How important is Google My Business Listings for Short Stay Accommodation Owners?

Welcome everybody to the audio version of the Boostly podcast. So today I am going into the vault and I am finding some of the best clips from a 24 hour clubhouse room that we ran this year. It was an, it was an amazing experience to be part of, to host it, to admin it, and to grab friends and peers from the industry into one room on the the leading audio app and help hosts all over the world. We had a lot of fun, we touched every single corner of the globe and what I wanted to do is be able to put it together, find the best bits and put it into the daily Boost podcast. So I hope you enjoy. The section is not going more than 10 minutes, but it's going to feature a part of the 24 hour room that resonated the most with me. So thank you for tuning in and I will be back tomorrow with another podcast podcast episode. Right now though, let's jump into that clubhouse room.

South Florida. Sorry. Yeah, us.

Do you have a Google listing yourself?

Yes. Yeah, so when you look up any short term rental hotels, we, we come up on there as well.

One thing I'll be interested. Do you do each individual listing as a place or just the main business name?

No, just the main business name.

Awesome.

I remember Mark did that. Right, the individual place. Sorry Monash, didn't mean to interrupt.

No, that's fine. I was just gonna say I do individual listing. The reason why I do that is to be able to take advantage of the space in my area against my competitor because I can list as many as I want and to try and get mine before others. So that's the reason why I do it. And I would definitely say, Liam, this is most probably very, very important for the travelers market, the corporate market. It's absolutely important for you to be on business. Google. We've done it. We, we don't do any ads, we don't run any ads, but we've always had it and we always try and get reviews on there. And the last booking we had from there so far we've already banked 18,000 pound and the contract is for three years. So it's about 291,000 pound on one property for the next three years. So it's very, very important to, to get yourself listed on business. Google.

Definitely, definitely. And I do the same as Humanisha with I have, I do it per listing for two reasons. It definitely helps with guests also when they're searching, you know, for the name of the property or whatever it then comes up on, on, on Google it's easy for them to find, to get directions to it. But then also from a management perspective, we're looking to be seen by people in the area. So we do two things. One is, is make sure that our listings are there by the name but in brackets. We always have our company name as well. So if you was to search Norwich and look through some of the locations you'll keep seeing, you know, Hamlet's Rest brackets, Ginger Gold, Chapel Break brackets, Ginger Gold. And it helps to show, you know, that that brand in general and that we are where we have our locations. But also if you're a landlord and you're thinking about having your place managed, you know, people might be seeing that and you know, it builds trust. If you're seeing in more places, people say that you need seven touch points to build trust and certainly by having those multiple listings and it's easy enough to do, it doesn't take long to.

Get those set up.

So yeah, definitely something that we do. Tip number, we're going to skip to the next tip. So one of the tips just alongside that, what we do, and this comes from Shamil here in the UK who operates short term let's in the UK, he said this on the last 24 hour room that we've done and that was to change your WI fi to be your company name. So everybody in the area who is locally or traveling by will actually see your company name whenever they're searching Wi fi again, all these little things. And then actually the password we now use is Book Direct. So, you know, hopefully everybody in the room won't travel to Norwich and nick some of my WI fi now. But you know, it's two just key things where you get your business name out there and also the fact that you've got, you know, Book Direct in there as well as your password. I dislike that. So we initiated that in our business. Okay, so we've still got another 12 tips. I know we've got four minutes until Mark joins us, so I might overrun slightly, but I'm sure he won't mind, hopefully. So make sure you've got an email list building up of your guests. So Manisha, who operates sort of contractors, a bit like ourselves here in Norwich, if you've got leisure guests, you know, no matter what, just make sure you're building up some sort of email list where you've got your guests who stay with you. And the way to do this is to make sure that, you know, you're able to obtain their email by directing them to join your email list for perhaps either discount or maybe an early check in or you know, a number of different ways that you can do it. But the key thing is that you're then building up an audience where you've got direct contact to and say you've got a couple of last minute deals at that stage where you've built up a list of previous guests who have stayed in your place, you've got their permissions to market to them. You know, you tell them you're not going to spam them but send them an occasional email about how your business is doing about last minute deals or any news. And you can simply send an email which will say, you know, we've got, you know, this is what's happened in our business. We've now taken on a brand new riverside pipe apartment. Whatever it is guys, if anybody would like to stay there, then here's a 10 off or maybe not discount. You know, if you want to be the first people who stay here, then we'll make sure that you're treated to a bottle of bubbly on, on arrival, something like that. I'd be interested to just see mods. If you're in the room, just give us a little flash if you're in the room. Me and Manisha. So Misha and Emmanuel, do you have email lists yourselves? Do you use them?

And yes, I do have email lists. We do build them up and we do use them to retarget our existing customer. But one point I wanted to make clear and especially with those in the business market, very often you will have somebody booking on behalf of somebody else and they will actually have the contact detail or they will provide the email detail of the person who's actually staying and they are somebody else who's actually done the booking. So part of our communication would actually say to them that be aware that if you are providing us any of your day booking, we will be using that obviously to facilitate the check in detail, but also use it for marketing purposes. However, we respect your privacy and everything else and if you have, we'll be more than happy to take you off our mailing list. Please click on this. So it's very important to do that because most of the time it's not them booking for there stays somebody else booking and they're actually giving the authorization on their behalf but not realizing that you're going to be using it for marketing purposes. So just make sure you have that somewhere in your communication.

I just thought I'd dive in on email list because it's worth an Entire clubhouse on its own. I use email list quite a lot for all sorts of purposes, but it's incredible how you can tailor the email and who it's sent from and the title and everything else gives you such a massively different response. I just thought it might be good to have somebody who's an expert on emails jump in to this clubhouse at some point to give advice.

Definitely, I'd love that. I mean I know Mark will, will weigh in on it. Emmanuel, how do you use it in your business?

Yeah, and yeah, we do a lot with it. And also because as I mentioned earlier on when I came on the on the room originally, about 60, 65% of our of our booking are just returned and direct bookings. So we open up. A lot of the emails that we send are seasonal bookings. So like holiday bookings. And then what we try to start doing, our system does not wasn't built for it. So we're kind of playing around with it. But is something Mark gave me an idea of last 24 hour clubhouse was to reach out to people on anniversary of their bookings or right about there. Because what we're seeing is that there is a lot more family event type of travelers and those tend to be very recurring. For example Mom's birthday or Mother's Day or those type of things. A lot of those travelers will tend to come back right around the same time. So just to keep ourselves top of mind, we use it for that as well and any new properties.

Awesome, awesome. I mean guys, we've reached half past four. So Mark is now back in the room. So in the next few seconds I'm just going to hand across to the man, the myth, the legend himself, Mr. Simpson. Just before we do, obviously, I mean I've got another 12 tips which if anybody is interested in those 12 tips, tips. What I'm going to do, I am going to put these onto a PDF so we can share these tips for everybody in the room. But to get a copy of that, what I'm going to ask you to do is just take a picture of the room, go and share it on Facebook or on Instagram. One of the two take a picture to share it and tell people to come and join this room to take us home. Now we've got three and a half more hours of hospitality and Airbnb with Mr. Simpson here and if you know, just share it on the social media channels, take that picture and send it to me or tag me in on Instagram and I will send you the PDF as soon as is ready. Thank you very much, guys, for today.