How have Airbnb and Booking com Treated Their Hosts During COVID-19 with Moriya Rockman

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Thank you for tuning in and joining us this evening. I'm really excited to talking about this topic because we're going to be covering so many and tonight's guest very kindly brought along a nice little slideshow as well. So we're going to be able to go through a few things, pass on loads of hints and tips. So let's get started. Before we do get going, please make sure we've got a little like and comment goal tonight. What I want for everybody to do, I want to get over 30 likes of this post, this video, this interview. I want to get 30 comments with BookDirect because this is what this podcast series has all been about. This is what these daily live videos are all about, is to help you increase and get more direct bookings. So this is what I want everybody to do. Hit that like button, give the thumbs up and in the comments put but direct. All right, so let me just bring in today's guest, Mariah from Smiling House. Mariah, how are we doing? Thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you.

So could you please just for everybody that is watching, just give us a brief introduction to who you are, where you are in the world and then we'll get started with today's show.

I'm the founder of the Smiling House, which is a Swiss company based here in the Swiss apps in Gstad. We are focusing in a small niche that's called the luxury segment in the vacation rental and we're doing a lot of direct booking, working with many property managers and homeowners around the world in our niche in 24 countries and 70 destinations. Very, very big fan of the more booking, direct movement. Believe that that's what we are here for.

I wanted us to start and I want to ask a question to everybody whether you're watching this live or whether you're watching this back on the replay is what is your opinions on how Airbnb booking.com and the likes have acted during COVID basically this pandemic. Do you think they've done enough to look after hosts and or could they have done more? Mariah, what I would love for you to do is just to give your input from from a Smiling House perspective, just from from how you've seen because obviously you've done a lot of webinars, you've been speaking to a lot of people about this. What do you think they have done and how do you think they could have acted better to help protect the their hosts, their potential, you know, the partnerships that they talk about.

I start with the fact that we're barely working with booking.com because we are not instant booking company in the vacation niche that we are representing, keying more into communication. And that's why the direct booking is also fit us. More about Airbnb yes, we've been surprised and it's not a secret that a lot of homeowners and property managers been slightly disappointed from their behavior in the last few months and weeks. And because we in Smiling House, which is kind of an alliance of property managers, we heard a lot of stories of people that just been, you know, facing, you know, cancellation one way from Airbnb coming at once. One of our partners in Italy telling us a story how he lost 70k worth of bookings in one day. And people find themselves completely lost in a partnership that's supposed to be between the OTAs and the property managers. And they felt that this kind of partnership is not a real partnership. Instead of being a real partner that you discuss with that you asking at least in a survey, you know, they could have done to take some property managers and homeowners from around the world and from different segments and ask them how would they like to deal with the situation.

Let's just give a little bit of an insight. I think this would be really helpful to give a little bit of insight into luxury housework. Talk a little bit more about your model, talk a little bit more about the type of clients that you work with, because I think that would help everybody sort of realize where you're coming at from this.

As I said in the beginning, we are more focusing on large properties in getaway destination, in rural destination, in fancy destinations. We are offering through property managers in the world, this kind of offer. The way that we are acting, we are actually acting as, as an alliance. So we open freely with no charge to any property manager that's really busy with this segment to join us. And in this way, we are driving more bookings to different parts of the world, more demand. One of the things that is special about kind of clients that we busy with, these are first of all clients, some of them you can call as jet setters, but it can be also families that have been saving and just want to have a great vacation together in one place. Like three generations travel altogether. So this kind of clients, they are traveling normally more than once in a once a year. Some of them are traveling between 12 and 14 times in a year to certain destinations. And we following this destination, we know where they're gonna travel in the winter, in autumn, in springtime, and of course, in wintertime we started our business in Switzerland. So of course, all the winter destination, the ski resort is very much focused for our company. But not only and this kind of guests, they are very, very open to travel to another place with trust. So we are working very much, very much focusing on trust, on high standards of hospitality. And we are happy to add any partner that working in these segments.

What I really picked up on and what you're saying is the word partner and partnerships, and this is one of the reasons why I really wanted to get you on the show is because now more than ever, local partnerships are going to be the way forward. Now, you've obviously built your whole network up with working with people within your niche all over the world. But I think one of the easiest ways that people can get started is by working with other hosts in and around their area. So can you just explain to people how you went about building up partnerships, about building up these relationships? See if we could pick up any tips and advice to pass on to other hosts that maybe are watching this, that haven't been able to do this so far.

For us it was kind of easy because we've been busy with a segment that nobody really paid attention to before. So the luxury segment in vacation rental is actually maybe the oldest one. Like, you know, all the big OTAs come to lead the vacation rental industry. When we started to offer to partners. When I say partners, by the way, I don't mean that we're taking any shares in their company or they're taking any shares with ours. I'm talking about partner because it's somebody I'm shaking hands with and I'm trusting him and that's a real partnership and we driving business one to another. We hosting together and we gaining trust together. So when we started to travel the world and offer it and actually visited the islands of Greece and in Ibiza and Mallorca and Marbella, and actually arrived to the villas, the homeowners and property managers been quite surprised. They used to have such a quest from far away by big agencies just asking them to sign a contract. But we really wanted to see the place, we really want to confirm it, we really want to be faithful for the idea of hosting together. So whoever we met and we offered the idea, actually say yes to us. So we grew quite fast. And I'm happy to say that today, even though we limited in travel, just like most of you, we're getting distrustful partners that reaching out to us. And for us, it's good enough to see that they are a good host and the price that they offering is suitable for the guests that we in contact with and we happy to add them to the alliance.

I did mention when we were getting into the start of this interview that you have got a super cool little slideshow. So if you would just be so kind to line up that slideshow while I fill for a little second here. Whilst we've been doing that, Mariah's kindly started to share her screen. So I'm going to hand you back over and what we'll be able to do is see Mariah's screen and she's going to walk us through a couple of slides.

Okay, so this is from the start a little bit about us. I forgot to mention that big believer in third parties travel partners. We started our partnership together with Homes and Villas by Marriott and we do see a big chance for all of you guys to connect with travel partners. It can be travel agency or travel designer or you know somebody that has a great blog for traveling to recommend your places. So facilities we believe, I believe strongly and we see the demand that people after being locked down, you know, they would like to travel even if they travel locally, but they would like to travel to a place where they have something, some kind of facility they don't have at home. So if you thought about even adding a hot tub or jacuzz, your balcony or some swings in the garden, this is the time to add these facilities because that's what people would like to have, the high cleaning standards. Of course this is one of the biggest topics of this time. I'm sure that all of you taking care about the cleaning. But now it's time to really, really emphasize on it. Diversity of OTAs and channels. We just talked about it before, you know, you cannot be dependent anymore on the OTAs alone. And of course this is the time and I mean Mark, you are the guy. But extend your presence anywhere that's possible. If it's in Pinterest or Instagram, in LinkedIn or any other social media, Facebook and even local groups that busy with hosting in your area. This is a real picture from the view that we have just outside the window more or less. I believe that the getaway destination and the remote location will be really one of the things that people will look at. People want to be close to nature, people want to live a little bit the cities. And it's not about now what I'm calling luxury. It's not about the facilities necessarily or the design. It's about being close to a place where you have, where you're feeling safe, when you're feeling clean, when you can go on hikes and you can enjoy your family and the luxury properties, the niche that I'm representing. So we see demand for this ongoing demand, even in the time where the COVID was really in the main of the heat. And we see that the stays, the length of stays are increasing. So 14 days, three weeks even. And this kind of people in the luxury segment will probably keep on traveling. So offer whatever you have in this niche. Diversity of market. This is another thing. If you only hosting in one place, which makes sense, it's time to join an alliance. There's alliances in cities. There's alliances like smiling house, like what we are doing, connecting with property managers in the segment of luxury and getaway with travel partners as well. But if you can be with your activity and join market. So our togetherness is creating a big power that we need these days and we can even get some referral commission. And I will talk about it maybe later in a wider way. So if you are hosting in winter destinations like we are, we expect, you know, that winter will come again, can be, you know, hit by the virus once again. So my suggestion to you is to prepare vouchers. Let your guest know that if they're taking decision from now to the winter, they can definitely take a decision to get a voucher in case that they cannot travel and use it later. It should be kind of an agreement, especially if we have the booking direct. There's no reason why to work on cancellation of 24 hours before. It's not fair. I believe that we'll see more consolidation and alliances and people getting together. It can be you as a city property manager with. So maybe not with the one that you see as your competitor in your own city, but did you think about joining others in other cities in your country and create some kind of a referral agreement between you? I think that people, after spending a lot of time with their family, would like to join also on vacation with the family, but maybe extended family with the grandparents or couple of friends and they would like to stay together in a place that they can enjoy and to feel safe.

Can you please share that with everybody, what your biggest exciting news is and how you are helping luxury property managers increase their portfolio this year.

We decided that today will be the day we'll launch our B2B platform. It's a platform which is white label. Taking all these partners that I mentioned before and combining them with travel designers and travel partners and travel and Concierge companies, et cetera, where they can book our homes instantly, directly with COVID 19, I think it was the time that we met together in London like two months ago at the time of Shorties. I think that the idea came to me as we spoke actually and said why not to give the property managers the possibility to book one another because the platform is already commission based, is already white label. So it's you offering somebody else's with a commission that is built in. I think this is a great time because we realize now that all of us have guests from overseas that maybe cannot travel to our properties in this year, but they can definitely go to other places even in their own home countries. In this B2B platform, we're even more open to join venture and to shake hands with many of you.

We will give everybody the links on where they can go to find out more afterwards. And you can check it out in the show notes@booster.co.uk podcast but thank you very much for that and thank you very much for sharing. I like to end all podcast episodes with our quarantine quick fire questions. So Mariah, are you ready for your quick.

I'm ready.

Okay. So as always, I start them with a random sound effect. There we go. So number one, if you could be on isolation or in quarantine with one celebrity, famous, first famous person, who would that be?

First of all, I thought about Jamie from Homeland, but I saw that my husband got a little bit jealous. No, no, I would like, I would like to be actually with Julie Andrews. Why? Because I'm exactly in the same views of the Sounds of Music if you know the movie. And I do have seven kids and I really would like to have a great babysitter that will sing and do activities with them all day long while I will be able to keep on developing the business and breathe a little bit.

Do you have any favorite movies, TV series that you may have had on your to watch list for a while or anything that you can recommend on Netflix or Disney plus or anything like that? Any movie that you can recommend that people watch now. But we're now, but we are still in lockdown. Anything that you could recommend for people?

Yeah, actually it's a series that I saw a long time ago and I would like to see it again. It's Lost. I think it suits the time. We are a little bit lost. We are a little bit isolated and we getting this kind of, you know, situation where we have to feed the unknown and I would like to have the time to See it again.

Okay, so next question is, what is the one main thing that you've missed being able to do since being on lockdown over the last couple of months?

So I'm not really in a lockdown, but I miss traveling. I used to travel a lot to the most amazing destination in the world, also thanks to Smiling House. Giving it this mission to travel with my husband Ira, that we actually established this Smiling House together. So I'm missing it. And, you know, it's like every day I'm waking up with a kind of, you know, memory of a place here, a street in Mykonos, a beach in Ibiza, and wow, I'm waiting for the time that we can do this again.

Yeah. In the last year, so I'll give you 12 months, have you had a purchase under a hundred euros that you. That's like your favorite purchase. So under €100, is there one thing that you can remember?

Yes, I remember very well, and I appreciate it very, very much. It's actually been in London. I bought myself one of these music loudspeaker, small thing, cost less than £30. And now I'm able to enjoy it in nature, wherever I am. And, you know, music is. Music is life for me.

Do you have a favorite podcast or an audiobook or just something that you like to tune into yours.

Right now? I love it. And. And I'm sure that all of you are. That. That are here with us today. Love it, too.

Well, I'll allow that. Thank you. And final, final question. Seeing that this is a podcast all about getting direct bookings, about increasing our profits and all of that, what is the number one piece of advice that you could pass and leave with anybody watching or listening to this on how to increase their direct bookings?

Stay active and creative. I think that one of the things that we're going to see is that a lot of listings and active properties will not be active anymore in the vacation rental world. Don't worry. It means that the one that will stay will be a better host and better, you know, and more professional. I think that it's very important to spread the word that you are active, that you are back to business, and to shop your social media to be creative in the way that you deliver your message about the kind of hospitality that you are bringing. Something personal. I think that one of the things that our industry is lacking lately is this, you know, the special touch, the storytelling. Allow yourself to be busy with storytelling. Make the difference. The difference about your property does not have to be, you know, because it's huge or very expensive, or it can be just close to the museum, just close to the train station. But it's got something that you, that you brought with you. Your personality has to be there. Allow yourself to sharpen and to rewrite your story about your listing.

If you think about the modern age, you think about technology, Facebook, tablets, phones, everybody's doing the online thing. And what I want to just add on top of that is by going old school, by doing what we used to do maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago with a handwritten letter or a postcard. I am so excited to see what Vicky's results are on the back of it. And I encourage everybody to think about. You don't have to send 120. You know, you could just start off with 10 or 15 or 20, but do it because now is the perfect time to be doing it. If you can act today, post it tomorrow, get out in the post on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of next week, then, you know, I'm really excited to see what your results could be. Mariah, thank you so much for this. If anybody wants to chat to you about anything that you've discussed tonight, where is the best place to find you? I assume it might be LinkedIn or is it email? Where do you want people to go?

Yeah, so of course it can be in LinkedIn and Maria Rockman and it can be also MariaMilingHouse. Ch. And if I may, I can share again the last screen with the details. So you all have it right here.

That's it.

Yeah. With a big hello from the Swiss Alps. So happy to answer any question. Happy to, of course, to connect. And if you see yourself as a potential partner with Smiling House, we'll be happy and even if not, we'll be happy to connect you with others. It's wonderful, wonderful opportunity to be here today.

We've got one more week of live videos. I've got a super special guest lined up to finish it all on Friday the 15th, which I'm super excited to share with everybody. And also next week I'm going to be sharing something very special that we're going to be ending the month with. I've been planning away this week and I'm going to tell you all about it next week.