How to get bookings in the shoulder season with Mirelle Brown - 10 minute highlight

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Welcome to the Boost hospitality podcast. We are in season seven, episode 11 and today we're talking talking about pricing. Now before we begin, I just want to do a big shout out to our sponsors. Hostfully they provide stunning digital guidebooks that will wow your guests. Paula Butler from Cockington Cottages recently let me know that her guests have said how amazing her digital guidebooks are before they arrive. So it's already enhancing the guest experience. Now today, pricing is a massive part of what I believe is going to happen in 2020 to the hospitality and short stay accommodation industry. With this I invited on Marelle Monda Brown of Optimize Revenue. You can go and check out their website at any time. You can go and subscribe to their emails. I 100% recommend you do because this episode is packed with so much good. You are going to find out about the apps that she uses for pricing. You are going to find out some of the most common mistakes that other hospitality owners are making when it comes to pricing. She's going to totally change your mindset in how you look at pricing your property specifically in the shoulder season. Now this is going live in January 2020. We are in what is would be known as the shoulder season and she's going to give you some advice on what you can be doing to get those bookings and specifically midweek bookings. You are going to be making so much notes on this. Now if you're in the car, please do not make notes. What I would advise you to instead is when you get to your destination, go to boostly.co.uk podcast. There is a full write up for you right now on the blog. Go down to Season 7, Episode 11, click on the link, it will take you to the full blog. You'll be able to find more about Morelle, be able to find more about her training days. You'll be able to find out more about how to subscribe to her email list as well as all the goodies that she recommends in here. It's an information packed podcast, probably one of the best ones that we've ever done. I've hyped this up as much as I possibly can do. Without further ado, let's jump in what we are going to do today then we're going to talk about pricing. But before we do that, I've got some quick fire questions that I would like to ask. So number one, what would you say is your or your company's superpower?

Yeah, my superpower I would say is really the ability to help people make decisions and take uncertainty out of their pricing questions and queries. Inevitably, with 25 years experience, that probably is where my biggest superpower lies because I've experience of blocks of apartments, individual apartments, bed and breakfast, the hospitality community and obviously independent hotels and so on. So that's probably where the wealth of my experience lies over that length of time. But yes, ultimately it's really about taking uncertainty out of the pricing question for people.

What's your favorite business book?

This is one that I just can't not to get rid of. That's the wrong thing to say. It's a bible that I started with a long time ago and I keep looking for something to replace it and nothing has quite managed to do it for me up to this point. So it's something by two guys called Johnson and Scholes and it's about competitive advantage and it gives you a load of models in there of some of them. A little bit traditional these days, but they still work really well in terms of looking at your environment, looking at your marketplace, looking at demand and supply. And these are all fundamentals for revenue management and pricing. And if you own or you are managing a property, then knowing how to see and view your marketplace and adopting some of those models is really quite positive.

I would suggest. Okay, final one then. What is your favorite purchase under 100 pounds being in the past year?

Actually purchased? It was more of an app. It's a business card reader. Having been at lots of different events, PIN meetings, networking events and the likes of. I was struggling with all of the cards that I was collecting and actually I hadn't realized. I'm sure lots of people out there have already done this and got that. But actually to just line up that business card on that app and put it straight into a database, obviously in line with GDPR regulations, to be able to have that database of contact, which would be brilliant.

So you've worked at and with some of the biggest chains in this industry. What I want to know is what is one of the most common mistakes you see hospitality owners make when it comes to pricing? And it doesn't matter on the size, the largest or the smallest. B and B, what's the most common mistake you see people make?

I'd rather say two things. One thing, it's not necessarily specifically pricing led, but it does have an impact and that is the property management system. And based on the day of week pricing, it's really, really important to understand that it's about an average over a period of time that you need to achieve and not the rate that you're talking about, that's really, really common and a really common challenge and a mindset to try and have to change for people as well.

Obviously, I imagine over the time you've been doing this, you've seen every time. Do you have a personal preference? Is there a PMS that's doing better than others? Is there one that that you prefer over others?

There is purely on the basis of the information that comes out of it. And if it was a large independent hotel property, I would be recommending the use of something like guest line. If it's an apartment or a block of apartments, individual units or multi units, then I'm using more often res harmonics, which is purpose built for the apartment and short and long stay community res harmonics.

That's the one that I've just heard of as of a couple of seconds ago. I'm sure everybody will want to go check it out. We will provide obviously in the show notes the links to these and where you can go find out more information about that. I'm really interested to find out more about the rate and the average rate as we go out through this topic. But would you give to somebody specifically around pricing when it comes to. When somebody asks you the same question, how would I go about getting those midweek bookies? What's the best tactics and tips you would advise them?

It's quite a broad answer. There's quite a number of facets to answering that kind of question. And I think, you know, in the first instance there's got to be a realization that, you know, having your property, your asset, whatever that looks like, whether it be the apartment, bed and breakfast, so on and so on, various different types. It isn't a plug and play. And I think there's a fallacy that you plug into what's classified as distribution channels. And in the main they tend to be two main ones being airbnb and booking.com There are many others out there. Just it doesn't look necessarily that an awful lot of people are either aware of it or they don't have a property management system that can support more channels. So you need to be familiar with there is, you know, more, more opportunities there on distribution sites such as Expedia.com, hotel.com, Lastminute.com, laterooms.com, I mean the list goes on and on. And a T in order to find out what dot coms are being used in your location is simply to go on Google and type in accommodation in whatever location you're at, there are two and a half thousand agencies plus plus plus in the uk, not just Silver Door and Situ and so forth. There are so many more that are corporate related and you need to understand which corporates operate with which agencies. But before you do, you need to set your corporate rates.