to that because I think this is something that everybody could maybe look to investigate specifically to help with their business in the immediate short term, bring in some income. What we've got here, very important. Nice big image, really beautiful picture. It looks idyllic, you know, it looks like little Hobbiton, you know, from the Lord of the Rings. It looks really welcoming and it looks like a beautiful picture. I would say this is definitely for me a unique selling point. If I was to be picky, what I would be looking to do here is I'd be looking specifically on desktop to get this menu to appear. Because it's hidden. Not everybody knows to click on this little hamburger here to bring up the menu. It's an assumption website designers fall into the trap of this a lot. Market has fallen to this trap of it a lot is that just because we know what this means doesn't mean that your random guests or first timers will know what this means. So if I was to do anything, I'd get this. Stay, eat, drink, offers, gatherings, experiences, blog, get in here and get it in on the menu at the top or even just under here. Maybe what they could do, the website designer could move the logo over here, bring that menu in so they've got clear indicators. Because right now it's super easy to miss all of this and also as well, I'd be having a click to action button here. So again, having that there, which is great, but then having one here, you want to have as many click to action buttons as possible. I'd have another one here. You've got it here, which is great. You've got one there, which is awesome. Now for the overall layout of the website. I really like the layout. It's clean, it's crisp, it's clear. You've got beautiful pictures. That bath looks amazing. I love the little welly boots. You know, you really have hit upon your target audience. Now, for me, looking at this combining with your pictures, I can instantly tell that your ideal audience would be people who wanted to get away, get away from the cities, get away to the countryside. The welly boots tells to me that this is a farm area. You know, we've got it with the name, we've got it with the welly boots. You know, they're coming away for a country getaway. The food means that you, you know, there's some seriously good cooking going on here. And again, amazing photos. And as well, it's got a family atmosphere. So families, big gatherings, you know, one of those sort of places where you come as guests but leave as friends. That's the sort of atmosphere, that's the sort of, the sort of the cliche that I'm getting from this wildlife safari. Big selling point, soul soothers for origin trips. You know, you're in, you're in Gloucestershire, so it's not massive miles away from, you know, London and the big cities. So I can totally get who would be coming to stay with you. And again, it's really super straightforward, super clear on everything, which I really like. And again, the use of the Instagram, the Instagramable is amazing. So really well done with that. Now compare this right now to your website. Compare this to your current setup. Compare this to what you have. Have you got a lot of information? Would you say that your property is bookable from your website, from your homepage? Now, I haven't even gone any further than that. I haven't gone into eat and drink, stay offers gathering, et cetera, or the blog. We're basing, we probably base and guest base a large, I'd say 90% plus of their decision factor on booking on this homepage. I think if there's one thing missing, and I'll give everybody this advice, get in the social proof. So there's a super cool website called Reperso R E P U S O R E. If you just go to boostly.co.uk reperso. It's a review tool. So what it does is it takes your reviews on all of the big sites, Facebook, Airbnb, Booking, Google, and what it does is it filters it down to your 5 star reviews only and you can put it together in really useful looking widgets. So it keeps it really cool, keeps it really clear and it presents it in lots of different styles. So what you could have on here, Harry, which is what you're missing, I would say, would be about social proof. Now, the problem that so many people do here is they'll just copy and paste a review from one of the channels and they'll put it in. Now, the problem with copy and paste reviews is that more often than not, they can look fake or they can look edited. The beauty of Reperso is that it's done in real time. It only puts in your five star reviews and it's crystal clear to see where it came from. So it just eliminates a potential barrier. What incentives are you giving to a guest when they book direct, early check in, late checkout? Do you get a welcome hamper? Do you get best rates and discounts? You need to be telling this and explaining this to your potential guests straight from the off, because otherwise what will happen is that booking.com, expedia and Airbnb will make out that it's better to book via them. Remember, general public do not realize that when somebody books at your property via booking.com that they charge a high commission rate. They naively think that you just pay a set annual fee of 100 quid, which we know it's not the case, or they list you on there for free out the goodness of their heart. And we know that's not the case. So what we need to do is we need to re educate. And it starts with your website. Now, I just wanted to quickly go over to the crowdfunder page that they created and again, this is something that I didn't realize that they had done, but I'm super impressed. You can go and check it out by going to Crowdfunder.co.uk Tudor farmhouse. What they're doing is they've started this campaign to even out our cash flow over this difficult period and continue to pay our staff to global. And they've got information here. So what they're doing is you can donate and buy gift vouchers or rewards via this crowdfunder and then what the guests can do is they can redeem it when life goes Back to normality. So as you can see a 20 pound or more, you'll get a dining club membership, 60 pound or more, an experience to remember. £100 or more, stay in a hen or hatchling room. And again there's some super big discounts. If you're going to do this, you want to be doing some super big discounts on this and then for 450 pound or more, two night short break, really big discounts, 5,000 or more, yours for the night. Take over all 20 bedrooms for the night and celebrate in style. This includes cream take. So really clever idea here. Harry and Colin, I applaud you for this and it is already bringing in bookings and money cash flow. Right now, going back to a Google search. Now, what is the first thing that you spot when you see the Google first page? Now the first thing that I noticed is that they are doing bid on brand. You can tell that because you can see ad right here. So when somebody googles the business name, you've got the ad running right here. Now that's amazing work. But what the first thing that I would say to you, Harry and Colin, would be to go back into Google Ads and I would use this time, this downtime to amend the copy of your ad because it's great. But I would change it to Tudor Farmhouse Hotel and Restaurant right there. So get out fabulous. And put in official hotel website. So that's super clear to the guest, to the user when they run a search for your business name. Because you've been running for 15 years, you've got nearly a thousand online reviews, word of mouth is strong. The recommendations is wrong. I know that is not wrong, is great. So I know that there'll be a lot of people without seeing your Google business listing analytics that we talked about in the last episode. I know that there'll be a lot of people who are searching for your name. Next thing then let's go have a quick look at social media. You've got a real solid, nearly 5,000 people like and follow your page. You've got a cool little logo and you've got a really cool cover picture. My first advice would be here is that you've got a Farmhouse hotel. It's a social experience. Your website screams like social behavior, social gathering. You've got staff. You know what I would be doing here is instead of having a boring logo that no one's going to really resonate with on social media, just put a picture of your staff in here, put a picture of you and your family on Here, this would be the first thing that people see. The reason being is that this profile picture is the first thing that people will see about you online when they're doing the scroll. If you say you comment or someone tags you in, etc. That's what they're going to see. And those that have their brand and their business is like this, they do a social thing here. They're the ones that are going to get more click through and people are going to resonate with it more. Use your cover picture to sell. So this overlay picture of Facebook food on these amazing bits and bobs here. But you can actually edit this. You can have up to six pictures in your cover photo. You can have one picture of the restaurant, you can have one picture of the other amazing pictures that you have on your website. You can put them in here and you can just simply edit it. For those of you that have got a video, you can put a video in it and that really stands out. So one thing that I noticed that's missing from your page here, Harry, is that you can add in a shop. So when you go to the shop, what you can do is you can link people for the time being through to your crowdfunder page with the shop. It's online and clickable, so it sits in at the top here. So you can talk about the crowdfunder, you can talk about the gift vouchers that they can buy. People can even pre book rooms and you can put that in really simply at the top also as well. What I've noticed that is missing is a pinned post. So you may have one post that is really important. For example, the one where you're announcing that you are closed until the end of June. You want that to be pinned right at the very top. I know it's really hard at times like these to want to post on social media. You've got a really good Instagram, you've got a really good Facebook and you know you are part of the book direct membership. So my advice to you would be to come in to social media sorted, just make full use. You've got 35, 40 images and copy here that you can use. You know, even if you're not going to use the image, come and use the copy. And you can pretty much schedule out 80 to 90% of this month social media through the social media site that you have access to. But overall I think you're doing a really good job. What I would love for you all to do, let's keep actionable. Let's be proactive. And now let's plan these exit strategies around the coronavirus. We're still in lockdown, still have time we can dedicate even it's just an hour or two hours a day. What are we going to be doing to fix what could be broken right now? One more thing that I would say is that if you're looking at your website, if you're looking at your social media, if you're looking at Google and thinking I just don't know what's wrong and if you want to have an expert look at it, I was speaking to my buddy last week who is based in Liverpool. His whole company, he's got a big agency, his whole company has been closed down because of the coronavirus. He has got a lot of time of his hands. He has said that he is willing to do a limited amount of people but he's willing to do full audits. 14 page audit that will tell you exactly where your website is fixed or where it's broken, how your social media is looking. If you want to speak to him about that, it's £90 that he's doing it for £99, that he's doing it for one off. Normally his agency charges 400 plus pounds for something like this. He's doing it at a cut price because he wants to help and because he's bored because he's literally sat at home. So if you want to find out more, put in the comments below audit and I will send you a link to his website where you can book that in. I'm not affiliated, I don't make any money from that. It's just me trying to help him and trying to help you because I personally don't have enough time to do one on one marketing reviews right now. Thank you so much for tuning in to this. In the meantime, all I ask is that you do one thing. Share this video, share it on your personal wall, share it on your business page, share it in a Facebook group, snap a picture, go post it up on Instagram, LinkedIn. Just tell everybody about it. Tell everybody about this episode and if you're watching this back on the replays, please make sure that you join in and you comment. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us. Always go and rate review on Apple itunes. Go and leave a review on trustpilot. Go leave a review on Facebook. Tell everybody about this, let everybody know what we're doing and we'll get more and more people proactive and not only survive through this coronavirus but thrive on the other end. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I'll see you all very soon.