How To Attract More Bookings Using The Latest Tech

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Hi, welcome back to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast that gives you the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly the confidence to go out there and get yourself some direct bookings. Today we've got the Spotlight miniseries where we look at services, people and things that you need to know about basically as a host that can help you with your hospitality journey. Today our special guest is going to be talking about Web 3.0. We're going to be talking about how you can connect and actually attract direct bookings using the latest technology. So let me introduce my special guest. We've got Cynthia Huang. She's the CEO and co founder of D Travel and I'm going to not take anything away from her introducing her business. So let's get started and dive straight in. Cynthia, welcome along.

I'm super excited to be here. Thanks for having me Liam. Big fan of Boost Lace. So really excited that we're talking.

Thank you for being Here. So take us through. First of all, what is DTravel?

Yeah, so maybe actually, yeah, I'll start with DTravel and I can share my story a little bit later, which led to D Travel. But DTravel is a little bit different from probably other companies that people have heard of because we call ourselves an ecosystem of products and essentially at the core of it, we're trying to give ownership and control back to hosts and property managers because, you know, short term rentals have been around for a really long time. But I think in the last 15 years is when the industry has really exploded with the increase and introduction of OTAs. But with that, even though the industry has grown so much, obviously you guys know this, but owners and operators have had less and less control and there's just been an oversaturation of the market. And so all of our products within our ecosystem are really designed to move owners and property managers away from OTAs through tools and infrastructure that help them with things that they wouldn't be able to otherwise, like creating a direct booking website, getting distribution to other channels, but still being in direct booking. And I think the most important part of it all is really just our mission to really empower direct connections between hosts and property managers and guests.

That makes sense. What is it that's got you into this, into this area? Why have you decided to start this business or be a co founder of this business? And yeah, if you can share some of your story.

Yeah, I know you're a big fan of quotes, so there's a quote that says founders who start businesses don't do it because of the money. It's because they want to change the world. And I think for me that's really what DTravel is about. I've been an owner operator for the last decade and, and I started on Airbnb as the host in 2014 in Vancouver, Canada. Still very new at the time. That was a new market for them because they had focused primarily in the US And I remember renting out a room in our house and just loving the experience so much that I wanted to continue hosting and I wanted to be the best host possible. But the problem was at the time, if you looked up being a short term rental host or a vacation rental host, all you came across were horrific newsletter articles about, you know, people's place getting trashed and not really a lot else. And so I decided that along with my husband, we created a forum called Air Host Forum, which is still running today. It's one of the largest and longest running Independent forums for vacation rental host. But we wanted to meet other hosts in the industry. And so that was just amazing because we got to meet people from all over the world and learn from them and really connect with people. And I think that's what this industry is all about. And so with D travel, as I think the industry has matured and also shifted, there's been kind of a moving away from that personalized feeling, short term rental or vacation rental stay. And so I was in crypto previously or in web3 previously from 2017 onwards. And I saw that the technology could really help with a lot of the problems that exist in the industry. And so that was how DTravel was born, was taking my experience as an owner, operator and then my background in web3 as well.

Nice, nice. I mean, this is a great segue into what is web3? Because I know there's going to be people listening to this who are hosts and maybe not techie. I'm not a techy person. So what is web free?

Yeah. So Web3 is really the underlying technology is blockchain technology and cryptocurrency and that is the foundation of what kind of makes up web3. But I think more importantly, and I say this all the time, is that it's not the technology which is so important because that's really just a facilitator of change or an enabling technology, but it's what's driving Web3 that I think is really special. Because, you know, we had web 1.0, which was really about getting access to the Internet. And then we had Web 2.0 which was about connecting people all around the world through platforms and marketplaces. And that's why you have companies like Airbnb and Uber, et cetera. And Web3 really is about taking back ownership. Because I think what we've seen over the years is that you get access to free services because you are the product. So they sell your data, they sell, you know, your information to advertisers. And in Web three, what we're saying is we want to take that control back. And instead of you being a user, you become an owner in the products and ecosystem that you're using and you can contribute to it. And a really concrete example of this is if we look at the short term rental industry, it is so community based, right? You have so many different groups all around the world where hosts come together and help each other. They share resources, they do meetups, and that all happens organically because they're trying to help each other. It's Just such a beautiful community. And that's why I've always really loved it. And that's what Web3 really is about, is about the communities of people who can come together and do different things and even potentially run organizations. And so if we take Airbnb, for example, if you thought of them more as like a Web3 company, which is kind of what DTravel is trying to build, our community members, our hosts, our guests, our customers, they essentially become community members who can make different decisions within our ecosystem. And if you think about Airbnb, I think they've moved away a lot from being host centric. And I think guests would argue that they're also moved away from being guest centric. But imagine if hosts and guests could actually make decisions about Airbnb. So if you could vote and say, no, we don't want to have this change, or you could vote, say, we want this new feature, I mean, that's really powerful and that's really at the core of what DTravel is trying to do. And we use blockchain and cryptocurrency to be able to do that.

I mean, I could deep dive into the stuff. I love talking cryptocurrency and stuff like that, but it wasn't until I really understood what the difference is with the blockchain about, you know, how you can't. You can't copy it, you can't hack, you know, it is something which is created and it's a direct to. Am I right in saying it's direct. You can direct user to user, basically, and it's the control stays, like you say, with the host and with. Well, with the guest, I guess, as well. Is that right?

Yeah. So I'll give you some concrete examples because I think whenever we talk about technology can be a little bit amorphous and vague. And so concrete examples always help. If you think about COVID Right. I think this was a really big watershed moment for our industry because that was really the moment that a lot of houses, property managers realized that relying on OTAs was really dangerous because overnight their business vanished and they had. Especially if you didn't have a direct booking website, now you have no way to take payments. And with blockchain, what happens is, let's say that you have a direct booking site built on blockchain, even if we decided that we wanted to no longer enable that, because on the blockchain, if you own a booking contract that's built on the blockchain, you are the person who owns that forever. And so you can continue to process payments through that even if the travel no longer exists. And that's really, really powerful. The other thing is, if you live in a region where, let's say a company decides to pull out, whether that's the OTA itself or a payment processor, now again, you're very vulnerable because you can't run your business anymore. But if you have a blockchain based smart contract, again you can continue to run that even outside of anybody else. And so it becomes very censorship resistant in a way because you can run it forever and not have to depend on a payment processor and OTA to continue to run your business.

I mean, that makes sense because there's so many people who are struggling with high payment processing costs. There's so many people who are struggling with really where to start with what software to use and you know, how to really connect to guests. And obviously as more and more people are using web free technology, the different payment options are there at lower costs, isn't they? So I can definitely see that a major pull towards this. Where should hosts get started? I mean, to me, I look at the opportunity being really big, but I've got that fear and I imagine a lot of our listeners would do as well. What advice would you have to them for them to reassure them that this is the way forward and that this is, I guess, safe to do?

Right. Well, you talked earlier about the payment being between a host or property manager and a guest directly. We call that peer to peer. And so that's something that happens on D Travel where the payments are always direct between host and property manager or guest. And the really beautiful thing about that is with crypto payments, it's final settlement, meaning there's no chargeback. And we know that's a really big problem in our industry. When I think about the Web3 industry sort of maturing, I think more and more we're going to see really, really good applications that essentially abstract away all the complexity of blockchain and web3, so that as a user you don't even know that you're interacting with the blockchain. It's going to be so seamless and easy to use that it doesn't really matter. You just get the benefits of that. And I'm not sure if you follow Web3 News, but Starbucks, for example, is a really, really good example of a company, a really obviously massive, widespread, popular company that has used blockchain for these collectibles that they have. So they have these stamps that people can purchase. And it's been a really, really popular and successful rollout. And when you're buying a stamp or getting a stamp as a user, you don't know that you're interacting with the blockchain. Right? It's a really seamless experience. And that's the same approach that we tried to take at DTravel, where you don't need to know that you're interacting with the blockchain, you just need to get the benefits of it. And we're super design focused in terms of trying to make the user experience as beneficial and easy to use as possible. And our head of design was actually from Airbnb, so he brings a lot of that experience in terms of user design and trying to make it easy. And so I would say in terms of starting, if you want a direct booking website, then definitely come to DTravel. But even in terms of crypto payments, more and more we're seeing that digital nomads and a lot of people who work in Web3 and even people from countries where, for whatever reason, they're holding cryptocurrency instead of their country's native currency, there's more and more demand for people who want to pay in cryptocurrency. And so there's lots of ways for you to be able to accept crypto. But I think the challenge is that generally they're not integrated with the PMS and they're not built for the vacation rental industry where we are. So I would say, like, you know, definitely comes to the travel, but there's also other solutions that you could potentially explore if you feel like that's something that you're interested in and which I would highly encourage because I think the world changes really fast. And, you know, the more that you can diversify your business, the more sustainable of a business you end up building.

I mean, this, this reminds me of I used to work as a department store manager. We had a supermarket as part of the store. And we've seen a change throughout history where once upon a time it was the suppliers who really were in charge of things. It then moved to the supermarkets instead. So, you know, the, the sellers effectively, and then really the powers move to the consumer as to what they buy, how much they buy and that sort of thing. And this feels like this is what is happening with tech almost, you know, like instead of the big companies being in charge, you know, and then the second lot was the Facebook and the communities and that side of things. And then really it's moving to individuals and the power is shifting again. Is that would that Be a fair sort of metaphor for it.

Yeah, I love that analogy. Because more and more, you know, brands are really making decisions based on what their customers want. Right. And that's why you've seen this really big shift, not just in Web three, but in Web two, where so many brands have their own community pages or different communities that they're trying to build and they're listening and making decisions based on that. And so I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that the power is definitely shifting so much to consumers. And I think that we've already seen some examples of this, like Airbnb, for example, they saw that there was a shift to remote work and people kind of blending that like pleasure work and work and personal travel. And so they created a bunch of new features around, like trying to look for longer term stays. And that was a very specific example of, you know, a trend that had been happening that they've made a big change to. So again, more and more, I think that consumers and travelers, with their shifting lead, they're going to be driving a lot of decisions that our industry makes. And so keeping on top of that instead of waiting, you know, years down the line until it's too late, then I think it's really important for a lot of operators to keep that in mind. Especially because in some markets you have a lot of oversaturation and so try to figure out unique ways to attract travelers that you might not otherwise is really important for you to continue to build that sustainable business.

I mean, that sounds exciting to me because I, I host a lot of digital nomads, we host a lot of midterm stays, and it's one of the ones where having fast WI fi really makes a difference. Having that desk space, having obviously all, all the rest of the stuff, the good location and, and, you know, all the usual stuff. But more and more I'm seeing that the people who travel and live like that are the people who are more likely to be at the cutting edge of technology, who might use crypto, might understand. Certainly after staying with us, we educate each guest. Always book direct. So the more ways they've got, the more choice that they've got and the more. Exactly ways to pay. All that sort of stuff is really important.

If you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boostly and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only your niche but could be in your location as well. Boostly has helped over 2, 000 hospitality businesses all over the world increase their direct bookings. And if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to Boostly. B o o s T-L-Y.co.uk call and booking an appointment with one of our sales team.

What would you say is the biggest challenge to getting this to. Obviously this is cutting edge technology. So what is the biggest challenge at the moment?

Interestingly enough, it's not actually related to Web3 and it being a new technology, it's more about, you know, we have this premium direct booking solution that's really easy for you to spin up and we call it the Shopify of direct booking. But I think it's really hard to move people away, especially if they're using PMS solutions because you, you have almost like two ends of the spectrum. You have people who are using, you know, generally PMSS or some solution to build the direct booking website. And then you have more casual hosts who might not really know about direct booking. And so you have different challenges with both, with more casual hosts that you have to educate them about direct bookings. I mean, you guys obviously live and breathe this every day, but education takes a while. And then on the other hand, moving people away from a service that they're using, that's challenging because there's a switching cost. But I think that more and more, you know, we see in this industry that a lot of companies are really seeing the importance of direct bookings and investing in a lot of infrastructure and tooling for the industry. And so I actually see this really amazing, you know, future not too far away where the same way that Airbnb kind of made short term rentals really easy for anyone to host, we're going to have this future where direct bookings will be super easy for any host or property manager to be able to have as a big part of their portfolio. I think right now we just lack the tools and infrastructure to really do that. And that's really what we're trying to solve, is making it as easy for someone to use and grow a direct booking business as it is for them to use.

Airbnb Music to my ears, because, you know, educating people around that is exactly what Boostly does. And so what would you say if there's somebody out there who can help the most? Who are those people? What does their businesses look like? What pain points have they got? Who are the people that DTravel help the most.

I would say an operator between, you know, sort of 5 to 50 or 100 properties tend to be our sweet spot. So they're kind of just gearing up their direct booking business, but they're really motivated and they are willing to spend the time on and resources on that. I think as we move into sort of this next phase of D Travel, we're building out a lot of distribution. So our first distribution channel is Google Vacation Rentals. And then we have another product coming out which is the AI powered recommendation tool, which we're really excited about. And that one I think especially will help target digital nomads and crypto travelers, which is a very unique and new segment that I think it's hard for people to target on different channels today. And they're both going to be or they're both obviously focused on direct bookings and always making sure that the booking is directly between the host and the guest. And that's going to be always a big part of our ethos. And and so as we build up these distribution tools and channels, I think that will make it easy for anybody who wants more distribution but still wants it to be a direct booking to use DTravel. But I would say our sweet spot definitely is about, you know, five to 100 properties right now.

One question I know people will be screaming down the speakers to me is how does this work with a PMS? Because a lot of our hosts at that stage, 5 to 50 or above, is going to have a PMS. Does DTravel kind of replace that or is that working alongside of it? How does that work?

Yeah, definitely working alongside. So I think we have a very similar approach to Bursley where we recognize that people already have their tech stack and we don't want to. If anything, we want to make that as easy as possible. So we work with a lot of PMS partners where we integrate with them and we try and make it as seamless as possible where if you're already using a pms, you can just connect your account and then create a dTravel direct booking site in literally a couple of minutes. And I think that's always going to be our stance as we understand connectivity is really, really important. People should have choice in terms of the tools that they want to use. And so our intention is never to replace a pms.

That's cool. And I know some people will will have been worried about that. So you've obviously got properties yourself or had properties been in hospitality for over 10 years. If you could give yourself some advice back at the start of the journey, whether it obviously relates to Web3 or not, is your choice. But what advice would you give yourself? If you could go back to the.

Start, honestly, it would be to diversify my business. So what happened is, and this kind of turned out to be a blessing in disguise, but in 2020, I ended up having to actually close a couple of my listings because of like some regulatory issues and because the listings were in like a gray area, so they didn't really have any tools. But if somebody could plane, then they would kind of come knocking. And if I had a direct booking business, that wouldn't have been a problem because I could have continued to service the guests that I had already had a reservation with and I could have continued attracting new guests. But basically I had to like close that business entirely. And I still have other listings now. But I think again, like with COVID and just continuously some of the changes that these OTAs are making, where it's just really punitive for host, it's becoming more and more clear that relying on just OTAs and you know, there's really only like three. Right. That's really dangerous for your business. And I think especially as regulations become tighter and tighter, it makes sense to really have other options in terms of how you want to run your business, especially if you have a lot of properties. Because now you're obviously very reliant on continuing to run your business.

And you know, it's just one of these things which the more that you hear about, obviously regulation changes, the more that people like the OTAs put in rules or do things which aren't host friendly, then the more and more you realize that if you are fully reliant on those that you're not really got your own business, you're actually working for them in a way. So the more that you can do to have direct bookings, to have the power in your hands. So if like during COVID when Airbnb switches things off, you've still got another channel, you've got your own email list, you've got your website, cool stuff to be able to market to, then you know you're going to be in a lot stronger position. And actually, I think this isn't just it would be nice to be in that position. I think people will need to be in this position because I think that will become the norm. Exactly like what we talked about on this, where peer to peer bookings and communities is going to be the way forward. What tip would you be able to share with the people listening on how to get direct bookings.

Okay, so we have a direct book booking marketing guide that is on our blog that we're going to be sharing. So that has like a full A to Z kind of steps on how to start and grow your direct booking business. But the easiest way that we always tell people, and I know you guys share a lot of amazing tips, is just to convert your existing guests into a direct booking. So if they're going to extend their stay, for example, which happens very frequently when you send them a check in mail, just tell them that you have a direct booking website and that they can extend their say or if they have friends or family to refer there. And honestly, I think pretty much any host can do that. Like this is very low risk. And also the benefit is that if you're asking for their contact information, like their phone number, their email upfront at the beginning of the reservation, that becomes your customer. Because if they cancel or if you want to contact them again for anything else, you actually have that contact information. Whereas if you don't get that information, Airbnb owns that customer and you, you're the one who's done all the work to build up the before the relationship to service that customer. And so you should be able to own that relationship even after that guest check out.

I love that. I absolutely love that. And as you say, we're going to be sharing your details in just a moment, but before we do, let's just ask a couple of fun questions. Where do you like to go on holiday? Where do you like to go and explore? Or where would you like to go and explore?

Oh, okay. So my two favorite places are Thailand and Lombok in Indonesia. And where would I like to explore? Probably. I actually surprisingly haven't been to Japan yet. I know it's quite the hotspot right now, so it might be a bit busy, but I definitely want to go there. And I would love to explore Africa because I think that there is just not just in terms of the natural beauty, but I've heard so much about the people there and how happy and just full of life they are. And so I would love to experience that. And also Australia. I mean, there's so much there.

I mean, if there's any hosts from any of these places, feel free to get in touch. There's going to going to be lots of people reaching out. One of the things that I'd love to ask is what is your favorite karaoke song when you go and go off and have fun.

Oh, wow. This is a fun question. Honestly, I have a terrible voice, so I never go to karaoke, but, you know, Single Ladies is probably always a hit.

Nice, nice. Beyonce, I take it?

Yes.

I don't know my pop music very well, but yeah, that's awesome. Awesome. And just to give a shout out to any, any loved ones or, you know, people at home, anything like that, they want to.

Oh, I got to shout out my team. They're honestly incredible. I always say that there are secret sauce every person. I think one of the really special things about our team is that everybody is super mission driven. Everybody loves the vacation rental industry and Web3. They've been in it for a really long time. And if you talk to any of them, you can tell that they have so much passion for the industry and that's, I think, just passion that you can never buy. So I'm really grateful to have such an amazing team.

Awesome. What a nice thing to do. So I'm going to throw the mic open. How can we learn more about D Travel? How can we get in touch?

Well, our website is www.dtravel.com and we're on all the socials as either dTravel or Dtraveldao Dao. And you can also reach out to me on any of the channels. I think I'll share our my details. But I always love talking to people, especially because I'm an owner operator myself. So definitely love to share tips and just talk to people and meet them.

And of course we'll put these around the notes. However you're consuming this content, whether it's on the podcast on YouTube, these links will be somewhere around in the notes so you can go and check them out. And of course, if you want to carry on the conversation and talk about web 3D travel, anything at all, you can come and join us on the hospitality community on Facebook. Quick search for hospitality community. Community will come and find us. And you can come and join for free in more conversations about direct bookings and anything hospitality wise. So, Cynthia, we're going to end this the way that we love to end it, which is what is the mantra or the saying that you like to live by and why?

I love this question. So there's a quote by Maya Angelou Rue, which is, people will forget what you say, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. And I really love that because it's so easy in our busy everyday world to forget to think of people as human beings, especially when you're behind a screen. But the thing is, there's somebody. So there's something so beautiful about every person. And I think that as much as you can try and be helpful and generous, that comes back to you tenfold. And it sounds really cheesy, but I really believe in trying to spread as much happiness and kindness as possible in the world because I think we need more of that. So that quote to me really encapsulate what we're. What I think would be amazing for us all to do and live by.

I love that quote. And ultimately it's so true, isn't it? I mean, even today I heard my team talking on the phone and they literally were trying to find out the story of behind the guest, of why they're booking, if they've been before. And that human connection, I think is what starts off the five star experience. So, yeah, it's making people feel listened to and, and wanted, isn't it?

So I've seen.

Yeah, completely. What a nice way to, to bring that to a close. Was there anything we missed along the way before we bring it to an end?

I would just say yeah. We have our distribution product coming out very, very soon, our AI powered recommendation tool. And so if you want to get access to that, definitely go to our website and sign up for the waitlist that you can be the first to get access.

Nice. That's awesome. I'm sure there's going to be plenty of people reaching out and if you listen to this on the podcast or however you're consuming this, we really thank you for spending your time with Boostly. This has been the Spotlight series and yeah, we've really enjoyed having you here. So we'll see you on the next one. Thanks very much and bye for now.

Thanks.