Mark Simpson talks with a Guesty representative about whether to list on Airbnb and Booking or focus on direct bookings. Property owners often skip asking for reviews after guests leave, a mistake that tanks visibility. The conversation covers email and text templates to request reviews, plus why Airbnb's 4% commission beats Booking's 15% if you can drive your own traffic.
Questions this video answers
Around 4%.
Around 15% (minimum).
80 countries.
Chapters
It all sounds good. Obviously, we're going to touch upon direct bookings later, but what are the cons? Like, we've touched on a couple of the pros, but what are the negative aspects of having your business on third party on an ota?
So exactly what you said, Mark. Right. The OTA can offer many pros, invisibility, maximizing your reach, right? Getting you the type of guests that you want, if you are focused on specific types of guests with your different properties, if you're, you know, luxury, if you are catering to corporate travelers. So that being said, though, there the con, and again, you also said this, is that you do need to pay Commission to the OTAs, unlike direct bookings where, you know, you are making that, that's direct revenue to you guys. So again, many pros, but it is with a commission that comes, you know, with being on their platform.
Commission obviously varies depending on which platform that you're on. Everybody has their own, like ways, like Airbnb at the moment, you know, 4% where, you know, booking and Expedia both start at a minimum of 15. And there's others that do more depending on location and what you do. I think another negative for me from our family business and working with OTAs is that you obviously got in your mind your niche, as in the type of guest that you want to attract, like whether that's family friendly and X, Y and Z. When you do list your property on these big businesses, you do then sort of open your doors to everybody and it has the pros and the consult, you know, so you do sort of again, when you throw it up on booking.com or Airbnb, you do so anybody can book and, you know, you do sort of take that control away from the sort of the quality of the guests, you come to stay with them. But again, you do get the quantity. And at the end of the day, you've got to get heads on beds, you got to get bills, got to get paid. But these are the sort of things that you can still achieve with direct bookings. And it's just a case of figuring out more, which we are going to talk about. Now. Guesty is, as you said, in 80 countries, you must have hundreds, if not thousands, thousands of owners and agencies running through your platform and obviously doing marketing. You must see a lot of people's properties. Now, what is the one mistake that you see accommodation owners make when they start to put their property on these OTAs?
Only one mistake. So obviously there are many mistakes that can be made. I would say the Most hopefully important mistake that people should avoid making is not investing in reviews. And the reason being that is that's your online profile and that's, you know, the voice of your listing speaking to the guest. Right. So invest a little bit more in getting reviews. You can easily, you know, increase your review, you know, review getting if you give a review. So improving that and again, you know, enhancing your online image to these potential guests.
So let's unpack this a little bit because I like this. Reviews is obviously really, really key. And you know, it's whether you like it or not, reviews can make or break your online presence on these sites, whether it's Airbnb or booking or wherever. So when you say go out and get more reviews, how would you. If a guest has left now, there's always a case where you can ask them as they're leaving. You know, if you've got that face to face contact with them, oh yeah, please go, leave a review. They go, yep, yep, yep, as soon as they get in the car, then the real world kicks in and then just believe it. What do you recommend to people to do to then sort of go and get those reviews? Are you sort of thinking about email templates, like reaching out via a text or something like that after guests day? Like what, what would you like to see? What, what do you notice people not doing that you think they should be?
Yeah, so there, there's a couple of ways. First of all, you know, somebody who's on their way out of your apartment, your home, they're on their way out, right. So follow up with them, follow up a week later, you know, be that reminder for that great vacation that they just for, you know, a review there. With the follow up template, you can do automated SMSs, emails, you can do it, you know, right away, the day after on the channel if needed. Right. Things like that. But obviously SMS and email is ideal. So collect that information. You have that information already from the reservation. So that's one, two is again, you know, make it easy for them to leave a review. So give them the link that gets them to the page, make it actionable, trigger when you're sending that email so that again, they're more likely to do that. And then if you don't see them doing a review, then leave them a review and then they're more likely as well to go and leave you a review. Right. So those are three ways I think you can really boost your review rates. Obviously you can also use reputation management software. So it can also help with that. You know, we're. We're building and managing reviews and guesty, so that's something that you'll be able to do in software, so. In our software specifically, as well, so, yeah.
