How to boost your guest experience - FULL INTERVIEW with Sapphire Stein of Wishbox

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?

The ideal scenario would be obviously confirming the reservation. Like you said, that's the very first step. But secondly, before the guests arrive, 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 having a conversation over coordinating the arrival itself, but also already preparing them for the reservation and taking part of the plan. 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.

Welcome to the Boozed Hospitality Podcast. My name is Mark Simpson. We are in season 107 episode 2 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. I've got Safiyya who works at Wishbox and Wishbox is an awesome company that helps you and your rental accommodation make the whole guest experience 10 times. So, Sapphire, thank you so much. If you could just go ahead and the floor is yours.

So I'm gonna tell a bit about myself and experience 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 use to manage vacation rentals. And so the way Wishbox was created was created 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.

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 Australia and South Africa. So it's definitely all over the world.

This topic is all about the guest experience and the guest experience is key if you want your short stay accommodation business to grow. 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 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?

The ideal scenario would be obviously confirming the reservation. Like you said, that's the very first step. But secondly, before the guests arrive, 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 having a conversation over coordinating the arrival itself, but also already preparing them for the reservation and taking part of the plan. 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 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 drilling all the plates and whatnot. So how does Wishbox make this process a lot more smoother?

So it does it by automating the whole procedure. What do 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 with different transportation providers, they can offer that to guests.

There's so many different form of revenue upsells that you could do here. And 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 guest? Once they've booked to the next level. What are some good examples that you can maybe share with us, please?

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 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. It just automatically allows you to generate more revenue. Guests see this, they can see this. It's totally customizable.

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 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 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.

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? Could you just explain how does it work? So you sync in with channel managers and PMSs, is that correct or does everybody have to leave their current setup to come to you? How does the back end sort of work and the connectivity?

So it's actually exactly what you said. We sync 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.

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 using Wishbop, we communicate with the guests, 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.

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 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 show that you're thinking about them. What's your opinion on this? And again, how do you help with this at Wishbox?

It's a good question 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 guest upon arrival. But I think it's definitely important to check in with the guests. 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 to constantly worry and check in with them repeatedly.

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 you think.

Sappha, 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 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. 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. If it's a positive rating, we encourage them to leave their review online. If it's a not so good lading, 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.

Out of all the people that you help and the rental owners 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 so, for example, one mistake is not providing additional content that is at like added value to guests. Guests want to feel like they're in on the local experience. And I think that a lot of hosts have that information and when guests ask them the information, they provide that information, but they don't have it organized for all of the guests.

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 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 I 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. 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 a property. But when once they're in, there's a constant communication if needed. We've talked about Wishbox a lot and we want to put people out of the misery. We've teased 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 you can find out more about the setup, how it all works. And like I say, you only have to do a little bit of research on Wishbox 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 her evening. It's pretty late where she is right now, so I really, really do appreciate it and hopefully you've all this has been the Boost Hospitality Podcast, Season seven, Episode two. There's going to be more. I'm planning on doing more and more and more of this season and we're going to 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 your podcast and rate and review it, please. It 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 Booster 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 three. If you want to find out more, go to booster.co.uk podcast.

Sam.