Holidaymakers posing as key workers to “hoodwink” hosts

Going off the dumb.

Ready for my close up good looking let me tell you. Get more bookings. Aw that'd be nice giving me tips, tools and advice. Yeah you're gonna get em hun. You're gonna sit back, listen to Mark Simpson. Whoa. 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 loose leaf 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 I welcome one and all. And if you are joining me live or on the replay, please make sure that you say hi in the comments and then give your business a bit of pitch and a promote. Put your web link in there, let everybody know where you're in in in the world, what type of business you have and why someone should come and stay with you. And like I do every Friday, I really like to document the week that was so everything that's happened, showcasing team Boostly members, showing off you and sharing your wins. So again as you are tuning in with me, whether it's live or on the replay, let us know what your wins were this week. Did you get any direct bookings? I know one member did as I'm going to share them in a second because it's fantastic to see. Just let me know everything that's been going on. What have you learned, what have you been doing, what have you proactively been doing? So yeah, as you are coming in, whether it's live, like I say on the replay, you know the drill by now, come and say hi, comment below and then let us know where you are in the world. So first and foremost, those of you that tuned in last week will know that we put out a press release talking about TripAdvisor and basically just saying how what they were trying to do was very scummy because they're trying to scrape our websites, trying to make everybody agree to new terms and conditions. So again we, we brought that to the wider world and this week there's some else really scummy and scammy being happening. There's been guests that have been trying to book accommodation and they're trying to pose as key workers. So again the members of the hospitality community brought this obviously to our attention. We got to work and we have spread this far and wide and more journalists are picking up onto it. A big thank you to Paul at Short Term Rentals who, who was one of the first to run with it. And again it's all information has come from the hospitality community. So again well done for that. If you're not part of the hospitality community just go search for it on, on Facebook, go and find it and come and join him. So I want to start off by saying a big massive well done to Tara Heen. So Tara just posted this up 30 minutes ago in the 90 day to quick start to new direct bookings, more direct bookings. It's a training that I run. We've got 115 people doing it and Tara just came in and said we have just taken our first ever booking for our new barn and it was direct which is amazing. So a massive well done to, to Tara and I just want to give her one of these. So again please do share your wins. Let us know if you've had any diary bookings this week. And again just, just put it in there, pop it in the comments. But obviously a big part of Boostly we do website design and this week we've had 1, 2, 3, 4 websites go live. We've, we're now getting ever so closer to the magical 600 live websites which is fantastic. And again I just wanted to spend a second to just showcase some of the amazing people that have got their websites live. So this is Paul Pendleton Properties, really nice website if I do say so myself. Everything that you see here as structurally is, you know, is how a website should be. It's all in the right places. They've got reviews. The benefits of booking direct, you know it's, it's very simple but it's, it's effective. So well done Paul for getting it live. And then here's Louise Barclay guest house, real nice image, hit home about family and coastal location. So again it really gets you in the mood for a family vacation down in the south of, of England. And again just really nice put together website. This is one of our DIY templates. So basically Kirsty bought this template From Us, a WordPress template and has just gone, gone with it and it looks fantastic. So really well done to her. And again it's got everything in the right places, lovely little T's and C's. And again it's really, really well done. And another one of our DIY websites again so this is a business, a one page, this is a boostly one page website. Again really, really simple, nice and simple. The way that the one page websites work is that we've just created 95% of the content. All the host here has had to do is personalize it really simply put in the black, it's fill in the blanks. And again looks just, it's just put together, it's put together nicely. And again another one, another DIY website. So really well done to, to our four people there, Aiden, Felix, Paul and, and Kirsty. And we also had more Team Boostly people join websites this week which is fantastic. So Scotty, Scotty Hudson, really good guy. Looking forward to getting a website put together for yourself. Hendrik over in, in Germany, a nice big portfolio. There's Helen, we've got Philip Pask who's gonna be doing something very funky. Looking forward to, to putting that together with him and, and Andrew as well. So again, websites is obviously a big part of what we do at Boostly. We, we really do love putting them together and I guess say we've got nearly coming into 600 clients now and the, the whole thing is about direct bookings. That's, that's the whole bag of Boostly is direct bookings and the website is a big part of that. So any way that we can help is, is the main thing. Another part of Boostly is content creator. So that's where we every month we create 30 plus pieces of fresh content that our members can use on their social media channels as well as email templates and all of the other things. And this week we had Ken and Sally amongst other people join. So welcome again. We're closing into 800 members of that. It's only five pound a month and hospitality community members, you actually get the first month free. If you would like to get the first month free and test and trial it out, just go head into the hospitality community, look for the pin post and there's a special little promo code for you. But yeah, it's a really, really effective little program. I absolutely love it. All of the money that we make from that goes back into the members by hiring new people to come in and give us new content, new features. We've just created a headline tool. So basically a headline generator tool for your which again was another big pain point. So many websites that I see have the same tagline which is your home away from home. So we hired a copywriter to come in and she did a fantastic job and it's, it's, yeah, it's really good. So all the money that we make from the content creator goes straight back into the members to making it bigger and better. And finally, as you may or may not know, this year I'm putting together my first ever book, the book Direct Playbook it's going to be out in November. The first draft is done. It's currently being edited as we speak and I've started to promote it, I've started to talk about it. I'm starting to grow a pre release squad and the pre release squad, they get early access, they can get a chance to read the first draft, help me make any amendments that need to get amended and when the book does get released in November, they will get an exclusive discount to say thank you for helping put this together. So this week we've had 100 people join, which is fantastic. My, my goal is sell between 3 to 5,000 copies of this book in November, which will get the attention of the big publishers hopefully. So maybe book number two will be even bigger and better. But yeah, thank you to everybody that's that's joined this week. I can't list yours, I can't list your names out because you'll be. I'll be here all week. But to everybody that has a big welcome and if you want to find out more about that, it's just 99p. To join the Book Direct squad, go to boostlee.co.uk book now. What has been happening outside of Boost Leave? So this week I've been chatting to a lot of people. It's been a really good week this week. I'm trying to get all of the calls in this week and for the first three days of next week because in April I've implemented a no calls rule. No calls, no live videos, no webinars. I'm going to be a little bit quieter in April. I want to just focus on family and just take a little bit of time out. Hopefully we're going to get away for a couple of days, so I don't want to be stressing about having to work around all of those sort of things. Obviously my 90 days to more direct bookings crew. I'll be there for you. We've got our weekly calls. It may be changed from a Tuesday to a Thursday. Just depends on when we can get away. But, but I'll be still. Be there for yourself. And, and obviously the team Boost Team Boostly is not going anywhere. All of the people that we got will be working behind the scenes on the websites and just helping everybody as um. But yeah, this week I did a clubhouse room with Hendrik in Germany which was fantastic, a really good room. I had a meeting with Hostify, so a big part of what I do now is I chat to the big PMS's to try and strike up a partnership relationship, how we can work together with their PMS providers, PMS software and our website. So we're creating a tool that will communicate to every pms. So it just means that every booking can be completed on a boostly website, which is going to be so powerful. It just means for the guest there's no interruption, there's no lag, there's no confusion. It can just be so smooth and clear. And so a big part of what I do now is speaking and building relationships with people like Hostify. So it's real great, a great chat and there's definitely something we can do in the future. Tuesday we had our first ever group call for our new members of the 90 Day Academy, which is fantastic. 90 day to more direct bookings. First group call, we we're going through the pricing part of the phase. So we've got five phases, pricing is the first one. So for a lot of people it's the first time they've had to go through something like this. So it's kind of overwhelming. But the response from everybody was fantastic. From the people that have maybe done it before and revisiting it, it was really good just to sort of see the existing team boosting members, just give out confidence to members to say, listen, it'll be fine, trust. A process which I, which I absolutely adored and loved on Wednesday. So, yeah, Wednesday, more calls. Wednesday was pretty much all calls with people from all over the world. I was speaking to somebody in Finland all the way in, we spoke to somebody in Los Angeles, speaking to somebody over in London, Texas and then Toronto as well. So again, big, big day for calls on Wednesdays. Again, just making contacts, creating relationships, partnerships and just seeing how we can link up with people that are not all over the world, really, which is fantastic. So yesterday, and let me know below if you tuned in yesterday. I really. Yesterday was a pretty big day. We did the Boostly Roundtable, the Boostly Roundtable, the Boostly Podcast experience, as somebody called it afterwards, that was all about trends, travel trends. If you haven't yet tuned into that, please do go check out the YouTube channel, check out the Facebook page, go and look for Boostly Podcast roundtable travel trends 2021. We had, we had to bolt and we had Joseph from Guesty and to bolt from rental scale up. Really good podcast. I enjoyed it. Some really good insight and really good actionable tips that everybody can be taken away from them. And I know that already people have been going to Fiverr to sort of hire translators, etc. Which is fantastic. So I love to see the action taken that everybody takes after, after tuning into something like that. And I did a. Ask me anything with with Hostfully. It was like a direct booking. Ask me anything with Hostfully. Really enjoyed was an hour long. It was just me talking, a lot of me talking. And we just, we just did, we just talked about diary bookings. So again, really good week. I've tried my. Well, I, I am now changing my weekly work schedule around a lot because it was getting to a point where I was just doing too much. So now my week is structured. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is a day off. Apart from this. I did want to continue doing this, but, you know, I get Frankie to bed and whatever time he falls asleep, I just come into the office, load up the laptop and just talk about the week that was. This is the only thing that I do on a Friday. And yeah, and just enjoy spending time with, with Frankie. We now have him off nursery on a Friday, so I get the whole day to him. And yeah, we, we, we took the boys after school, we went to the park with the friends and it's just like a nice little sense of return to some kind of normality, which is what we get here in Javier. It's a very social place. After school, going down to the park with the kids and the parents. It was nice. And then going down to the beach, coming back, getting the kids to bed. And now, yeah, me and Laura's gonna sit down, sit down and relax after doing this. But it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been a really nice week, really good week. Lots of things got done, but everything gets A lot gets done every week. We're always making sure that we're improving and speaking to new people and making sure all of our members are being looked after as we always, always do. So if you are a Team Boostly member, please put hashtag Team Boostly below and I'll know that you're there. So. Hi, Hadil. Hi, Ralph. Hi, Shirley. I can see lots of people. Andrea. Look, I love seeing you all and thank you for, for tuning in, but the other, the other really good conversation that I had this week was with a gentleman called Luca. Luca is very prevalent on LinkedIn. He has created a cryptocurrency. So I'm doing a lot of research into cryptocurrency into NFTs and how it's going to affect, via the blockchain, the tourism industry and Lucas sort of pioneering that. Really clever guy, really insightful guy. And I'm going to look to get him into the Boostly Academy in May to have a good conversation about it. It's one of these things that's going to take over the world, whether we like it or not. I've had access to cryptocurrency since 2017, 2018, didn't know what I was doing with it, just had a couple of it and just kept on to it. But now I'm being able to revisit it via LUCA and learning a lot. And it's going to be a really good conversation with the Boostly Academy members in May. Now, if you are yourself looking into cryptocurrency, please let me know below. It's always good to see what your experiences are with it, what you're doing with it, if you know anything about it or if you know nothing at all. Because again, it's, it's going to be a really interesting conversation that we have. And if you want to join in that conversation, just, just let me know. But for me, thank you very much for being part of tonight. Angela Shirley, Ray Martin. Shirley. Who got the Friday night takeaway? Great question. I just reached out to the person who won just before coming on. It was Susan Barker, who is in Scotland. So I've reached out and look for a message because I'm gonna be paying for your Friday night takeaway. Hopefully you get it and hopefully you can order it. If not, it might have to be a Saturday or a Sunday or a Monday night takeaway up there. So well done everybody. And thank you to everybody who, who joined in on that little experiment last night. It was a lot of fun. So many people shared it and so many people have watched back the video today, which has been fantastic, which, which is exactly why I did it. I'll do it again, but I'll do something different. I'll do something funky. I'll do something new. So, again, thank you so much for everybody that tunes in. Thank you to everybody that took part, thank you to everybody that learned and but most importantly, thank you to everybody who takes action, which is the most important thing. So from me, have a great weekend, wherever you are. I shall speak to you all soon. And I'll be back next week for more Boostly Boostiness. Make sure you keep looking out for those daily Boostly podcasts. We go podcast every day on Apple, Spotify, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. You'll find them. But for me, for now, thank you so much for tuning in and I shall speak to you very soon.