Testimonial-style YouTube video in which Shelley Graham, owner of a cave house in Andalucia, Spain, describes joining Mark Simpson’s Boostly hospitality community and a direct-bookings challenge. She outlines practical marketing skills she learned (email marketing with Mailchimp, running a Facebook competition including terms and conditions, adding a Facebook shop and notes, and using Canva), notes community support and ambassadors, and reports concrete outcomes: three additional direct bookings and over 100 new Facebook likes. She joined the Academy afterwards, received a free DIY website as part of an offer, and expresses gratitude and optimism about continuing to increase direct bookings.
Questions this video answers
Three direct bookings.
Over 100 new Facebook likes.
Andalucia, Spain.
Third season.
About seven months.
Chapters
Hi there. My name is Shelley Graham. I have a cave house in Andalucia in Spain. We're now in our third season. We've been doing okay up until now. We're listed with all the OTAs, Airbnb bookings.com, etc, and we have our. Obviously our own website. And we have been getting some direct bookings, but not as many as we would like to have. I was being a member of the hospitality community group for maybe about seven months and what I learned through there so far has just been invaluable. And when I seen there was a challenge for the more direct bookings, I signed up for that. Didn't know what I've slipped myself into, but it certainly was an experience, one that we really, really enjoyed hard work. My learnings from that was of so many to mention how to email market through doing the mailchimp, how to set up the Facebook competition. Obviously that was a key part of it. Didn't know how to go about doing that. Mark gave us everything that you could think about, gave us the terms and conditions. They broke it down into layman's terms. The videos were quite intense, but the cheat sheets they gave us, just stopping and starting, it was great. What else did we learn? How to add the shop to my Facebook. Didn't know how to do that, how to add the notes to the Facebook. And then we went on to. Oh, no, obviously I learned how to do Canva. Never done that before. When the challenge started, straight away, the adrenaline was unbelievable and the people in the hospitality group were just fantastic. The ambassadors helped us along the way and during the competition, we just knew we didn't want to come to an end. And we thought. We knew we were going to probably come a flat once it ended. And when Mark put the offer on to say that he was going to do the Ellen Bird offer for the Academy, we had no hesitation. We just. We were lucky to be one of the five who joined and we got a free DIY Facebook, which is. Sorry, website, which is unbelievable. So I'm looking forward to getting into that. What did we get from the Facebook competition? We've got three direct bookings, which we probably would never have got through the exposure of that. We've got over 100 new likes on Facebook. The engagement they got was unbelievable. But mostly what I got taken away for that is now. Now. It starts now. Now I know. And now I'm in the Academy, I'm looking forward to keeping going and getting these more direct bookings. Finding out there's so, so much to learn. You think your business onto one of the OTs and that's it. So much more to it than you would ever realize. And we've had our eyes open. So we really look forward to working with everybody in the Academy and got to thank Mark so, so much and so pleased that we've done the more direct booking challenge and look forward to it. If you're ever thinking about doing anything or unsure whether to join the Academy, certainly if this challenge comes up again or, or just go into the hospitality community and I'm sure you'll feel like we did. And all I can say is thank you very Mark, very much. Mark, much appreciated and thanks everybody in the challenge. It was great.
