How Chris Ballard increased his direct bookings

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Everybody back to another special episode of season nine of the podcast. This is where I am sort of passing the mic over to you to Boostly Academy members and finding out a little bit more about their business, about the the pain points, whether struggling and what has happened since the Academy and Boostly has come into their life. And today I am very excited to showcase to you Chris Ballard. So Chris has got serviced accommodation properties in Cardiff in Wales but lives in Sweden so he's doing the full digital nomads work away sort of lifestyle. Now Chris has only been in the academy for between 6 and 8 weeks but already he has gone from 10% Diarrha bookings to over 85% Dhaira bookings by just simply using the tactics and the tools that are made available in the Academy. Now I'm not going to give you much more than that because I've just gone through his message and it is amazing. I do want you to watch it in full but make sure that you do come back at the end because I will give you a little bit more information about how you can find out more about the Academy. So without further ado, please do give Chris a big thumbs up. Love, heart emojis, everything in the comments because he's not used to doing this. He's not used to being on camera. I am going to bring this out on him and I do want him to be on camera more because he has put in some fantastic tactics and just taking the initiative, especially with a couple of tactics that he's shared with Academy members, which has not only resulted in him getting more direct bookings, but Academy members as well, which is what it is all about. So please, please have a big thumbs up. Love hat emoji. Big hello to Chris Ballard of Discovering Estates.

I'm Chris from Discovering Estates in Cardiff. We operate service departments in and around the city centre, mainly for leisure guests and corporate business travelers. Before I joined Boothly, most of my bookings were on mainly Airbnb. The quality of guests I had, they were, they were not the best, to be honest. There was a lot of last minute bookings and parties and things getting destroyed, unfortunately, because that's, that's what happens with OTAs. They just take your money and send you, send you the guests.

Well, back to me quickly. The next question then I asked Chris and some of the questions that I sent over to him was where was he struggling and what was the appeal of joining something like Boostly. So to give you a bit of a context is that Chris and I were part of another Facebook group and I saw that he had posted out a question around Airbnb around accommodation. So I just jumped in and I gave him some help and advice and we just got chatting on messenger and you know, I could just tell, chatting to him that he could do just a little bit more help and advice. And I told him what I did, I told him about the Academy, I told him about other people that were in there, shared with him, other couple of Facebook groups that I'm a part of, that around property and whatnot. And you know, he went away and devoured it. What I love about Chris is that he is an action taker. So I was asking him and when I had the idea of his video, I sent him a couple of questions and it was along the lines of what were, what was your pain points and what was the appeal of the Academy?

Working in this business on my own, I felt a little bit of overwhelm. I didn't really know. Well, there's a lot of information out there and probably too much. So I was trying to do too many things too often and it kind of got on top of me. So since joining the Academy, I've had a lot more clarity, a lot more ability to find out what I need to do and exactly how to do it, which is a lot, which saves a lot of time. It really does help with your business when you know exactly what you need to do, it's been done before. And the results you're expected to get at the end, looking around and trying to find the correct information and the correct way to do all the little bits you have to do when running your hospitality business was really, really difficult. And if you don't get the basics right, you can struggle. Going to really, really struggle. And to be honest, before joining BHLE and seeing all the. Having everything explained to me clearly and appropriately, I really, I didn't, I didn't have the basics in place. I didn't. I wasn't doing. The price instructor wasn't correct. The messages I send in to guests, they weren't, they weren't as good as they should be. And since then, it's. Since joining and going through some of the trainings, I've started to see results already.

So we're gonna get into the juicy bit now. We're gonna. I asked Chris to share some of his results because, like I say, he's only been with us for about six to eight weeks, but already in such a short space of time, by only putting in a couple of the practices into place in his business, he has had a massive uptake in direct bookings. His profits have gone up. But most importantly, even in a time where he was so hard to get bookings in Wales and Cardiff because of the strict lockdown measures, he was able to do so. And I'm looking forward for him now to give you some numbers because I've just watched it and it's brought a big smile to my face and I'm so happy and looking forward to share these numbers with you.

Bruce Lee stood out to me from everything else because, well, mainly, mainly you can see that Mark genuinely cares about getting his members, students, friends to get the best results they can and live the best life they can from their hospitality business. There's lots of thought that goes into the training. There's lots of thought that goes into the group. The atmosphere is great. There's so many, so many, many lovely people there and everybody contributes, everybody helps out where they can. It's not just about Mark, it's about the community feeling of everybody in there contributing and helping each other to get the best results they can. After taking a few of the trainings and seeing the results from the SEO training, the Google business training, and seeing how my business and the amount of people that ring me for direct booking has risen. I've removed my reliance on the OTAs and got much, much more direct bookings. I've gone from 10% to up to about 85 in the space of a month and a half of joining the Academy. Like, everything you need to get where you want to go and save that 15, 20% from the OTAs is there for you. You just have to do the work.

That message from Chris, just do the work, and it's something that I'm trying to instill in every single Academy member moving forward is that I can give you those tools, I can give you those tactics, I can give you the training and the confidence, but at the end of the day, cannot sit there and do the work for you. So I will nudge and I will encourage and the whole group will nudge and encourage and keep everybody accountable. Those that do the work will be the ones that will massively succeed. And Chris is a fantastic, fantastic example. So I just want to let Chris leave you with the final thoughts and I just want to say thank you so much to Chris for doing this. If you want to find out more about the Academy, then please do click on the link that is in the description. If you are listening to the audio version of this, then please do check the show notes, go to boostly.co.uk podcast, look for season nine, look for Chris's name and you'll find all the links in there. If you're watching the video version of this, just check the link in the description and you can go and find out more. And we would love to have you a part of the ever, ever growing team. The Booster Academy now is over 600 members. It's the largest online training platform in the world for all versions of hospitality. Every niche possibly going hotel, guest house rental, glamp sites, farm stays in every single country as well. So please do listen to Chris's final words. Again, thank you so much for doing this. And if you are watching this and you want to find out more about the Academy, then you know where to go.

I now feel like I've got much more control over my business and how I want to operate it. I'm not racing to the bottom like everybody else is on the on Airbnb or booking.com I've got returning guests, people, people that are recommending me to their friends and family, people coming down from business who are then recommending me to other people in the company. So it's produced a much more stable base for me to build from. And I'M looking, looking to expand now in the next couple of months because even though this is the middle of COVID 19, I am fully booked up until January, and that's down to the community and the training in Boosley. It's given me much more confidence in what I do, given me the ability to see things a little differently and to push forward and give the service and get the results I want.