How to Get in Front of the Staycation Market

Foreigners that's coming in the world of hospitality and that staycation it's obviously been around before for a long time, but now more than ever staycation is going to be at the forefront of everybody's mind. And today in the boosted podcast episode I wanted to talk about staycation, what it means for the world of hospitality and most importantly I want to share tactics and tips and tools on what you can be doing to get in front of that staycation market. So you can not only your bookings but your direct bookings will get bookings that are on your term. This is recorded on the 11th of May and you know obviously when you come back to watching this on the replay, so many things may have happened but this these tactics and tools and these tips will become use useful in your marketing. Doesn't matter whether you're watching or listening to this in 2021, 22 and beyond. So please make sure that you get that pen and paper out when it's safe to do so, make notes, but most importantly implement into your business. Please do interact, please do get involved whatever channel that are tuning in on from. If you are listening this to the audio version go and tweet or Instagram me@Boostly UK and let us know what you've been doing or what you are doing. Before I go any further I just want to give a big shout out to our podcast sponsor which is hostfully hostfully.com you can go and get one free digital guidebook. I talk about hostfully a lot more in this episode. I show them about how you can become really proactive with a booking and how you can give them all of the information with your new usps. Again we'll talk about this in this episode. Now if you are listening to this post May so if you're listening to this June, July, August etc then I speak about something called Project Kickstart. Please do not go and try and join. This ended on June 1st so it's a bit late. If you are tuning in and listening this for whatever reason before 05-20-2020 then please do come and get involved. But again I just wanted to say thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for being part of of the people that are downloading and joining in on these on these pod episodes. And if you want to find out more, you know you can you know always come to Facebook, Instagram, find all the information you need. But enough of that, let's get on with today's Boostly podcast episode and let's get started.

My close up, good looking, let me tell you. Get more bookings. Oh, that'd be nice. Giving me tips, tools and advice. Yeah, you're gonna get them, hon. You're gonna sit back, listen to Mark Simpson having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee.

Like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard.

And the tee is loosely making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you better put direct.

Mmm.

Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.

This is a really important episode and I want it to be just me. Just me and you. And the reason why I wanted to do this is that this phrase is going to be massively overused for. For the next couple of months, you know, for the rest of 2020, but it could also go into 2021, and that's staycation. Now, I want to stress that the word staycation, because I know there's going to be a lot of people here tuning in from, you know, Europe, mainland Europe. And when I say mainland Europe, I mean, you know, you've got your Italy, your France, your Spain, Germany, you've got Holland and you've got Belgium, and you've got the countries in and around all of that. Basically, what I'm meaning with staycation is that somebody will jump in their car. Whether it's a family, a couple, solo traveler or groups of people, they will jump in their car and they will drive to a destination. Now, the types of transport that I can see quite clearly being ruled out in the short term is flying this episode as much as it is for everybody. I really want people to focus on the staycation aspect of it. So how you can start to attract people that are a drive away in the comments, I would love to know, so that everybody is tuning in. Are you getting bookings right now? And where are people booking from? So you should be able to see in your data from your PMS provider, you know, a place that stores your bookings. Where are people booking right now? And I'm not meaning for, like, tomorrow, but I'm meaning for the coming weeks and months. I want to set a scenario for you right now. In 2019, there was 30 million people who took a cruise around the world. 30 million. Okay, now what are that 30 million people going to be doing in 2020? Now, even if just 10% of those people will be booking their 2021 cruises, I was watching a lot of news reports and clips over the course of the last sort of five days. And, you know, one of Them was saying that there are people that are booking their 20, 21 cruise cruises at present because it is a super reduced price, but it's a very low number. So there's a lot of people right there that are not going to be taking their cruise. And what if those people, that is their only vacation that they take in a year. So instantly there's more people that are going to be looking to take an alternative type of a vacation. Secondly, and I want to set the scene so airports and airlines are all talking about what the new normal will look like. Say that a family shells out two grand on a, on a holiday, two or three grand on a holiday. Save it. We spend all that money, we do all of the things, we get to the airport and say, Frankie, for whatever reason has got a temperature because and the thermal scanner spot this. Now what does that mean? Does that mean that we can't fly? Does that mean just because, you know, one of our family members and then we can't travel? And this is the sort of feeling and this is the sort of scenarios that so many people are thinking about. And again, for us right now we're in Scarborough and we are actively looking how and when we can get back home to Spain. And right now we are not that confident about taking our young family on a flight again because they're saying everybody has to wear face masks, for example. But you know, anybody who has a one year old or a two year old as a child, the chances of them keeping that face mask on is practically impossible. So again, the confidence of jumping on a plane right now is very slim for us. So we're actively looking at other ways and means of how we can get back to Spain. And then you got to think, okay, well how many people do you know that jump on flights and go on their holiday? So there's all of them as well that will be looking to get away. They want to have a vacation, they want to be able to have something to look forward to. And this is some that we have been talking about massively over the course of the last two months. Whether it's just been me and you or where we've brought in a guest. We've been talking about how right now for, you know, nearly two months, half of the world has been on lockdown. There were a recent survey that was done out of the recent survey that was done and people were saying what type of vacation are you looking at making when you can potentially make the booking? And it was over 60% of them said that they would be going to stay on holiday, whether it would be a couple of days a week, a couple of weeks within a 200 mile radius of where they live. So 200 miles, you're sort of talking, you know, four hours, you know, three or four hours in a car journey away from where they are. And that was a large majority. The next one was a little bit further where they would go up to 400 miles away. But the overriding majority of people were saying that they would jump in a car. Nobody was confident enough to go on a cruise, nobody was confident to jump on a plane. So what I'm saying for you right now, wherever you are in the world, and however you've been doing your marketing, whether you've been again, heavily reliant on third parties or you've been actively looking to get your own bookings right now, then there's definitely a lot of things that you can be doing to be proactive on this. So number one, what you can do is if you are active on Facebook and particularly Facebook ads, one of the cool features of Facebook advertising is that you can set a ad radius. Now what does that mean in simple terms is that you can go onto Facebook and they give you a map and you can draw a big circle, 200 mile radius or 100 mile radius or a 50 mile radius around your property. And if anybody is living within that area, you can have a Facebook ad pop up on their newsfeed where you can promote your property. So again, the terminology and the copy and the words that you would be using and I would be encouraging everybody to do this would be your ideal staycation vacation. And if you want a tutorial on how to do this, if you go. If someone could please put this link in the comment section when I give it to you. It's boostly.co.uk YouTube. That link will take you to my YouTube channel. And I've got hundreds of free videos, interviews with experts, etc. Where I show you step by step on how you can do cool things like this with Facebook groups or with just online forums in general. There is a group for every niche, so we're all part of them. For example, I live in Javier, I'm part of the Javier community in Scarborough. Right now there are tons of Scarborough for sale groups, there are tons of Facebook groups as business groups, etc. What you are able to do is if you were to spend an hour on this, then you would be able to find 10 to 20, maybe 30 Facebook groups in the main areas in and around where you are now if you're thinking, well, I'm not entirely sure of which areas, then the cool thing is specifically if you've had guests before in the past, then if you just go into your property management software, when I say that I mean free to book, Xevu, Supercontrol, etc. And if you go into the reporting tool, you'll be able to find out where your guest from the past stay come from. So you may already have, you know, out of 100 guests, you may have 50 or 60 of them that come from one specific area. Now where we are now, Scarborough, I know from the reports and the work that we've done in the past when we're looking at previous guests, is that we get a large majority of our guests come from the Leeds, Wakefield, Doncaster, that sort of triangle. So for me, what I would be doing is I would be going to find in local Facebook groups, Leeds, Wakefield, Doncaster, that sort of triangle. You can do the same. And again, for bed and breakfast out there, or small hotels, even rental properties, if you take guest registration forms, this is even easier because, you know, we've got a closet full of thousands of them and we could just go through there again, just put half aside, half a day aside as you're watching Bargain Hunt or escape to the Chateau or whatever you, whatever you're doing in the daytime, we'll be going that Netflix binge and you could just start to sort them all out into locations, get the piles together of where the most popular ones are and again go there. Now if you want to do something a little bit different and again, nobody else will be doing this, so you'll be the first. And this would be the best time ever probably in the last 20 years to do this. The only other time maybe would be the 2008 financial crash is that, say that for example, you get a large majority of your previous guests and you know this from the records, or if there's an area that you want to target, then you can call and contact a local newspaper in that area. And right now, local print, paid advertising, whether it's the newspaper or it's one of those magazines that goes out in every doorstep, they are wanting money, they need your money so bad. And you could negotiate a really good rate here where, say for example, over a course of four weeks, if there's a weekly newspaper, for example, you could have eight newspaper editions, newspaper prints. So for two months, if it's a weekly paper, you'll have an advert that would be just talking about staycation. And again you can have it where it's post Covid. And again, we're going to talk about your USPs very, very soon. But you could go to these places, you can find these publications and you can negotiate a really, really effective rate. And again, I guarantee you nobody is thinking about this right now. People in Spain, for example, people in France, there are free newspapers everywhere. So I know Michelle is watching this. Obviously he's got a property in Javea. Go to the Olive Press, you know, the free newspaper. And again, you could be doing these sort of things where you could be. So if I'm in, for example, Javer and I know that a lot of our guests come from uk, for example, then you can find maybe local ones in there. But again, if you're not going to be getting the flying market, then, you know, I also know that people, there's people in Madrid, there's people in Valencia that come down to Javert, you know, there's people maybe from other locations inland. So you could just find again the free newspapers in and around there and talk about some paid advertising. There'll be an expatie sort of newspaper somewhere. There's expat newspapers everywhere. This is another tip that I guarantee that nobody's doing. And again, you could be striking now, probably the best time to do so. And this, this idea came from. Not me, this is from Plaxi, who is a member of the Boostly Academy. We do weekly group calls as part of my mastermind coaching group. And Plaxi shared this and I just want to let everybody know about this. So what Plaxi did. And again, this tactic may not have worked so well over the course last few weeks, but in her local area, she got advertisements for her accommodation business on the bins in the major shopping center in her local area. And it was, you know, in simple terms, it's where the amount of foot traffic is a major part of foot traffic was, let's just say before March 11, and she has got a massive amount of her income and her revenue and her bookings come in because people see those bins and then they see the river advertisement that she's doing. And again, so they become top of mind now, right now, these companies, they will have had their income halved, if not more, you know, they will have lost a lot of their revenue. So you've got the perfect chance now, just as the world is about to flip on again and people are going to be able to go out and move around and whatnot, you'll be able to start Spreading the word. Another tactic could be the more that. And again, this is pretty UK centric, but you could do it anyway. But go to the places where people are going to be. So parks, UK parks are where people are able to go and walk around and mingle and whatnot. If you're going to go down to your local park, why not have a couple of flyers and find a notice board and see if you can put your advertisement up in a notice board. People are walking around the milling around because they don't want to go back home. And you know, the more that the restrictions are lowered and again, you could put that little advertisement up. Now, that person who sees it may not be wanting to book, but they may know somebody who's looking for accommodation, they may know a key worker who might need accommodation or they may need to find somebody for an accommodation soon because sooner rather than later these restrictions are going to lower and they're going to able to have people to travel and whatnot. So again, if you can just print off a couple of flyers, find a notice board in your local parks where people are able to mill around a bit more now or you know, or any of these sort of community notice boards, just go put it up. What's the worst that can happen? Now? Next on the list, become your local expert. Now what do I mean by this is that again, right now you are. And again, if you've got got a local radio station in and around where you are, there are so many people that are coming onto the radio show, there are people that are wanting to be interviewed. And again you could become the local hospitality person for your area. Before you know it, over a course of a couple of months when, when again when somebody is looking to come to the area and they ask on a Facebook group to say, hey, I'm looking for somewhere to go, I'm coming into the area, who do you recommend? Because you're the person that showed and stepped up, then you're the bit of one that people will recommend. And if you want more on this, then season seven, go back to season seven of the Boostly podcast, Type in Danny Clark. Danny Clark did a fantastic interview with me on this topic alone of becoming that local expert and you could become that local hospitality expert, the go to person when someone wants to interview or chat about these sort of things. Things Next is going to be one where it means that you will have had previous guests in the past, which I, which I hope and I assume that there will be everybody watching this will have had previous guests before Again, I find this is a problem with not just hospitality owners, but just business owners in general. We're always looking for the new money, the new customer, the new booking, when in fact a lot of revenue that we leave on the table and is with our past guests. So these people already know, like and love us. And again, focus on the previous guests that are 100, 200, 300 miles away from where you are based. Somebody where it's a 2, 3, 4, 5 hour drive. And those will be the first people that I would be contacting. The second people that I would be contacting would be anybody, excuse me, who has cancelled on you since March 11th. So I guarantee everybody who is watching this will have had a cancellation. I've had them, you've had them. And you know, we've got over 100 people tuning in on the live. They will have had them as well. They will have booked with you for a reason. And again, just because they've cancelled, do not just dismiss them. They will have booked with you for a reason. Now is the time to be picking up the phone, picking up the email, picking up the text or whatever you're going to do and get in contact with. I would obviously start from the furthest away to the more recent, but again, just five or 10 a day, contacting people and just saying, you know, we are getting ready to reopen. I can see that you made a booking. You'll have the rate that they booked for how many nights they booked for. Say, I am more than happy to move you to a future date. We are getting ready to reopen. We're going to be doing X, Y and Z. Would you like to rebook so you can be so much more direct on this one? Would you like to rebook with me, us? And if you have it where it's such a direct question, then it's straight yes or no. Don't be afraid of no's. You know, I used to do sales for Yellow Pages and for Quip and for and for Yelp. I had to get on the phone, you know, more than a hundred times a day, speak to loads and loads of people. I'm used to all those no's, but all you need is that one yes is that gives you so much confidence and then again, it'll just give you the confidence to do more and more and more. I wouldn't be emailing as in a big email blast out. I'd be picking the time up. I would be making the effort to picking the phone up and trying to have a conversation with them. Now the next one, Vicky from the hospitality community, part of the Boost Lee Academy. You know, been in my world for a long time now. Vicky John Price, she put this post out in the hospitality community and it caught my eye and I want to share this with everybody so if everybody could just tag in Ickijohnprice and just let her know what we're gonna be talking about and I'll make sure that she sees this video. But she put a post out in the hospitality community, had over 100 comments. It got so many love hearts and just well done. It was amazing. And it's something that is so simple to do, but I can guarantee that nobody's going to do it. So if you were to do it and if you were to do it right now, you will have the best effect and that is that Vicki has used this time to design a postcard, have it printed off and she's got over 100, 120, she said. And all that she's doing is writing to previous guests, people that may be cancelled, X, Y and Z, and is just going to write them, handwrite them a little message and post it off. And the reason why I love this is just to say, hey, we're open, is that right now we live in the world of digital. Everything is phone, everything is email, everything is whatever. Nobody really gets anything in the post unless it's a bill, you know, your British Gas Bill, BT Bill, etc. So if you were to send a postcard, that instantly will get the attention now more than ever where everybody is in their house. And if you were to act now, before lockdown and restrictions properly come down, it's going to get so much more attention now. Even if they don't book, just imagine if somebody goes, you know what, that's really nice. And you know, if they were to grab their phone, take a picture, post it on their Instagram stories on their Facebook wall or wherever, and just say thank you so much for the postcard, then that social media post in it itself will be as effective as a booking. Okay, so let's move on now and talk about unique selling points, your USP as we talk about it. And before we move on to this, I just want to check in with everybody. How is everybody feeling right now? How confident are you? Again, I want you to rate this one for not very confident at all. Five to super confident. How confident are you that you can bounce back the back of this? How confident are you that you will get bookings in 2020? How confident are you that your business will survive these last two months in this crisis that we've all had to have. So again, one thought, not a chance. You know I'm going to give up. Number five is that I'm super confident, I'm going to keep going proactive, I'm going to be as positive as I can be. So one bad five. Very good. Let me know how you're feeling. So unique selling points now in the past and again if I'm thinking where I am right now at the granary, our unique selling point is that it's a family, family friendly farm stay property. That's our, our USPs is that you get to bottle feed baby animals, you get to go on amazing walks from, literally from, from here. You know, we've got, we've got hot tubs, we've got the views. You know, it's a, it's, it's an amazing breakfast. You know, all of these sort of things are our unique selling points. All of this is going to change. Two most important things that people are looking for based on the surveys and the studies that have been recently done by Fuel Travel and Skift and other big brands is that number one they want to have safety and number two is they want to have a worry free cancellation policy. Now what do I mean by that? I'm going to talk about both. So number one, safety is obvious. What cleaning processes have been put in play by the business, when was the previous guest staying there, what precautions of the cleaning team put into practice that safety. Am I going to be safe from staying in your property? Number two is the worry free. So the reason why 70% of people are currently sat on the fence is that they don't want to make a booking for say July if the then going to have to cancel or to move it and have penalties for doing so. So this is where you've got to be super proactive mainly on these two things alone. And I would be shouting out about this from the rooftops as in on your website, on your social media and I don't know how long you're gonna have to talk about it. Now having a worry free cancellation policy unless you're with super control as your pms, unless you've got master council or and you know there's other things being set up, unless you've got that in practice then I don't know how long you're going to have to do this for. And it's again for the world of hospitality. Having a worry free cancellation is something that is kind of unheard of specifically for rental properties. And those have got super strict cancellation policies. And again, I'm not going to tell you how to set up your policy. You know, you do what's best for you and your business and you know, etc. But what I'm saying is right now is that I would be, this is how I would be structuring this and I would be bridging it as I would be looking to get the full fee for the booking up front. But I would also be saying, Listen, Mr. Smith, you have got a worry free cancellation policy right now. So at any point that you, that you can't travel with us, we will move it for you at any point to any day in the future. Again, I wouldn't be stressing about the cancel word. I would be saying about changing it or moving it. Even better. If you haven't yet got a, excuse me, a digital guidebook, go to hostfully.comboostly.co.uk hostfully you get a free digital guidebook. So when they've made the booking, before they even arrive, you can send them this little app, this little webpage that they can go to and you can list off all of the things that you are doing so that the property is ready and it's in line with the COVID practices. So again, it, it just puts their mind at ease and you don't have to wait for them to arrive at the property. A lot of people promote and tell the fact that they've got Netflix in their properties. As we all know, Disney plus is a new streaming service. It's what, 40, 50, 60 quid for the year? You can have multiple users on one account. So again, I would be now looking to put more, I would be looking personally to put more things that will entice people in and talk about it. Because even when the restrictions are lifted, what you're going to find is that people are just going to want to escape their home. Even if that means that they'll just drive 100 or 200 miles down the road to have a change of scenery for a week, I wouldn't discredit that. So they'll even like work from your home or, you know, your rental. But again, for the family members, maybe for the kids, you know, what can you do to entice them? And again, by having things like Disney plus, having Netflix, by getting board games, even, you know, things like a Nintendo Switch. Now, me and my family, as in Laura, the boys and I, we don't have a Nintendo Switch. We've Got friends in Spain who've had them and played with them. The boy's uncle, my brother who is here, he's had a Nintendo Switch and we've been playing Mario Kart, we've been playing four player Mario Kart and other games. And it's. And it's a fun thing to do as a family. And again, things that you can do that are different from other people, try and find these things that you can put in that, again, that will make you stand out. All right, so we're talking about the cancelled bookings, the people that they had cancelled. And we're going to finish on gift vouchers. Now, I put this post and I put this question up in the hospitality community about cool and effective ways of setting up gift vouchers. There's a website called gift up app.com where you can create gift vouchers and they just charge a small commission. There is Square. So if anybody knows Square, it's a payment terminal, they're doing gift vouchers. But what I found out as well is that a lot of the PMS's are creating free gift vouchers within their booking system. Now, the reason why this is important is because you can create a credit system. And again, I've been looking to do so with the businesses, the local businesses to me in Javier, the places that I go, if not daily, weekly. So I've been going to the local coffee shop and I've been saying, hey, can I buy, Can I, can I give you some money? You know, I know you can open, so, but can I give you some money? Can I buy credit so I can. When I do come back to Javea, I can just use a gift card or whatever to get my. Get my coffee. Best coffee in the world, by the way. Nostro give a little shout out there. And again, we've done the same thing to our Spanish tutor for Alfie, and we're doing the same things for other places. But again, the surveys and the stats and the results that have been coming out from these consumer surveys is that over 90% of them said that if a place that they stayed so in the past reached out to them and offered this service, then they would go for it. So, again, this is what I want everybody to consider doing and if anybody has had a booking cancel, you can create the gift service voucher and you could just give them a ridiculously good offer. Now, I promised you before I finished to let you know something that is coming up and I want for everybody to put a little date in their diary. I did promise that if we got 10 shares and let me see how many shares we've got. We've got 14 shares. I'm going to give you a date to put in your diary right now. So it is the 25th to the 29th of May. Put that in your diaries, make sure you are doing nothing, make sure you've got that full week boxed off and I'm going to give you another date, the 14th of May, which is. Which is this Thursday. On the 14th of May, I'm going to be letting everybody know about Project Kickstart and this is one of the reasons why I've been. I'm going to stop doing these daily live videos as of Friday. Everything is going to be revealed on Thursday, Thursday the 14th. So make sure you're on my Facebook wall, make sure you're part of the boostly WhatsApp group channel. If you want to get part of that, it's boostly.co.uk daily boost. And I'll put the links in the comments, make sure you're on there because I'm gonna be telling the world about it on Thursday. Now, if all of that sounds good, please do me one big thing. So I know that you've seen this Kickstart, just put Kickstart. If you want to find out more information about it, put Kickstart. So those of you that have tuned in and stayed to the end, Kickstart, I'll make sure that you one of the first to find out on Thursday when I tell you more information about it. Until then, thank you so much for being a part of this. This is obviously a podcast episode. You go to boostly.co.uk podcast to get all of the podcasts that we've been doing. If you've got an iPhone, if you've got an Apple account, please go and subscribe and leave a review on itunes. The Boostly podcast is in the top 25 in the UK for podcasts, which is insane to even be saying those words, but it's thanks to Everybody. We're approaching 20,000 downloads. It's one of the biggest and one of the best podcasts in the world of hospitality. So I do appreciate everybody that does do so. Come onto the YouTube channel, come and subscribe, stick around for more, but keep telling more and more people about this. I obviously will look after everybody that's part of my world. Boostly Academy members, we've got our weekly group call coming up. Book Direct members, the membership, you've got the social media sorted, content all those videos and we've got the book, Direct Map, and, you know, website customers as well. We've got some amazing things to help all of you. So thank you so much for tuning in and I will see you all tomorrow.