How to boost your guest experience with Sapphire Stein of Wishbox S7E2

Foreign. Welcome to the Boost Hospitality Podcast. We are in season seven, Episode two. My name is Mark Simpson. I'm the founder of Boost Hospitality, Boostly for short. I help short stay rental accommodation owners all over the world increase their direct bookings and I show you how to make dotas work for you and not the other way around. In this episode we're talking about the guest experience and more importantly, how you can save time and increase your profits by having a fantastic guest experience. And I asked Sapphire from Wishbox to come on to this podcast episode because I have been told by a lot of accommodation owners all over the world to check out Wishbox. It's come into my sort of realm over the last couple of months now. I've been fortunate enough to have a little play around with the dashboard and speak to people that have been using it and I love it for a couple of reasons. Number one, that it can sync up to any pms. When I say any I mean the majority, but they are always adding more. Number two is that it will automate your guest messaging process from the start of booking to pre stay to during stay and post day. It's got a review filter system built in so when the guest checks out it sends them a message asking for a review and it's got a rating between 1 and 5. You set the level that you're happy at and if you get a rating below that level, it doesn't go off to Airbnb, booking.com, facebook, Google, you name it. It comes into your inbox so you can deal with it head on. That is a phenomenally powerful tool, but it's only scratching the surface of what it can. This interview is brought to you in August 2019. By the time you come to listen to it, there'll be more features added with Wishbox, so I definitely recommend you head to Wishbox W I S HBOX co to check out more. In this interview, you're going to learn all about the guest booking process, how many messages you should send before they arrive, what messages you should be sending during stay, and more importantly, what you should be sending post day to get that five star review. Without further ado, please sit back, relax, enjoy this episode with Sophia from Wishbox and we're going to talk about the guest experience. Welcome to the Boozed Hospitality Podcast. My name is Mark Simpson. We are in season seven, episode two and today we're talking about the guest experience. And like every episode of the Boostly podcast, I like to bring in a guest who will help me talk about this subject and this episode is like no other. I've got Sapphire, who is the works at Wishbox. And Wishbox is an awesome company that helps you and your rental accommodation make the whole guest experience 10 times what it could be through loads of little cool little features that we're going to talk about during this interview. But before we begin, before we go, delve into the questions that I have for Sapphire. I would love for her just to take a couple of minutes and just explain more about her background, what Wishbox is, and then we'll dig in. So, Sapphire, thank you so much. If you could just go ahead and the floor is yours.

Hi. Thank you so much. So I'm gonna tell a bit about myself and experience for of the Wishbox founders. I come from the hospitality world, specifically in hostels, so I used to be in hostel management and marketing management. The founders have also extensive background in hospitality. They actually used to manage vacation rentals. And so the way Wishbox was created was created from, from deep knowledge within the hospitality industry and essentially just, you know, there was a need, there was a need to communicate better with guests. And so the founders, who know and understand a lot about the vacation rental industry, just decided to go ahead and develop it. So that's a bit about my background and Wishbox's background.

Amazing. And could you just sort of tell us how, like what sort of countries around the world are you helping? Is it predominantly in the States or is it more like worldwide?

So it's definitely worldwide. It's a fair, I'd say at the moment a lot, a lot of companies in Europe, but definitely also the us. Those are the most prominent countries. We also have companies in, in Australia and South Africa. So it's definitely all over the world and we work with a lot of different languages.

Amazing. Okay, so we'll find out more about Wishbox as we go, but this topic is all about the guest experience. And the guest experience is key if you want your short stay accommodation business to grow. Because if your guests don't have a good experience, you're going to get poor reviews and poor reviews, poor guest experience, not very good for business. Doesn't matter what you do, whether it's hospitality or just any, any line of work, you want to make sure that you're. When a guest arrives and walks through the door, from the point of making the booking during the stay to post day, you want to make sure that that guest is having the best experience possible. Because if you achieve that, then you will achieve what is known as talk triggers. Talk Triggers is one of my favorite books that I've ever read. It's by Jay Beer. I recommend that everybody go and check out the book or even just get the book because it's a prime example for hospitality on how you can use free marketing tool, which is word of mouth, to get more bookings. And this is a big part of it. So the first question that I have for you, Sapphire, is from the point of booking to arrival, what do you think are the most important things that a guest needs to do to set the expectation of the guest before they arrive? So what sort of things do you recommend that they can do?

So first of all, it's very important to start communicating with the guests well before they arrive and well before they contact you to coordinate arrival details, etc. So for the first part, the very basic thing would be to communicate with the guests and send him the details. The arrival diesel is just information, it reduces uncertainties since especially vacation rentals, since they're different from types of accommodations, the check in might be different. There's a lot of question marks. So the best thing to do is reassure the guests and communicate with them before coordinate the arrival and most importantly, have a very friendly tone and basically start controlling the guest experience from that point. That from the very basic thing is basically you're taking the control over the guest experience. And I think that's a very important point to do before the guests arrived.

Yeah, so let's just walk through the scenario. I've made the booking via maybe a third party site or directly with the guest and the first email always gets triggered to go. Doesn't matter who you're with as a PMS or a channel manager, that goes off straight away. So how many times would you recommend from the point of booking to the guest arriving, how many different forms of communication would you recommend having with the guest to make sure that you are in control?

Well, the ideal scenario would be obviously confirming the reservation. Like you said, that's the very first step. But secondly, before the guest arrives, the guest books in advance. So the best thing to do would be to communicate again. Hey, looking forward to having you. And then start, start having a conversation over coordinating the arrival itself, but also already preparing them for the reservation and taking part of the plan. So guests have a lot of things they plan before they go in, before they go on vacation, before they go on the trip. And they book the accommodation they want and they book it according to the experience they wish to have. So actually the host has a really big opportunity here to start Communicating with the guests and offering them experiences that kind of follow through with the accommodation he provides. And so offering, you know, the different local insights, because that's exactly what the guests are looking for. Especially the type of guests who book vacation rentals, they're looking for a different experience. So definitely beginning in offering that and giving your insight as the host, you know, guests search online all the time and they're looking for the resources. And here you are, the host. You have all the information, you have all the access, organizing the information before and even improving the guest experience by providing information and also by offering additional services. For example, you have your regular, for example, you have the regular check in hours. Are you able to offer guests the option to book an early check in, to book in advance? Because a lot of times guests have flights and they arrive a lot before the check in time. So any different services and information you can offer your guests to enhance their experience essentially is what you should be focusing on. And that's what we focus on. That's what guests are looking for to have that interaction. So, for example, in Wishbox, starting from the moment of the booking, after the confirmation email, we invite the guests to share their arrival details, their direct contact details, their information. So guests can kind of do all the bureaucracy and get rid of the paperwork and then focus on the fun part, which is actually all the things that the guests can be doing and their arrival. So that would be the most amazing guest experience your guests can have.

So what are you doing at Wishbox to help with this? Because I know what a lot of people are thinking tuning into this. It's thinking, well, this is going to take a lot of time. I haven't got a lot of time. I'm a busy hospitality owner. I'm juggling all the plates and whatnot. So how does Wishbox make this process a lot more smart?

So it does it by automating the whole procedure. What you do, you provide the most optimal experience and you set it up once. And then every guest get the same perfect scenario that you set up repeatedly. And obviously you can customize it. If you operate a big amount of rentals, you can customize the text and everything per rental, but you set it up once and then your guests receive the information. They're able to enter all their details, they can scan their passport, they can let you know when they want to arrive, book transportation from the airport. It's something that we allow hosts to offer. And they can also generate more revenue from it. If they work with different transportation providers, they can Offer that to guests. We enable online credit card payments so guests can, you know, book this online, pay it and have a very smooth experience. And obviously, I mean, we communicate with guests in their native language. So it's automatically translated to the language of the guests. And it's also a web app, because one of the things that we know is guests don't like to download a special app for one specific accommodation. So what we did, we developed a web app. And so with one click of a button, the guests are able to log into this guest app, fill in their details and get all the information they need. And that solves the situation. And it's obviously customized. You can customize it with dynamic fields and use the guest's name and their specific arrival time. And then it's perfectly, it has a very personal feeling. And also when the guests arrive, because you've gotten rid of all this, you know, passport scan, terms and conditions, signage, even payment details. So essentially you have a very positive experience. Because one of the things that are also very tiring is the first thing you ask for your guest. You start asking for a passport scan and documents. It's also not a very nice arrival experience.

No, absolutely. And I've checked into places in the past where you're on the end of a long journey. Doesn't have to be a flight, it can be a drive or a train journey. And when you get there, you've then got to dig all of this out. And I've got young children and they're literally just boiling your head out because they're just asking all the things. And you know, you've been in a closed confines space with them. And the last thing you want to do is to have to fill in all these documents, you know, so to have this process automated, to have this process already done before you arrive again, will improve that guest experience. And to have it all automated, I think is the key thing. So it saves money, so it saves time. But what I like what you said is it is a chance to increase revenue with the part of what you said. So you mentioned pickups, airport transfers as one of them, but there's so many different form of revenue upsells that you could do here. And you know, there's only a certain amount of rooms or there's only a certain amount of accommodation you have or so many nights you can sell. But when it comes to upselling, as in making more profit, this is really cool. You mentioned airport transfers as one. But what are the other examples that you've seen? Some of your Clients use as a way of upselling a guest once they've booked to the next level. What are some good examples that you can maybe share with us, please?

So I'm going to share. The first example I'll share is actually one of my favorite features. We have a feature that's called Smart early check in or Smart Late Checkout and essentially allows the host to, you know, maximize revenue. A lot of times make the most out of the occupancy rate and I'll explain how it goes. Essentially you're able to turn this feature on and then you can ask guests if they want to pay extra for an early check in or extra for a late checkout. And it will only offer this if the room is available the night before. So it's automated and it's depending on your availability. And so it just automatically allows you to generate more revenue. Guests see this, they can see this, it's totally customizable. So you decide exactly when they see it. If you want to send them a special message letting them know they can do it, you can also do that. And essentially it's just making the most out of the opportunity of early check ins and late checkouts. So that's one of the basic upsells that every single host can offer. And it's just generating more revenue from something that already exists. And then that's one example, definitely. And again, it varies from host to host, but anything of luggage storage and different amenities like breakfast or, you know, groceries or different food opportunities, welcome kits, depending on if they're celebrating a special occasion. For example, one of the things you can do with the Wishbox online check in wizard is you can customize questions to guests. So you're for example, able to ask them if they're celebrating something special and then you're able to offer them different upsells opportunity and also obviously tours and activities and different experiences. A lot of hosts, they know local suppliers and they can definitely add them to the guest app. And guests will be able to to book them before arrival. Definitely, all the time. A really great feature that we're launching is the Wishbox Marketplace and it essentially allows a host to invite suppliers. So let's say there's a supplier you know who works in the UK and you really want to work with him. You can, with one click of a button, invite him and then you're able basically to sell their products online with virtually zero effort on your part because you're inviting the supplier to sign up, they sign up and then you're able to Offer your guests their services and it's again maximizing the opportunities, the revenue opportunities for hosts.

I like that. So technically, if the supplier is a local pizza takeaway to the property, they could hook in and link up potentially so that when the guest arrives, they, they can have pre booked in, say a delivery of food, of a pizza that night. Is that sort of where we're sort of talking about here? We're talking about that or is it like other things?

Yeah, I mean the majority at the moment, the majority would be, it could definitely be food. It also different experiences and different tours and activities that the guests can be doing. And again, because it's automated, you're able to pre schedule a message to your guests letting them know, hey, like I found these activities interesting in the area in case you find them interesting. And you can really set up the tone whether you want it to be extra casual and friendly or depending on your experience you want to offer.

So it sounds amazing. And one of the things that I am noticing more than ever before in tourism, whether it is staycations, whether it's like leisure, whether it's business or whatever, is the experience is a big part in the deciding factor on where people stay. So you can actually use this as part of your market and you can use this as part of your website copy. Is that when you make the booking, is that we will look after you from booking to arrival to checkout. You know, we've got you covered from every step of the way and it's a really good way. And I've talked about this a lot with customer avatar, customer demographic, knowing who you're going to attract is that if you track to certain demographic, then you can really speak to them. Not from the point of this is why you should stay with us, but this is all the extras that you could potentially get as well. Like for example, if you're in a busy, a busy coastal destination with an airport, it's like we will have the pickup ready for you when you arrive. You don't have to wait for an Uber, you don't have to battle other taxi drivers at the airport. They'll be waiting for you. You can then get to us. There'll be a food grocery order ready. If you want a certain experience, we can help you book that. And it's all done via this app. Now for those who are wondering and they're going, well, I'm currently with a PMS or a channel manager. Do I have to switch? Like, could you just explain how does it work? So you sync in with channel managers and PMS's. Is that correct or do ever. Does everybody have to leave their current setup to come to you? How does that the back end sort of work and the connectivity.

Yes. So it's actually exactly what you said. We sink into many, many PMSs and we are constantly adding new ones. And channel managers, of course we also sync to Airbnb and booking.com so in case you currently, you know, most of your reservations come from one booking source, you can definitely just sync that booking source in. Then Wishbox gets all the reservation and rental details and then that's how we're able to offer all these smart features because we know what your availability is like and we know what country the guest is from. We have all this information and we're able to offer these solutions. So it's a very simple integration with a PMS or channel manager. Exactly.

Sort of. Final question before I move on to the topic is a big pain point of hospitality owners that want to increase their DARA bookings is that when somebody books via booking.com and Airbnb, like you mentioned there is that we don't get their email address. It's a hidden email address. So by having your services, is there a way that we could reach out to the guests via automation and then collect their guest data that we can use for further marketing purposes? As an email marketing, is that something that you can help with?

Definitely. So it's actually the first thing we ask the guests. So when you have, when you're using Wishbox, we communicate with the guests, we say, we invite them, say hey, looking forward to having you. Let's fill in these few details. And then the first thing that you ask the guest is essentially that contact information. The moment they fill it in, you have their genuine email and you're able to communicate with them directly. And this is like it upgrades the experience completely. And I'll just mention that within the online check in wizard that they mentioned before, you're able to ask already ask the guests if they're interested to opt into your marketing list and then very easily you can create a marketing list and start marketing to guests. And it's just another way that you know guests just remember you that way when you offer this like online experience you remembered and maybe recommending you or next time they want a book, they know who their host is. It's basically putting a lot of emphasis on the host and allowing it to be even more significant part of their trip.

Nice. And if people are watching this and you're thinking, well this all sounds great, this all sounds amazing, but I haven't got a clue on what to create. If you're part of the Boostly Academy, I've got email template copies that you can just copy, paste, amend and add into Wishbox right now. And it covers you for every step of the guest booking process. Now, talking about the guest booking process, the guest arrives at the property, so you've done all of the pre stay, as in guest confirmation, as in guest pre arrival information. Making sure that they know every step of the way, how to find you, what's the code to get in, etc. During the stay is a tricky topic. People assume that guests will just like to be left alone where some go. No, you've got to contact them just to know that you're thinking about them. What's your opinion on this? And again, how do you help with this at Wishbox?

So it's a good question because I think I'm definitely for the contact. If guests want to disconnect, they also have the option to do it in Wishbox. You're also able to time a message to the time of arrival and then if there's different access codes or different sensitive information you only want to release at the very last moment, then you're able to do that automatically. So that's just connecting to the guests upon arrival. But I think it's definitely important to check in with the guests specifically in Wishbox because we have a guidebook and a guest app where they're able to see all the information.

Then.

They have all the information in one place. And also the guidebook includes a chat so they can very easily communicate with their host again if the host want to. And so they have all the information that you can create like frequently asked questions and different content for them. And so you don't really need. You can check in, you can automate a message just to check in, but you don't need to worry because they would have all the information in one place and it would be a click of a button. They see all the details so there's no need to constantly worry and check in with them repeatedly.

There's a guy that I know who is really, really good at this. He's called Danny from Optimize My Airbnb. And he talks about this on his blog, where when the guest is arrived or has arrived, you've got an automated message set up so that when they arrive, you basically sending them somewhat along the lines of, and I may butcher his quote, but you say I'm really Looking forward to giving you a five star guest experience. Because then what you're doing is that subconsciously you're implanting into their mind about that five star review that they're going to leave you already. So we're talking about like reviews, so how can you do so by having a little automated message go out and we're not talking about bombarding them. And what I like about what you said is that you've got the option for live chat if it needs be, but if it's just a little prompt, just to go, I hope you've arrived okay, I hope everything's okay. Please let us know if we can fix anything, if anything broken. And it's just again, just making sure that the guest knows that you're thinking about them. I think that the key thing about all of this is that nobody knows. Your guest isn't going to know that this is automated. They are going to think that you've personally taken time out of your busy day, your busy schedule to send them a message. And again, when we're talking about the topic, which is the guest experience, then this just puts you above and beyond everybody else that they could potentially stay with. You don't get that when you stay at Travelodge. You don't get that when you stay at home. You know, insert budget motel. This is something that will set you apart from everyone else. So we've had an amazing stay. We've gone and done all the things, we've taken all the pictures, we've done all the Instagram bits and bobs. Now we're talking about the post day. So the guest has left and every single platform that you on will tell you, but you need to get reviews. And with hospitality, you know that is 100% correct. Reviews are key. And it's getting even harder now to get somebody to leave you a review. What do you recommend that people do to get a guest to leave you a review? I know I've got my thoughts on this, but I'd love to hear what, what you think, Sapphire.

So I think obviously one of the most important things is review management and like you said, working to optimize the reviews. So of course it depends on the actual experience the guest had, which is why, you know, working towards that is something that's extremely beneficial and important. And like you said, no one knows if it's automated. So it really feels, it really feels personal. And I mean, for example, Wishbox is a white label product, so you, no one has idea everything. It's from the host email and again, a very personal touch which I think is one of the things that it valued most. Even if something went wrong in the rental, then the only if you had, if you, you know, if you had everything else perfect and the service was perfect, that's, that's what your guests will remember. I think asking for guests for guest reviews is obviously the very basic thing. What we do in Wishbox, we actually ask the guests to ask how was their stay before they check out. So then it gives them the sense and it also allows the host to kind of correct things if they're wrong. So we have a pre checkout message you can send your guests. It can have all the checkout instructions because that's also something that's a bit sensitive like what do I do, how do I leave, where do I leave the key? All the details can be in the checkout instructions that are sent out. And then we ask guests how was your stay? And you're able to ask guests to rate you. And then what it does, your guests can rate you and they can write a review. Now if it's a positive review, then encouraging the guest to leave that review online, depending on how they booked. But if the guest didn't have the greatest experience, we send the feedback directly to the host, obviously. And then it's basically a way for the guests to vent and communicate with the host directly rather than posting it online. So again we ask for the rating and if it's a positive rating, we encourage them to leave their review online. If it's a not so good lady, which is 3.9 stars and under, then we encourage them to contact you, the host directly. So that's a great way to optimize reviews because the guests would receive the message directly, they'll be able to manage the situation. And even we find that a lot of times the guest already expressed their concerns and it's just preventing negative reviews. So I think that's the optimal way to manage reviews and generally increase your rating online.

So how many would you say clients that Wishbox has? How many rental owners do you reckon a rough guest that you're helping at the moment, would you say?

Actually not sure what the exact number is? I mean we have, I can check up on and give you an exact number of rentals that are operated through Wishbox. So I'm sorry, I'm not sure.

No, that's okay. The follow up question would be say that it's 100. Okay. Just as a ballpark figure, it's obviously going to be more. But what is out of all the people that you help and the rental owners that you, that you work with, what is the one big mistake that you see the majority of people make when it comes to communication?

So I think the number one mistake is not communicating and not providing. I'll mention several because there are a few that come up. So, for example, one mistake is not providing additional content I.e. added value to guests. So a lot of hosts, they find the opportunity to offer upsells, great, but just managing to make genuine offers to guests, create content for them to optimize. Sorry, to optimize the upsells. Because it's basically giving added value to guests by offering them content. Because guests want to feel like they're in on the. On the local experience. And I think that a lot of hosts have that information and when guests ask them the information, they. They provide that information, but they don't have it organized for all of the guests. So I mean, the best thing to do would be automated, have everything on one platform and then the added value that you give guests who ask, you're just giving it to everyone. So that's one mistake that we often encounter and we're able to solve. Something else I would say is definitely the checkout and managing reviews that way. We see a lot of hosts that don't just seize opportunities. And basically there's so much opportunities to upsell and to be able to offer guests more. And it's something that, especially in hospitality because it's so intense and a lot of times it's work around the clock. So we feel that hosts don't have the time to seize a lot of additional opportunities. And that's what we're here for, essentially.

Yeah. Amazing. I can see just from personal speaking and all of the manual work that we've had to do over the years because our PMS hasn't had automated email triggers built into their system. I can see how much time you're going to save. And we've always done the upsell because the granary, which is my family business, is bed and breakfast. It's holiday cottages, but it's also was a restaurant. It also was tea rooms. And we always used to actively do the upsell, but again it was always had to be manual. I would be wasting can't even think how many hours a week by having to manually remember to send all these. But having it automated is such a time saver. But it's also what I love about Wishbox. After, like speaking to you before our call and looking in the back end and speaking to others is that ability to have the upsell. And you're ticking so many boxes from what a guest looks for, from clear communication, making sure that before they arrive, they know exactly where to go. They know who to speak to and how to get in the property. But when, once they're in, there's a constant communication if needed. And 99% of the time, it's automated. The only times you may have to dip in and do it manually is if they hit that speak. But let's have a live chat. And again, it just means that the more you can do this, the more you can communicate, the less likely you are to get a really shitty review, which there's nothing worse than getting. And your filters and your setup and whatnot will definitely help with this. So I think we've talked about Wishbox a lot and we want to put people out of the misery. We would tease them enough. So if anybody wants to find out more about Wishbox, I recommend that everybody go to Wishbox. Co this is the key here. Co so w I S H B O x co go there, you can have a demo, you can find out more about the setup, how it all works. And like I say, you. You only have to do a little bit of research on Rishbox to know that the glowing reviews and the amount of people that they are helping. I personally want to thank Sapphire for coming on and her dog. I really, really appreciate it. It was a pleasure, especially seeing that Sapphire has taken time out of their evening. It's pretty late where she is right now, so I really, really do appreciate it. And hopefully you've all gathered more about what Wishbox is. And again, I'd really, really encourage everybody to go in and check it out. This has been the Boost Hospitality podcast, season seven, episode two. There's gonna be more. I'm planning on doing more and more and more of this season, and we're gonna be getting more and more people on to help me talk about this. So, Sapphire, thank you so much for coming on and anybody.

Thank you so much for having me, Mark.

Pleasure. My absolute pleasure. So, okay, before you leave this episode of the Boost Hospitality podcast, I need you to do two things. Number one, go to iTunes, go to wherever you listen to a podcast and rate and review it, please. That means a lot. The more reviews we get, the higher it goes up in the search results and the more that people will discover it. My aim is I want all the hospitalities around the world to find out more about this podcast. And from here, they can gather so much information on how they can improve and implement it into their business. The other thing that I need you to do is to head over to Instagram, go to Boostly uk, hit the follow button and send me a message and let me know that you've come here via the podcast. That would mean a lot. I get probably one email a week from people saying I've listened to the podcast, which is phenomenal. When I started off doing season one, episode one, I would never have thought that I'd be getting people emailing me saying that they discovered us via the podcast, which is. Which is awesome. So thank you so much for tuning in. We'll be back very soon for episode free. If you want to find out more, go to booster.co.uk podcast.