A hospitality owner gives a first-person testimonial praising Mark Simpson and his team at Boostly for building a new website that transformed their direct-booking strategy. After four years of patchy, manual marketing, they launched the Boostly site early in 2020; when COVID-19 hit and OTA channels (Booking.com, Airbnb) collapsed, their site continued to bring business. The owner reports approximately £40,000 of revenue from key workers and NHS staff booked through the site during lockdown, and endorses Boostly as a game-changing solution for direct bookings.
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October 20, 2020
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Hey, guys, hope you're all doing good. Just a real quick shout out and a thank you to my man Mark Simpson at Boostly for creating us the best website that we could have ever expected. I wanted to quickly share a few pointers as to, you know, where we were before and where we are now since having a website. Because, look, we've spent a long time building a service department business. Well, nearly four years in September, and a lot of our focus has been on growth and networking with guests to bring in direct bookings and reaching out to old guests, but all been very clunky and been very sort of like amateurish. And then we decided at the beginning of the year to up our game and go and get a boostie site. Why do we want to get a boostie site? Because it's simple, easy to use and looks the part. But we was always doing things a bit messy, it was a bit clunky, should we call it? And we spent quite a bit of time working with Mark and her team to get it right, have the sorted, stay, brand, the feel and making sure we can have a great, good, well, a great guest experience right now. When the site was completed, COVID 19 happened. Booking.com and Airbnb fell off a cliff. But guess what stayed around our website. And with unique marketing strategies and putting ourselves out there and getting our brand out there and getting the website out there, we were able to get a significant amount of business. So to give you an example, we've done 40k's worth of revenue to key workers and NHS staff all through the website during that time, which we would never have been able to have done before. So it's changed. Well, it helped us thrive through COVID 19. It got our brand out there, gave us a look and feel, a level of confidence all around direct marketing. And where we're at now is we're in a position now where we're like, literally, like using the site to push, push, push so we can do more direct business. Because, let's be real, we don't want to be spending money with booking.com and Airbnb if we don't have to. Now we know that we don't have to properly and now we're getting results from it. So, yeah, I just want to say big thanks, everyone else. And look, if you're an operator, whether it's service departments, hotels, guest houses, bnb, whatever, have a chat with Mark and the team and look at what they can do for you. Because for us it's been game changing and I'M vouching for it big time. So, anyway, all the best. Enjoy your summer. And get boosted, if that's a word.
