How Susie Croot increased her direct bookings

If you are a regular listener to this podcast, you will know that there is a very quick sponsored message from Hostfully coming up. If you want to skip this bit, just go forward a minute on the podcast app that you are listening to. If you are new and if you want to find out how you can get a free digital guidebook for your business, then please stick around. So Hostfully have been sponsoring the podcast now for many a season and I absolutely love everything that they do. David, Brad and the team are fantastic and they very kindly sponsor this podcast so that it can continue to be free for you. All I ask in return is if you go and get your free digital guidebook now by going to boostly.co.uk hostfully so b O-O-S-T-L y.co.uk h o s t F U L L Y go there, download your guidebook, make sure that you bring your business into the modern day demands that your guests are expecting of you and then once you're there you can go and check out their award winning property management software, pms. You can go and check in how they are helping hosts and so much more. David, Brad and the whole team at Hostly, thank you so much for your continued support. And now let's get on with the show. Welcome to a very, very special series of the Boostly Podcast. This series I am not going to be talking all about direct bookings and tactics. What I wanted to do is I wanted to have some success stories and feature some of the Boostly Academy members, Team Boostly as we, I like to call them, we like to call ourselves. So in this little series that I've put together, I'm going to focus and I'm going to feature some members of the Boostly Academy. And today we're kicking off with the Amazing Suzy Krew. You are going to love Suzy, so please make sure you stick around and you tune into the full episode at the very end. What I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a little bit more information on how you can join Team Boostly and join the Boostly Academy. But for now all I want for you to do is to sit back, relax and listen and watch the Amazing Suzy crew of the Ross Cairn Group. And I want you to to make sure that you do reach out to her after this and give her a little bit of love because it is not easy going on camera, it is not easy sharing information that she's going to share. So thank you so much Susie. If you are Watching back. So everybody please watch, please make sure you get in touch and I'll see you at the end.

Hello, I'm Susie Crute from Ruskern Group Accommodation based on the west coast of Scotland in Dunoon and exceptionally beautiful where we live. I've been asked by Mr. Simpson to put a short video together just describing my experience with the Academy and how it's helped me. One thing I would like to let people know is that the Academy is for everybody. Even if you have behaviour difficulties and learning difficulties like I do, it's very easy so that you can pick it up and put it down when life seems suits you. So that if you've got other things going on and you're being distracted and you can't put your focus in at the moment, it's fine, you can just put it down and when you're ready, you come back to it. Okay? So don't worry about any of that. So our property is a Victorian villa built in 1880. Initially it was a bed and breakfast for the last 50 odd years and we've now taken it on and because we don't actually live there, we started doing bed and breakfast. And because of the stresses and commitment of time required to do that, we've got a little boy with learning difficulties as well. It's quite difficult to try and do that. So what we then we thought, let's look outside box, what can we do? So we decided to offer group accommodation for family holidays, celebrations, gatherings, that sort of thing. So our unique selling point is we have 10 ensuite bathrooms, which is exceptionally high in this area. Usually you'll get these large Victorian properties and they might only have five bathrooms between, between them all. That's where we are special because we do have, we've actually got 12 bathrooms but yeah, only 10 of them linked to the, to the bedrooms. So anyway, so that's our unique selling point is that we can sleep up to 24 people and we have lots of bathrooms with ensuites. Anyway, so that's a bit about me and what I do. So we now offer group accommodation. My major, major learning curve with all this is that these things take a lot of time, especially because I've took a business over that that hasn't really been running for the last five years and then I'm rebranding it and, and relaunching it and there's so many different areas that I wasn't aware of that needed looking at and what you had to be involved in, how to do pricing, how to do Marketing, how to use Facebook for marketing and social media for marketing websites. It was the major panic here just.

To say, amazing, isn't she? So I'm really looking forward to finding out what comes next. But the first question that I asked Suzy and it was what were some of the major frustrations that she was having before discovering Bruce Lee in her business?

If anything, it's just confusing all the time. And because bookings could come in so last minute, I found it really difficult to organize myself and plan myself. And then one minute I'd be like, oh, I haven't got anybody coming in. And then you check your phone, you'd be like, ah, I got someone coming anyway. So this is how the academy helped me. They want to know what did the frustration feel like as you tried to solve these problems. I was just like a rabbit in a headlight really. I didn't really know what to do, where to turn.

I asked Suzy was number one, how did she discover boosley and what did she find really beneficial to her upon joining?

I found the Boostley Academy through recommendations. So where we are in Argyll, it's extremely friendly community where we live and I was actually having coffee at another guest house owners and he mentioned the hospitality community to me and I hadn't heard of it. And so I then googled it and joined the Facebook group. And I'll be honest, since then the booster academy is, you know, it's different to just something else. You actually feel part of a family, like you're part of a team. So I know that I can ask a question and you're not going to feel stupid. Obviously with COVID that come in, I mean nobody mind blown. How could you even predict that that was going to happen? I mean, I set myself a target for this year for grouplets and my prediction was within the first month I already hit my targets that I was meant to be achieving for the whole year. So I was all like, you know, doing a little dance and then next thing you know, like Covid's here and especially in west coast of Scotland, I mean we can't have more than one household together at the moment and it's, it's extremely challenging and you could, you could find yourself getting really quite depressed and upset. And the academy helps, helps you have that moment of, yeah, I'm, you know, I'm pretty pissed, pissed off and things aren't great at the moment. But then there's other people there that are giving you inspiration and being optimistic and thinking outside the box and suggesting things that perhaps you could do that you hadn't thought of. So that's what I think is what makes Boostly difference is that you actually feel like you're. I feel like Mark's my friend, I've never met the guy, I'm like hey buddy, how you doing? And I've got a few other ladies that I chat to that we private message and yeah and it's like you've got a few friends and it was, you know, it's like you're friends of people and you just, you just feel like you're part of something. It makes you not feel like you're on your own. So everybody's in the same boat with different directions, different plans but you just, you just feel like you've got a bit of support, you've got some, someone's got your back.

So the final question that I asked Susie was how is life now? So how has Boostly helped, how has been in academy helped? How has it been for her and what has been her major takeaway but.

The academy it helps me like if I'm stuck on anything there's always somebody to ask and you don't feel silly asking those problems. I got my first book, my first direct website booking this month as well. It's only for a very short break in November and it's the first one that's came through my direct website and I was like oh I don't know what to do now. So now it's like another thing I've got to go learn like what do I do now? Because I was so used to it being through an online travel agent where they would just handle everything and send me the dates and then I would just go on my computer, block out the dates or whatever and I was like oh that's that done. Now I'm all like oh no, what do I do now? Nobody's like told me what to do for that. So yeah, so I'm now learning all about that. Sure I'll be making lots of errors and mistakes along the way but who doesn't in life? You know that's part of the, the joy of the academy that someone's, someone's been there, experienced it and they've got advice that can, can help you Anyway so I hope you've enjoyed my a wee video and if you haven't joined the academy I'd recommend that you do. It's great for making you feel like you belong to something. So obviously the self catering industry can be quite lonely I think and because even though people in your local area. Like you're all in the same boat because you're, you're still doing like holiday rentals or bed and breakfast or whatever, but in a way you're still competing. So you kind of want to ask them how they are, how busy they are, but at the same time you don't because if they're not very busy and you are, you feel like you're like. Or all the other way around, if they're really busy and you're like, hey, I've got nothing going on, and they then feel a bit, you know, then like, oh, you know, it's the end of the season, don't worry. Anyway, I'll stop wheeling on. I tend to go off on a tangent anyway. Susie Croup Ross Cairn Group Accommodation Join my Facebook page I just want to.

Say a massive thank you to Susie. You put a big smile on my face. So, yeah, please do go and check out the Ross Cairn Group Facebook page. Do go and like it, share it, tell your friends and go and give Susie a little bit of love from me to say thank you for doing this. And if you want to find out more about the Boostly Academy, then all you need to do is go to boostlyacademy.com b o o s t l y a c-a dash dash e dash m dash y dot com. You'll find everything that you need to know. You'll find out how to join, what you get when you join and what are the benefits of doing so. And you can join Suzy as Well as over 600 other members from all over the world being part of the Buck Direct movement as we strive and go towards making the OTA make more attention of us and hopefully if we keep growing as though rate that we're growing and we're increasing our direct bookings and we're educating our guests, hopefully they'll be able to treat us more like partners like they say they're trying to. I'll be back very soon for another one of these episodes, but then I'll thank you again for, for Susie. Thank you so much for watching and please make sure you keep on talking about Book Direct.