How to Build a Direct Booking Blueprint (Live from HostCon)

Not me. All right, let's keep going. He's been garnering recognition as one of the top 20 most influential people in vacation rental industry globally, y'.

All.

He's determined to make a substantial impact. His current mission, you may wonder, is to empower over 1 million operators to escalate their direct bookings. His story is a tale of professional triumphs and a testament to the power of ambition and resilience. Indeed. My man Mark isn't merely a game game changer. He is a game redefiner, y'.

All.

With an intro like that, we gotta get my boy Rob up here to talk a little bit about him as well. Because, Rob, I know you're. You're pretty close with. With Mark, are you not?

Oh, here we go.

We're on.

We're back. Never a doubt. Never a doubt.

Yes.

Yes, I am. So, as you guys know, a lot of the content that I do on YouTube is about Airbnb all the time. And, you know, this guy kept, like, about a year ago, sliding into my DMs, like, all the time. You know, he would be like, direct. Book me direct bookings in it. And I'm like, what is it? Who is this guy? I'm seeing him everywhere. He's on podcasts everywhere. He invited me to his podcast, and it turns out that he was friends with all my friends. And I was like, well, if he's friends with my friends, I guess he's kind of my friend, too. And, you know, we jumped on a. On a call, and we had him on the Bigger Pockets podcast, and he really opened my mind to this idea of direct bookings. And really, this is significant because I'm going to be very honest with you. For a long time, I was anti direct bookings. You know, people would come to me and they would say, hey, Rob, should I do direct bookings? I'm like, no, don't do that. You have, like, one listing. Why on earth would you ever do that? And it's because I knew nothing about direct bookings. I thought, well, if you go off of Airbnb, who's going to protect you? How are you going to automate it? And I started thinking about all these reasons, and it kind of made me realize that, like, we tend to shut down things that we don't know. And with one conversation with Mark, I remember just thinking, like, all right, I'm going to get. I'm going to have so many gotchas here. And I'm like, well, what about this? And he's like, well, there's insurance for that. I'm like, what about this? He's like, there's a way to automate all that. And so after really just understanding who he was and the idea behind direct bookings and why they're so important, you know, it's been amazing to get to know Mark and how much of a pioneer he's been in the direct booking world. I think this is going to be the biggest trend of 2023. Going into 2024 is not necessarily canceling Airbnb in VRBO. Right. But just diversifying how we do it. And, you know, I'll tell a very quick story here. Not too long ago, about two weeks ago, Airbnb did not allow me to get a booking on Halloween weekend because they were trying to stop parties. But the people that were booking my property were there for the biggest football weekend of the season. And it was a $2,000 booking, and I was going to make 2,000 bucks profit from this one booking. It was my last opportunity to do that. And Airbnb said no. I called Airbnb and I'm like, hey, it's all good. I'm accepting the risk. It's not a big deal. Like, I'm happy to host them. And they're like, sorry, it's our policy that you can't do this. And I shot a text to Mark and I was like, bro, this is a $2,000 booking. Can we get my website up and going today? And he's like, I'm on it. And the next day, he helped me get my first direct booking, officially for $2,000, which put us at a $2,000 profit for that month on what ordinarily would have been a break even. So I owe my entire mind changing to not just Boost Lee, but Mark Simpson for being the pioneer in this space. So I want to give everyone the opportunity to give them a big, warm welcome. Let's go to the stage, Mark.

Bring them out, bring them out, bring them out, bring them out.

Can you all hear me now? Perfect. I like to do a bit of hands free, so we're gonna have some fun in this next hour. And I've been told I can't go over an hour, so we are going to stick to it. We're going to have some fun. I'm going to explain everything that's on your table. It's been done for a reason. And thank you to the amazing volunteers for helping make this. Put this down together in such a short space. But let's start with a little bit of salt. So Hands up in the room. If you've got no properties and are looking to get into this world of hospitality. Okay, cool. Put your hands down, please. Hands up if you've got one short term rental property. Cool. Hands up if you've got over two. Hands up if you've got over 10. Everybody's got their hands up in the room. They're buying drinks later, by the way. So now, everybody who raised their hands, can you put your hand in the air if over 65% of your total buttons currently come in from one channel, also known as Airbnb. Alright, are you ready for the salt? Keep your hands up. If over 65% of your bookings come in through one channel, you do not have a business, you have a job. And Brian Chesky is your boss. You can put your hands down now. Don't get me wrong, having a boss can be a good thing. You get security, they give you money. But it also can be a bad thing. They can change the rules at any time. They can all of a sudden start being a dick to you. And even worse, they can sack you. And all you have to do is go onto your Facebook groups that you're a part of over the last 24 hours, 48 hours, how many of you are seeing that? People are complaining that their listings are just disappearing off the channel. Right? So what I wanted to do today is I wanted to all in this room and I want to show you, grow your business, you can scale your business and you can do so with your own rules. You can be your own boss. Does that sound good? Now, before we begin, I started off with a little bit of salt because I had to grab your attention. But I'm a nice guy, so. So what I would like to do now is to give you all some sugar. Now, if I go into my little cupboard here, I brought some sweets all the way from England. Now, I massively misguided myself on how many people are going to be in a room. There was a lot of you here, so we're going to have to play a little game. So everybody stand up, please. I need to basically knock this room in 50%. So we're going to play a game of rock, paper, scissors. You will all know this game. It is simple. Here are the rules. Number one, you play one round. If you are the winner, you stay standing. If you lose, you sit down. All right? Super simple, super easy. Are you ready? Off you go. Rock, paper, scissors. Find somebody to your left. Find somebody to your right. Fight. Play against them. There you go. All right. Everybody. And stop there. All right, if you are a winner, stay standing. I'm just going to throw sweets onto tables. If you can open it up and pass it around, sir, I'm going to throw this to you. There you go. If somebody can please help me. What's your name, sir? What's your name? Josh. Josh is going to hand them out. So these sweets are Worthy's Originals. They are a staple of my British diet. Whenever I have a Worthy's Original, I think of my granddad. So Josh is going to very kindly go and spread it around. You can all sit down. Thank you very much for entertaining me about. Okay, let's do a little bit of housekeeping, shall we? Number one, as you can tell, I have this accent. There are going to be some words you understand. There's going to be some words. You haven't got a clue what I'm saying. But it's okay because Rob has kindly said he's subtitled me later on so you can all understand. Number two, there is a card on your table. Okay, this card is important because we're going to play another game at the end of my talk. Now, you can play this game or you cannot play this game. It's totally up to you. All I need for you to do right now is is think about what is the craziest thing a guest has left behind in one of your properties. It's the funniest, the rudest, the craziest. And we're gonna read them out later. Just think about that for now. Number three. Number three, you have all got a book on your table. Now, these books are for you to take home with you at the end of this session. I'm afraid there's only three or four on a table if we've run out. And if you haven't got a book, I will let you know at the end of the talk how you can get a copy. And number four, you will notice on me is this shot. Now this shot is important. And I explained to you at the very end of this talk why it is important. So it is right here. And finally, this is my one big wish. This is my one big one for everybody in this room. And you have all been culprit of it today already. Moving forward, for the rest of my talk and for the rest of hostcon, you are not going to be calling yourselves an Airbnb host. Please stop branding somebody else's business. You're a short term rental house. Stay. Say your name, say your business. Loud and proud. Whatever you want to Call yourselves. No one walks around saying, I'm staying in a vrbo. So we have to educate, educate, educate, educate. And it starts with you. Now, I have told in one of my pockets is one of these. This is the problem. Now, the current prediction is this. And this prediction isn't just me making up on a piece of paper. This is by some of the cleverest minds in our industry. By 2030, 80% of all bookings will come in via an online travel agent. An online travel agent, OTA. OTAs are the Booking Holidays Group, otherwise known as booking.com, the Expedia Group, which is VRBO. And obviously, you've got Airbnb. The prediction, by the end of next year, so 2025, Airbnb will control 65% of the market. Now, the reason why that stat is pretty crazy is because in 2017, so what, just three years ago, they had just 15% of the market. Now, their growth is due to their phenomenal marketing, their phenomenal branding. They are, you know, you can't knock them. They are very good at what they do, but they are verbiage in this industry. And there's a problem when that happens. If you've got one company that monopolizes an industry, that becomes a problem. And this is why I have traveled all the way from England with a croaky voice to come and talk to you about this today. Now, the example that I'm going to give you is Amazon. Everybody knows Amazon. We all use it, right? They have monopolized the e commerce and the book selling world. I've put out two books that are on your tables right now. I didn't have a choice when I released that book of doing it myself. I had to do it on Amazon. I don't have a printing press in my garage, all right? And when I sell a book on Amazon, I don't get your name, I don't get your phone number, I don't get email address, I don't get anything. I just literally see a check, a wire transfer at the end of the month. All right, my prediction and my worry is that if we hit these numbers, I can see these little things here. Sorry if I blind you here. But if we get to those numbers, then what is stopping Airbnb monopolizing it and doing the same to you? Now, at the moment, we have two commission structures. So hands up if you're doing the 3% commission model to Airbnb. Yeah, hands up if you're doing the flat 14% rate commission to Airbnb. Hands up if you haven't got a clue what you're paying. I figured as soon as I saw the fear in your eyes, I was like, I got to ask that. So, for time, Airbnb had the lower commission of 3%, and then they charge a guest service fee. Now, my prediction is that that guest service fee is going to go. My prediction. And again, I don't work for Airbnb, obviously, I don't work for booking.com or Expedia. My prediction is that that's going to go and you're all going to get moved to a flat 14% commission rate. Now, you may be thinking, what does he know? This crazy guy from England's coming over. What does he know? Well, I've been in this game a long time. I've been full time in the hospitality industry since 2011. I know I only look 21. I know it's hard to get your head around, but I've been here for a long time. In 2016, Airbnb was inquiry only, right? You literally couldn't do Instant Book. And then they switched it to Instant Book. And then surely, but surely, you could see Airbnb saying, hey, if you want more bookings, if you want more visibility, do Instant Book. Don't do Inquiry only. Now, why would they do that? Because. Because their two main competitors, the Booking Holidays Group and Expedia, they were doing Instant Book, all right, and they could see the pattern behavior in how we consume. And so when new hosts were coming onto the platform, yeah, they were given an option of inquiry only, but they were encouraged to do Instant book. Now, in 2023, if you create a new listing on Airbnb, it is impossible to click Inquiry only. You have to jump through all the hoops because they are pushing you towards it. Better search, ranking, more bookings. That's the promise. Now, the reason why that's important. And right now, it comes up to where we are in 2023. What's happening with cleaning fees? All it takes is one shitstorm on Twitter for them to change their philosophy. And what's happened, literally two weeks ago that Airbnb have said, hey, if you get rid of these cleaning fees, more visibility, more bookings. All right, so what's the next trickster I'm going to be? Service charges. And I've seen it already. I've been messing around on the platform. It's part of what I do. I show hosts how to get more bookings, more direct bookings. But I like to see what Airbnb and all the big channels Do. I was on a listing just the other day, and as I was on the listing, underneath the Book now button, there was a little pop up, nice little pop up at the bottom that said, this host, if you book with this host, you don't pay a service charge. There's no service charge. And if you think of it from a guest point of view, what would they rather do? Book with a host that's not going to pay a service charge or where you pay a service charge? And that's where the 14% model will come in. Again, it may not be tomorrow, it may not be next week, but it'll be at some point in the future. And when that happens, you've got to think to yourself, what does that do to your profit and your loss? And then ask you this question. If Airbnb do get to 65% of the whole market, what's them to stop from turning around and saying, you know, we don't think this relationship's very fair. We're powering 90% of your bookings. I think that 14% should be 20% or 30% or 50%. And that could happen. And that's the shitty thing about having a boss. And that is why I have a solution, which is direct bookings. And this is what I'm going to take you on today. This journey that we've got for the next 30 minutes, we are going to help you get a foundation in place to have a strong direct booking business. Now, for a little bit of context, when I first created this talk for this event, it was something completely different. I was going to do marketing tactics and techniques, but after talking to Rob, after talking to some host campers, I realized that what's the point in me giving you a key to the Ferrari if you haven't got a clue how to drive it? A lot of you need to make sure that you've got the solid foundations in place. Now, Obviously, it's only 30 minutes. I'm going to have to give you the Cliff Notes, but that's why I left a copy of these books on the table. The bug direct blueprint that shows you all of the foundations to put in place. And the playbook is the one with 101 marketing techniques. Techniques. Now, I'm going to ask you three questions and all I want for you to do as loud as you can. Shout. Born Ready. I want you to shout so loud, the whole building's like, what's going on in this room? These three questions are going to then help shape out the next 30 minutes of our talk today. So are you ready to get more control back into your business? A little bit louder. Are you ready to get more control back into your business? Are you ready to get more Darren bookings? Are you ready to give the middle finger to your boss? Well, let's do this, shall we? All right. I wasn't flipping you, by the way. That was in the sky. Do not. My goal today is to help you build a business that is Googleable and Instagram. Who am I and what are we doing? Well, my name is Mark Simpson, founder of Boostly. Started seven years ago. As Rob kindly said, my mission is to help 1 million hosts boost their DARA bookings. Once we cross that note, then what we're going to do is we're going to go get the attention of the OTAs. And my ultimate big ass hairy goal is to get a seat at their tables so that every host has a decision maker at the table. So when they're changing their rules and policies, they. There's always somebody there saying, what about us? Because I'll tell you what, all of them don't think that you know or want to care about boosting your own bookings, direct bookings. They think that you are all just happy getting your paycheck at the end of the month. Now, I know that's not true. I've speaking to many of you. I'm part of a lot of Facebook groups. We've got over 2,500 members of Boostly. We've got over 10,000 listings coming for our service. And last year we generated $50 million worth of diary bookings. So I know there is a need for this and that is why I'm here with his croaky voice to show you how to do it. Now, that is not me, obviously, but that is one of the co authors of the book Direct Blueprint. I like to do marketing tactics that are a little bit different. If anybody has been into one of the restrooms, you'll see a picture of my face there. Yeah, a little bit different. I managed to get that billboard ad in the middle of Times Square at the back end of 2022. And Ruben lived in New York. He went down to grab the picture. Now, I'm going to give an option at the end of this session for one question, one question from the audience because I've got this game that I want to do, but I really want to do with you because I think you're going to give me some good answers, Right? But to qualify for the question, you have to do one thing and one thing only. I want for you right now. I'm going to give you a countdown. Three, two, one. I want for you to take a picture of the screen, take a picture of me, the stage, the screen. And what I want for you to do is post it on your Instagram stories or your Facebook stories. But really important, you have to do BookDirect. Why? Educate, educate, educate. So, on your count of three. 1, 2, 3. Take a picture and then flip over to your Instagram, flip over to your Facebook stories, upload it, and just put hashtag bookdirect, and then do Oostler uk. If you don't know Oostler uk, it's literally on the cards in front of you. If you do that, one of you at the end will get the chance to ask me a question. All right, I'm going to walk you through six very important foundations that you need to build into your business. Okay? Now, some of you will be already doing these, some of you will not be doing any of these. And it's totally cool. All right? You don't know what you don't know. Now, I'm going to give you a very quick Cliff Notes of this. And obviously, if you want the deeper dive, it's in the book. But my one goal and my one mission from the back of this is by the end of you leaving tomorrow, you're starting to put the foundations in of making yourself have a strong, solid business. Now, number one is property management software. We have guested literally outside. They are a property management software. Now, what's really important about this is that if you want to truly diversify your marketing and you want to go Airbnb, VRBO, booking.com, you need to have a property management software. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make is that they start on property number one, they have their Airbnb listing, which is great, and then they go, oh, what's this shiny object? Verbo. Let me go create an account on there. And then you create your account from Airbnb. You share your iCal with VRBO. You're literally building your house on Airbnb's land by doing that. So the workaround is to get a property management software tool. Now, I added all of these because unfortunately for you, There are over 1000 different property management software solutions in the world. It's crazy. These are just some of the ones that I know love and think they're great. But guest is literally outside. You can go have a chat with Marcus and the team There. Now, the reason why this is important is because when you've got a property management software tool, you have now got the ability to build a business on your land. This will be a place that you log into every day. This will be a place that controls your communication. It'll be a place where you can control your payments, which is really key. And it'll be a place that you can control your distribution. Without a property management software tool, you will not grow your business. Now, just a show of hands, who has a property management software tool in their business at the moment? Okay. Hands up if you do not. Fantastic. Okay. My goal for you, maybe not sign up for one tomorrow, but start to have that conversation ahead of getting one. This is the big one. And I made it late to the brewery last night. I discovered an airline that flew me from Orlando. My family's been based in Orlando for the last three weeks. Some of you saw me at BiggerPockets and I've been doing other bits a lot at Disney, but I left them yesterday to come to this event to fly back today. And I discovered an airline called Spirit Airlines.

Never again.

Never again. Hasten to add. I was late to the brewery meet up, and I got late and I got chatted to a few people who are just getting going in the industry. Like, oh, what's your accent? What do you do? And I tell him what I do. And this was one of the biggest questions. It's host protection, basically. What's the alternative to air cover? Okay, now write this down. Air cover equals marketing. That is all it is. And in my opinion, the marketing and the branding team at Airbnb do not get enough credit. They are phenomenal. You know, they are very, very good at selling this product that is air cover. But remember this very clearly. Just like their dynamic pricing, just like air cover is to protect one person and one person only. And who do you think that is? Airbnb. Right. Remember that. All right, you need to go third person on this. Now, there are solutions. I personally love, adore, promote. Talk about super hog. S U P E R H O G. Otherwise known as know your guest. They provide you with host protection, which I believe is $5 million, which is really good. It also does guest verification, and they are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Now, I am not an affiliate. I do not own a company. I just want to make sure that you have all the best options in front of you. Okay? So Super Hog, if you can't understand what I'm saying, they're in the book. And then Just come and grab us at the end and I'll tell you who they are. So it's really important. What I want for you to do out of all of this is I want to start to change your mindset. Look outside the box of the Airbnb box and start to put things into your business that's going to protect you. Because when an issue occurs and if you need them, you go outside, which will give you the best resolution. Now, 99.9% of the time, you'll never have to need them, but it's just that time when you do need them. And I think everybody who has got properties in this room, you know, it's all well and good having a boss until you don't like having a boss. There's that moment in your business that you've gone, oh, yeah, that's happened to me, and I've had to eat it. Number three is trust, okay? And this is. This is really important. The reason why the OTAs are so powerful is because of trust. The reason why you all book on there and you all say, I'm staying on Airbnb is that when you go and stay with Airbnb vrbobooking.com you trust that on the other end there's going to be a place to stay. Right? One of the biggest things I can't get the word out, but you will need to do to convince your guests to book direct is the trust. How will you separate yourself from every other scam of us out there? And so there's a company. You need to write this down. It is in the blueprint as well. It's called I hyphen Prac. Iprac. IPRAC is the world's leading certification and trust company in the world. And the cool thing about this is that when you join IPRAC for your business, for the guest trust, if they make a booking with you and if they rock up to your property and your property isn't there, they will re home you with a similar property for the same value. That's their trust. That's their guarantee. What they do is you can showcase this trust factor by putting it on your. On your website. You can talk about it on your socials. That's how you build the trust. So it's I prac P R A C. Has anybody had any aha moments just yet? Good, good, good. All right, next one. Upsell, Upsell, upsell. I just want to check I spelled that right then, but I did. Thank gosh. Now, it is in my opinion that the profit that you make from your booking should be the lowest revenue generator in your business. You have only got a certain amount of heads on beds that you can fit. If you've got one property, and let's just say for fun, you do a minimum stay of seven nights. That's really just 50 bookings that you need in a year, give or take two weeks for uptaker, etc. 50 bookings. There's a million, 3 million bookings on Airbnb every single day. You just need to get 50 of them to book with you. So you are limited in how much money you can generate. There are amazing companies out there, like Minoan, like Mount, and like so many others. That means that you can generate more profit from your business. For example, Mount, the one I just mentioned, and they're in the book as well. Rentmount.com they offer a free guest experience solution to you. So it costs you nothing to join. And anytime a guest taps into one of the experiences that they will plug into your business, then you get 10% back. Now, we used to do this back in the day in our family business time and time again in Vegas. It's really common. When you stay at a hotel and you go stay somewhere else, they get a cut. The hardest thing before Mount came along is that you had to find your local things to do. Local restaurants, local cafes or whatever. They help you do that. So, for example, if anybody's got any exposure in like, Joshua Tree, you know, there's loads of local things to do in the area. Apart from doing mushrooms is like, there's all those things. And then they help you go see that vendor and then you get 10% extra cash. Okay? So always be trying to think, how can you do this? One of the easiest things that you can do is you can charge for late checkout, charge for early check in, charge for a insert, whatever. Again, just look in your business at how you can be making upsell, upsell, upsell. How can you get more profit? Because there's a lot of you that I talk to, and I had a conversation with somebody just yesterday saying, hey, I'm at 2, I want to get to 6, but I haven't got that capital. I haven't got that extra. All right? And so I said to him, well, you could do this. You could do. You could do this now over a singular booking that's not going to pay for another property. But you compound that over a year and your P and L will look kind of nice. All right, so upsell number five, and this is the Elephant in the room. Obviously Boostly does direct booking websites, but it is so key and crucial for you to be able to brand yourself. This is why I slid into Rob's DMs all those times, is that I was saying, hey, you've got such a cool portfolio, you've got such a cool YouTube, Instagram, why don't you have your properties on a direct booking website? And you don't have to have the social media following of Rob to do this. I've very fortunately had the chance to work with so many host campers. Hands up in the room if you've got a Boostly website or in the process of. Yeah, it's amazing to meet you and see you all in person and working with you has just been phenomenal. And the thing, the reason why it's so important is that if you were going to walk around and brand your business, you wear your logo on your chest or your hat or you say, hey, you know, this is my business. You give a card over, you want to be confident in the place that they're going to go to. And unfortunately, if you've got a free PMS website that they have or if you've got a, a crappy landing page, you're never going to get that. The level of brand awareness, that level of confidence that you can give it, that domain to somebody and when they get to the other end, they're going to be like, wow, okay, so number one, with websites, you've got to make sure it's a WordPress website. If you're going to write this down. Website one WordPress. The reason being is that 62%, I think around 62% of all the websites in the world are powered by WordPress. Google loves them. So if you want your website to be seen, WordPress. Now the problem with WordPress, if anybody ever has tried to manage or tackle this, whether it's with hospitality or whatever business you did before this, you come away with it thinking, I need to have a degree in code and just to be able to work this right, it's a nightmare. Which is why what we did at Boostly is we came up with a simple solution that anybody can use, anybody can do, and it's just plug and plug and play, the second most important thing. And you can go to neeksleeps.com so n e e k sleeps.com that's Rob's website, you'll notice. And if you're going to do this yourself, cool, go for it. You know, neeksleeps.com N E E K sleeps.com youm'll notice in the website, okay, at the very top, it has got a very visible and one thing only, which is a Book now button. All right? Now, why is that important? When I see a website, somebody goes, you know what, Mark? I made my own website. I want to show you it. Brilliant. And it's like, it's all the foreplay and no action. They've got a real nice picture, they've got real nice copy, real nice properties, but nowhere on there are they saying, hey, if you like this book now. So my number one tip to all of you, as soon as the phone computer opens, make sure it has a Book now button. The second thing, which is really important, we call it your hero image, your unique selling photo. It's the one that you use for your first image on the listing sites to get attention. Whatever your best image is, whatever it may be, make sure that is the first image that people see. You want to grab the attention. Somebody described it recently to me as eye candy. I mean, that's really true. You've got to make sure that the eye sees it, loves it, and wants to find out more. And then the final thing is the copy. It's the first line of text. Now, for years, people turn around to me and go, well, I'm not a copywriter. I'm not good with words. I'll just put Home from Home, which is awful. Never do that. And I know you do. There's a really good resource that you may all have been messing around with recently. It's called AI ChatGPT. There's a really good website now called Poe.com. it has all the bots in one place. Poe.com, i did an episode actually in the summer with David and Rob on the bigger pockets, and we geeked out on AI Tools. Go and check that out. But with AI, it will help you get better at writing. Please don't copy and paste because you'll sound like a robot, but it gets you 80% of the way there, and then just 20% of your own little sprinkle of magic on the top of it. Now, unfortunately, I have to leave after this. As I said, my family in Lorlando, I've got a date with them tomorrow at the Disney Parks and Universal Studios. So I'm leaving straight after this. But, Jordan, stand up at the back. Jordan, please. He is from Bruce Lee. If you've got any questions about websites, please do go and speak to him. And I have said that. Listen, he's got full Range. He can offer whatever he wants to offer to anybody in this room. But the rule is this, if you're going to have a conversation with about Boost link and about the sign up rate, it has to be done before the end of tomorrow. You can't be hitting him up on Wednesday or Thursday or Friday. Go and have a conversation with him about Boostly and see how our websites can help you. Number six. And we are cracking on. Well with this, number six is database. Now, I don't care how long you've been in hospitality for, I don't care if you've got 0 properties, 5 properties, 10 properties, 40 properties. A lot of you have come in from other industries. The key to any industry and succeeding is your database is your list. Whether it is an email list, whether it is a phone number list, you need to start collecting your own database yesterday. Hands up. If you've got an email list already for your short term rentals, it's like 2% of the room. Okay, good. Gold star for everybody else. You've got homework to do. Now the reason why it's important when a booking comes in on Airbnb, do you get their email address? No. Okay, so no, That's not an email address. Yeah. So you don't get an email address. You are lucky that you still get their phone number, their cell number. My prediction, it'll come a case in point in time where you won't even get that all communication they will want on their app. Right. So what you need to start doing, and I'm gonna give you a line demonstration on this after this slide. I think of how we can do this, but what I want for you to do, and again, it's not only in the, in the blueprint, but it's also in the playbook. I want for you to start building your database, your list. Now, there are some easy and free email marketing system solutions. One is called Mailchimp. You may have heard of Mailchimp. There's things like HubSpot, et cetera. They're now building it into Boostly as well with our own email CRM because I can see how important this is. But if you can do one thing and one thing only for me, start building your database list. Imagine the power. Let's set a scenario. Imagine the power that you've got a reservation spot that opens up at the end of the year. Let's say there's a cancellation. Normally you just reopen it up on the OTAs and you cross your fingers to go, hopefully I'll get this Booking, that's very reactive. We're going to stop being reactive. Instead, imagine having a proactive database of people that have already stayed with you at one of your properties that already know, like, love you. And you can email them saying, hey, this property that you love is available. Would you like to book? Just say, I'm literally sending this out to 10 people, 20 people, 50 people, 20,000 people. And the first come, first served is the one thing that we did, our family business, that we scaled and sold in 2021. It's the reason why we were always around 75% to 80% direct bookings is because of a database. So my mission is to get all of you to 65% direct bookings. Start getting this. Next is the billboard effect. Okay? Now, we are not going to go cold turkey on the listing sites. We're not going to go cold turkey on Airbnb. We're not going to go cold turkey on vrbo. I'm not saying to cancel your listings. I'm not saying do that. We have to start making them work for us and not the other way around. Now, I talked about the billboard to a few people in the brewery. And what we have got the amazing opportunity to do is to brand our Airbnb listings to drive people direct. Now, I know that Rob has been talking about this on his YouTube channel. He's been putting Neek Sleeps and the logo in the images. And that's just a prime example of what I would love for you to start doing. Now, if you haven't got a logo, guess what? There's a little tool called AI that'll help you. All right? Or you can go find someone on Fiverr, which is really easy and simple to do, but go and get a logo for your business. And there's three key points in your Airbnb listing that you can brand your business and billboard effect. Because what we need to do is we need to get across to your future potential guest when they land on your property that you are a proper business. There are 6.2 million listings on Airbnb. Is my belief that only 5% of them are any good. And you are part of that 5% for being here, by the way. Right? 95% don't attend events, don't attend workshops, don't watch YouTube channels. They're just crap. All right? So you're part of the 5%. You have to get across that you are a proper business owner. For when a guest books with you, they're going to get looked after. And you need to get that across straight away. So this is what the billboard effect is. Number one in your images, where can you remind the guest of your business and your brand, AKA Nick Sleeps? Put it in your pictures. Now, there's a lot of discourse in groups about, well, if I put my logo in this image, will Airbnb see it? Well, you can get a little bit creative next time you have a photo shoot. When you're doing your photography, try and get the photographer to take a picture of maybe the living room or the kitchen counter and strategically place images of your branding. A client in the uk, he brands all of his pillowcases in the property. So every time a guest is literally sitting, they can see the branding. What we used to do at our property is we put a lovely little sign on the back of the door and we were just always saying, hey, next time you want to come, stay, bug direct. Here's our number, here's our Instagram, et cetera. And we identified another key part of our property was our fridge. How many times do people open and close your door? We put a cool little fridge magnet on and we're just always billboarding. Now back to the Airbnb listing images is one. The second part is your description. I don't know if you've tried to list yourselves on booking.com, it's a nightmare. It's awful. You haven't got the ability to amend the text. With Airbnb, you do. And that first piece of copy is all important. So the first line should be this is X presented by Y. So, for example, start to brand your properties, whatever it may be. I saw a really cool one in the host camp group. I think it was a spaceship in la, right? It was. This is the spaceship brought to you by X. So branding the property, what that instantly does is it's making you Googleable. We all have the naive assumption that. But when a guest lands on an Airbnb listing, they're just going to go ahead and book straight away. We like to click. We like to click about. All right, Google have just brought out some latest stats. I was at a big industry event only this week. That's why I've got a voice like this. But Google came down and they presented some really telling stats that so many of your future potential guests are going to Google to make sure they can get A, the best rate, or B, just to see how they can book differently with you. They don't just take one site as verbatim anymore. Okay, so by. In the first line of the text, if you're going, right, this is my business, brought to you by the brand. What are they gonna do? They're gonna run a Google search and then the final, final place is gonna be in your bio. Has anybody been messing around with your bios over the course of the last couple of weeks and months? Have you noticed that it's a little bit different? They're asking for your likes, your dislikes. I said, it's like it's trying to turn into Tinder because it's like you're listening now, but trying to match up hosts with guests based on more than just pretty pictures. Okay, but you've got a little bit of copy in there. That again, you can use to your advantage. So you can say, hey, I'm Mark, I'm the founder of insert brand name. And again, what does that encourage them to do is it encourages them to go and do a Google search. Everything that you're trying to do with the billboard effect is you're trying to get them to run a Google search. Now, that's not just for Airbnb. This could be for social media. When you attend events. I've got Boostly literally on here. I see all the sub 2 guys with that little logo on there. How many times can you go somewhere that will drive people to go, oh, that's the person, AKA how can you become the go to? And you may be thinking, well, I haven't got a niche, I haven't got a specialty. Rob mentioned it at the very start. When you try and appeal to everybody, you appeal to nobody. And you've literally, if you've got one property, you've only got to get less than 100 bookings in a calendar year. Find what your niche is, what you're really good at, and become the go to. So when somebody is talking on social media, when somebody is chatting with friends and they're saying, hey, I'm coming to Houston, it's going to be loads of the boys. We're going to go pies. You got to speak to X. You've got to become the go to. And that's what the billboard effect is. All right, this one is a good one. How to convert a guest from Airbnb or Verbo to direct. Okay, now, the reason why we were able to to convert that Airbnb non booking for Rob to a direct booking was the terminology and the words that we used now, obviously, in the business on his Airbnb listings, it was very prominent that he had a logo. Nick sleeps. So the guests were saying, hey, I want A book. How can I find out more about you? Now, you've got to be really, really, really, really careful because if you go, oh, yeah, absolutely, here's my phone number, give me a call. Airbnb will flag that instantly and obviously try and say, hey, what's going on here? But if you do it carefully, you'll get away with it. So, for example, you could say, hey, absolutely. Well, if you check out the business, our business is Neek Sleep. If you run a search online, you'll be able to find us. You're getting around the rules. Don't go dropping in neeksleeps.com because again, you'll get flagged. So there's another thing that we did, which I did at our family business, and it works really well. And before I finish out today and we, before we do a little game with you, I want to give you this tip. Now, a lot of you will try it, a lot of you will not try it, but it is a really good one. So when a booking comes in, okay, comes in on Airbnb, VRBO or whatever, right? And the booking has an automated message. So those of you that have got a property management software tool that the automations go out, fantastic. When a booking comes in, if you're just using Airbnb, you've got an automated message that will go to the guests. So it works in all scenarios. It doesn't matter whether they've booked on Airbnb, if they booked on vrbo or booking.com, this works. So in the automated message that goes to the guests, super simple, don't do what so many of you do and have a paragraph or a book literally as the confirmation email confirmation message, keep it short, sharp and suite. So the message would be, hey, Rob, thank you so much for booking with us at insert your brand name. This is important check in information. So make sure you read this message. If you want to put it in capitals, it grabs their attention. You can put check in information as the next line. And don't worry if I'm going too fast because if you email me or message me on Instagram Booster uk, I've got the actual script that I can give you. Right? The script goes check in time. If you have booked with us via a third party, aka Airbnb VRBOBooking.com your check in time is 5pm if you booked with us directly, aka email, website or phone number, our check in time is 2pm now, you may be thinking, I'm not going to move my check in time three hours Early. What's this weirdo saying? Well, our check in time has, was, and will always be 2pm I've punished people for booking on an OTA. Now, the next line of text is key. If there's anything that you want to amend about your reservation, here's my personal cell, or I'd put a number for a member of our team. All right, now, what do you think happens? Hello. Yep, I've just made the booking. I've seen. If I book direct, I can get an earlier check in time. Absolutely. Rob, can you do me a favor for security? Can you just confirm to me your email address? Remember, I never got the email address. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to make sure that you get booked direct. No problem at all. Just. Can we just confirm your payment details? Yeah, absolutely. Fine. I'll get that booked for you. Now, one more thing before you go, Rob, I'm going to get quick. One more thing before you go. I need to do me one little thing and I can't do this for you. I need you open up your Airbnb app, your booking.com app. I just need you to cancel that booking for me. Yeah, brilliant. And I'll book you straight. Now, that's really important because it has to be the guest that cancels the reservation. It cannot be you. If you cancel a booking, you can kiss that super host thing that you care about so much goodbye. Now, you may be thinking, well, Mark, if a guest cancel, isn't that going to affect my algorithm? Here's another statistic. Around 33% of all OTA bookings results in a cancellation. So you just join in the quagmire of cancellations that come in at the moment. An Airbnb guest may not want to do that because they go, well, I might get hit by that service charge. But remember what I said right at the very start. In my opinion, that service charge is going and you're all gonna be paying a 14% flat rate fee. The guest is never gonna pay a service charge. That's little tactic worked every single time on booking.com on VRBO. And it's gonna work on Airbnb again. If you want the deep dive on that one, I go into a lot more detail. It's in the book Direct playbook. And also, if you want the script, just send me an Instagram dm. All right, we are coming very quickly to the end. I've got literally two minutes. So what I want for you to do, first and foremost, if you can Just write on the cards the craziest, the funniest, the scariest, the rudest thing that a guest has left behind and then bring it up to me. Write on the card as quick as you can. We've literally got 30 seconds. So the first thing that comes to mind, the best one, is going to win a prize. Well done. All right, nice. You've got literally got 10 seconds. Nice. Wow. Okay, nice, nice, nice. It's good, eh? All right, thank you, thank you. All right, you've got 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four. Oh, my gosh. Three, two, one. All right, thank you. All right, no more, no more, no more, no more. If you have missed your opportunity, you can send me it later. All right. Okay, now, host con, I need to know how rude I can go on this one. I saw there was a little kitty earlier. Is she still in the room or she gone? You can get her out of here if you want to because this may get a bit aty. Now I need for you to tell me where to go. Hands up for PG 13. Hands up for 18 plus earmuffs. Earmuffs is please. Jesus. Right, so the winner. The winner is going to win a copy of a book that I brought out called the Workbook. The Workbook is the companion to the Playbook because it helps you implement everything that you've learned in the Playbook. And in the front of it is my personal cell phone number. No one else can get this, only one person. So you can ask me questions as you're going down this journey. Okay, so that's what the best one's going to win. I'm not going to read all of these out because there's a lot of you and that means that a lot of crazy stuff that happens. But I'm going to go through some of my favorites and the best one is going to win that. So first one, whips and handcuffs. No. Next one, adult tooth in couch. Next one, a dinosaur dick. Underwear. Tell you what, a toilet filled with shit to the bin. Yeah, he tried to sell me weed in his first week. A baby. Yeah. Oh, wow. Somebody here has got a lot poop in a hot tub, blow up sex dolls and all that sort of stuff. There's a lot of sex stuff in here. What do you do in America? Is it crazy? Yeah. More sex toys. More sex toys. Poo pew. All right, I've got two. I need you to help me vote. So in my right hand is a baby. Number two is dinosaur dick. So make as much noise as you can for a baby. Number two, make as much noise for dinosaur dick. We have a winner. A baby. Who was this one?

Ah.

Well done. What's your name? Susan. Susan. All right, round of applause for Susan. And finally is this. This shot that I brought on stage is called the STR shot. A little bit of sugar. We've had a little bit of salt. And this is the shot. And I want for you to take this drink everywhere with you around the country. When you're at events, talk about the SDR shot. Buy an SDR shot and share it around. This is not the Airbnb shot. This is the SDR shot. All right, now, I just want to say thank you so much for making me feel so welcome to this event. Thank you. Hostcamp has been an amazing group to be part of. Getting to know Rob has been amazing, and I'm looking forward to seeing, working with you and helping you get to 65% direct bookings. So this is from me to you. Cheers. Thank you very much.

Y' all keep it going for my man Mark.