How to get more spontaneous stays - tips on Branding and SEO

Thank you. If you're tuning in on the podcast or on the Facebook Live, as we've just gone live on Facebook, this is the Boostly podcast. It's the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the trainings, but most importantly the confidence that you can go out there and get yourself some direct booking. So I'm Mark Simpson's co host, Liam Carolan and today is the Spotlight series where we shine the spotlight on services and people that you need to know about if you're in the hospitality space. So today we've got the founder and CEO Zach Boozy Cruz here to tell us all about spontaneous dot com. This is an awesome, awesome website which you as a host need to know about. So we're talking about last minute stays and how you as a host can fill some of those dates. Certainly if you've got a, an awesome short term rental, we're going to be talking about search engine optimization, we're going to be talking about how you can use branding as a host. And yeah, I'm so excited because Zach is actually a podcast host himself and you can go and check out his podcast which is behind the stays. So Zach, welcome along. Thank you for joining me today.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you first and foremost for, for the timely. I'm a, I'm a big fan of the work that you and Mark are doing and of course the show a little bit about me. So I, I'm a marketer by trade. I have spent the last, actually almost 10 years, I started when I was in college working at a boutique agency that actually serves the nonprofit and higher education sectors. So that's been a lot of fun. I've helped colleges and universities market their programs and their offerings. And then when Covid hit, my wife and I were living in a small one bedroom apartment in Washington D.C. and all of a sudden we were both on zoom calls all day and we were, you know, interrupting each other constantly. It was difficult to focus. And we both kind of like looked at each other one day and we said, you know what, we, we got to get out of here. Like, we have to find like slightly larger space anyways. So we were looking around and we had this crazy idea of like, well, what if we just broke our lease and hit the road and just, you know, tried this whole like digital nomad thing, right? And my wife is, she's actually an attorney so she was able to like work up the necessary language to, to get us out of our lease. And so then we, we hit the road and we actually spent the next Year and a half living full time on Airbnbs. And what I mean by that is we literally lived on the platform full time. We actually, we, we never booked direct. This was before I even knew, knew anything about this world. I know, I know. I feel like, oh, it's terrible now, but like, it was literally, we would, you know, spend our time scrolling on Airbnb, figure out where we were going to stay, you know, the next week, and we'd, we'd book it. And we had a fantastic, you know, experience overall. But one of the things that we learned along the way was that if you had flexibility with your travel and with your dates, you could score a pretty remarkable deal on a home. And so we would find these places that were normally priced at, let's say, $500 a night that if you waited 72 hours before booking, you could get it for $250 a night in some cases, right? Or if you DM to host and you said, hey, I, you know, would love to stay in your home. I can't afford to stay in your home at this particular rate. If it's not booked by 24 to 48 hours before you'd like it to be booked, I'll book it instantly at this price. Right? And doing this, we would send these deals to our friends and our family, and people were just amazed by these remarkable places that would, that seemed a little bit more affordable if you could be, again, flexible with your days and travel. Anyways, we started sending them out via text and email and pretty soon we had strangers saying, hey, can I get on like that list that you send to your aunts and your mom and your cousins? And we thought, hey, maybe we should just whip up a quick little newsletter and offer this to anyone who might be interested. So we wrote a simple, super simple Airbnb like scrape so we could essentially kind of custom filter and custom query in a much more detailed way than you can on, on Airbnb. And we started sending out a hundred to two hundred deals every week and started building out this list, quite frankly of subscribers who were flexible travelers who wanted to be notified if, hey, you know what, I could make a week long trip to, you know, to London for a week for the right price, right? And most people at this particular juncture were still working remotely and many of them still are today. And so the idea of being able to kind of like go on a workcation has never been more popular, which is really conducive to people being able to book these last minute escapes. So that's where the idea of spontaneous came from. And again, we just started out with basically 100 to 150 deals a week. We've since expanded. We've got regional newsletters all over the US We've got a UK newsletter, we've got regional newsletters across the rest of Europe. It's been a really, really fun little project to kind of work on and it's grown so now we're, you know, going, going all in on it. So that's, that's a little bit about it. In its simplest form, it's a newsletter that brings subscribers the best last minute deals and upcoming steals on, on Airbnbs.

That's really cool. And I mean, who doesn't like a deal when they're going to go and stay somewhere? Do you know what I mean? Like this is as a guest, we're all guests, you know, many of the people listening in a short term rental hosts as well. But at the end of the day we've all stayed in these different places. So getting on these newsletters and finding a deal, I don't think there's many people who turn around and go, no, I don't want to know about any good deals, any last minute deals. So first of all, it's a genius idea which more and more people are going to jump on. There's a couple of elements that I want to touch on that you've just mentioned, which was first of all, the work stay. The workations as since the pandemic, the rise in the people who are traveling and working and staying for long periods in the short term rentals is, is just rising and rising. You know, people are able to work from wherever there's Internet now, which is so important. Yeah. Was there anything in particular, Was there any themes when you picked somewhere to stay? Was there any aspects which was really important to you? And I think this is useful for people listening so they can tailor their listings towards travelers like yourself who are looking to stay for long periods of time. What, what sort of amenities did you look for?

Yeah, that's, that's a great question. So one of the things that everyone expects me to say when they ask this question is like, oh, a dedicated workspace. However, I don't think that that's important. I think the reality is people don't want to feel like they're in an office. And so like the reason people aren't going back to their offices is because they, they enjoy working remotely. So I think it's less important to carve out like a, I don't know, like a desk and a super nice, like, little like, you know, workstation. And it's more important to make sure that you have excellent wifi. Obviously this is limiting depending on, you know, where in the world you are, but get the best wifi you can possibly get and make sure that you there are spaces that are conducive to setting up a laptop. So what I mean by that is, hey, maybe spent if you have an island right in, in your home, maybe spend a little bit more time figuring out how could you design the. Especially if you're building something from the ground up, how could you design the island in a way that's conducive to two people being able to kind of like work across from each other on their laptops, Something like that. Right. Or hey, how are you effectively setting up corners and really sort of like spaces to sit in your home with like a lot of natural light, Right. A lot of people are on zoom calls, right. And being in a dark kind of room on a zoom call is, is weird. So are there places where people can pop open their laptops where they'll get a, you know, a good stream of natural light so they look good on their podcast interviews or their zoom calls? Right. Optimizing the spaces that you do have rather than feeling like you have to create a new like dedicated workspace. No one, you know, wants to just sit at a boring desk. So that's one thing. And then the other thing that I would just add quickly here is that if you do want to tailor your stay more towards kind of the work cationer finding, having an external monitor, right. And like the, the appropriate like HDMI cord so that people can take their laptop and plug it into a larger screen and have that kind of double screen effect that many of us love from our days in the office. I think that that is a fantastic investment. It's incredibly cheap, so not expensive. But, you know, being able to store something like that in a closet, maybe even with an external keyboard, could be a huge value add. Would be a huge value add to somebody like me.

That's cool. That's cool. And now you've got me thinking about the backgrounds of, you know, I'm thinking about my short term rentals, thinking, oh yeah, the background's really boring or the windows in the wrong place. And now you're thinking, well, actually, yeah, I use this, you know, this is in front of a window for natural light. And yeah, it's so important those, those points you've touched on. So thank you for that Zach. So let's talk about sponsor. First of all, awesome name. How did you come up with that?

Thank you. Honestly, it was kind of just a. Again, I work in marketing. I've helped many organizations develop brands. And what we really want to be true and what is true about small SA that we want to keep true is this isn't like we're not trying to build like another ota, right? Like, the idea is not necessarily to like build a competitor to Airbnb. The idea is not to build another like, listing site. Really what we want to do is we want to find a way to create opportunities for hosts that do have last minute availability to connect with the best, most qualified, flexible travelers so that the host gets a booking and that the traveler gets some semblance of a discount, right? Whether that's coming in directly, whether that's like a discount on the back end, whether that's just like, you know, maybe more amenities in the home than they would have otherwise received. So when we were thinking about, you know, okay, this is really important to us, what, what name kind of makes makes sense here. We loved the, the word spontaneous. Like the idea of the, the, the rise of the spontaneous. I can't even say spontaneous the real world now, but the rise of the spontaneous traveler has been remarkably significant over the last couple years. And again, we, we just found it in our own behavior and our, our friends behavior of people literally being like, it's a Tuesday, right? Hey, what if we all just like went and worked in, you know, Montreal for next week, right? Literally that. And then by Friday we had booked a place in Montreal. We were all working in Montreal for a week. Like there is again, for, for many people, not everyone obviously, but many, many people have the ability to be incredibly flexible with their traveler, right? To, with their travel, to be spontaneous. So we're like, all right, we love this word. And I just kind of said to my wife, what if we called it spontaneous? And she's like, well, that's a mouthful. And I was like, I know it's a mouthful and it could totally fall flat. But I have a feeling that if we say it enough, and if people say it enough, the next time they hear the word spontaneous, they're going to think of us. And that would be like such a remarkable way.

Like, it's spontaneous.

It was very organic.

Spontaneous in general is just, it rolls off the tongue. But also I think it's very hashtagable. Do you know what I mean? As in, yeah, I've gone on a spontaneous stay, like So I love that.

Yeah.

So how does it work? Let's, let's talk more about from a guest point of view. I get the idea that they can go and sign up for your newsletter and I love the purpose that it is now tailored towards, you know, the, the different areas and I've even seen on the website that you can actually say, well, actually if you're more of a weekend stayer, then sign up for this list. If you're more of a seven day or seven night stay, sign up for this list. Which is cool.

Quick break from the podcast to let you know that the two boostly books that we brought out, the book Direct Playbook and the book Direct Blueprint, are two of the top rated and the best selling in the hospitality category on Amazon for just two pounds. You can grab both of those books right now, the foundations and the structures that you need to put in place is in the Blueprint. And then for 101 marketing tactics, that is in the Playbook. So go and grab a copy on Amazon now just type in Book Direct Playbook or the Book Direct Blueprint and we'll see you on the other side.

How does it work from a host's point of view? So is it for anybody? Is there particular criteria that hosts have got to meet to be able to get onto the newsletter? Or how do you select, I guess, the deals which, which come up?

Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. So I will say right now, at this particular moment, we've been, we've been Airbnb exclusive in that the way that our, our tech runs is we are, we're scraping airbnb. Right? And the reason for that is actually, is actually twofold. One of all the other like listing sites out there, it's, it's because we've built first for the guests. We're trying to build first for like travelers. Right. It's kind of our mantra here. And so because of that, like Airbnb is the most effective as far as I'm concerned with understanding, like, all right, which, which are the places and the hosts that are most reliable. Right. So what we do have is we require everyone, every listing on the site to have a 4.95 star rating or higher. And that's just because that's what we care about is kind of like quality, quality over everything else. And then we are really selective with the actual stays that we feature. So like, you know, we absolutely feature apartments and townhomes and stuff like that occasionally. But most of the stays that we're going to feature are like, are a little bit more unique, right? Maybe like an a frame or like a barndominium or like, you know, some, some, some cool kind of, you know, sexier, if you will, sort of like accommodation, but again, not exclusively. So how folks get on the, get on the list is it's purely organic at this point where we, we do all the scraping ourselves. But the way that we work with hosts is twofold. One, you can join our host partner program. And what that means is anytime that your listing is available during our curation, again, we curate twice a week across the world, your stay will automatically be included in, in our curation. So basically you pay an annual membership and then anytime your, your place is free, we, what we always do, we always curate four weeks ahead of time. So, you know, tomorrow morning a newsletter will go out and it'll feature weekend long stays across the next four weekends, right? So if you are a part of our host partner program and you have a place that's available over those next four weekends, it'll automatically be included in our curation. So that's one way that we work with Host. The other way that's a little bit more interesting is we built a product called Ping. And what Ping does is Ping. It integrates with your Airbnb calendar or whatever calendar you want, like your single source of truth as a host. And what it does is it allows folks to come to like, let's say you have a direct booking website, like a boostly website, right on that site. What we can do is through this little widget, someone can sign up and I can say, oh, hey, like, Liam's place looks really, really cool. It's booked out during like the time that, you know, I, I'd like to be able to stay there, but I'd like to be notified immediately if new dates become available or if a cancellation occurs. So a lot of hosts, right? And when a cancellation does come in, they'll post on Instagram or they'll send, you know, you know, if, when they get around to it, they'll send an email blast to their, to their contacts and they'll say, hey, you know, next weekend just became available. Book it now. Right? And that's great. But oftentimes, like, if you could have that happen instantly, the minute a booking comes through, it would, it could save you a lot of time, right? So we built a product that does that. So what Ping does is it allows guests to be notified when their favorite Airbnbs become available. So, you know, Ping lives on your direct booking site. And then what's kind of cool about this is it uses the power. It leverages the power of Airbnb and the power of Airbnb's calendar and algorithms and whatnot. But then you can ship people to your direct booking site. So, like, when I opt in and I say, hey, I want to be notified if any week in October becomes available for Liam's place, right? I'm using Airbnb's calendar to tell me, like, when that availability might exist. The minute there's a cancellation on Airbnb or any other ota, there's going to be an email that gets sent directly to me that says, hey, Zach, Liam's place is now available. Book it here, you know, via Airbnb or book it here via Liam's direct booking site and save 20% or whatever it is. So that's, that's the second product that we've built for hosts so far. And yeah, again, this, all this stuff is quite new. We're in beta for Ping. We've got about 15 customers that we're in this, you know, private beta in right now, but going to be expanding that very, very soon to everybody.

That's amazing. And there's two things I really like about, about your products. First of all, you know, we've got saying here, which is Bruce Lee, which you've got to remain top of mind. So for your guests, you know, using email lists, which you guys have built out this amazing newsletter, you know, we're encouraging hosts to send out regular emails to keep top of mind so they don't forget to, you know, when they want to stay somewhere. But what you've just mentioned there is perfect for. There's a lot of places, which I see. I mean, I get to see some amazing places talking to people and, you know, places where I would go and stay. The trouble is that once it's out of mind, I'm not going to be searching that calendar to try and find the dates. But using something like Ping that you've just mentioned, that would be perfect because you'd get notified when those dates come up. And then as a host, the chances are, providing you've got, you know, one of these awesome spaces and, you know, you. It's a bit wow, you know, it's got these high WI fi speeds, then you'll be able to fill those dates nice and easily and you shouldn't have gaps or there's less chance of having gaps because as soon as it's sent out, I imagine, I imagine some of those Dates go quite quickly if they're, if they're great deals, you know, and it works for both host and for the guest. And I think, I think there's an aspect around any discounted last minute stays where, where as hosts even I still feel it where I cringe a bit. I'm like, I don't give stuff away too cheaply. But yeah, at the same time, on every empty night, I make nothing. You know, on every single empty, I make absolutely nothing. And providing as a host is another thing that we encourage people to, is work out your costs. You know, what, what are your energy costs? What, what is your, what is the cost of having it at a certain price point where as long as it covers everything, you're not losing money.

Exactly.

And then how much? And often that's quite a low. That's quite a low rate. So ultimately, as long as you're selling your, your home, and especially now as we record this, we're in January, I know there's a lot of hosts out there looking to try and get bookings. So by sending out, you know, emails to email lists or becoming part of services like Spontaneous, then, you know, the chances of getting it filled is, is a lot higher, which is cool. So, yeah.

One, sorry, one last note on that. Quickly, Liam, I think what you brought up was such a fantastic point is also like the repeat guest component. So, like here, here are like two, like real stories. Real quick. One, my wife and I, so we found this beautiful, incredible, like, cottage in Booth Bay Harbor, Maine. It's like this coastal escape. And we wanted to stay there for a couple of weeks, but it was pretty expensive. So we DM to the host. We're like, hey, like, this is who we are. This is what we're doing. You know, we're willing to stay in anywhere, you know, between three days and like three weeks. Is there a way that like, you know, we could, we could fit into your calendar, but is there any way we could get like a percent discount on our sales? I think is what we asked for. And she was like, she looked at her calendar, she was like, you know, these two weeks, they're typically lower for me, you know, in my calendar anyways. Yes, book these two weeks. It's a longer stay. She doesn't have to spend as much on, you know, turning the place over and whatnot. Like, great, like, let's do that. And anyways, we did that. We had such a remarkable, like, time. We became very good friends with this host and we've been back three times since. And We've paid full price because we now know like, the quality of the space. Right. And like, we, we, we love Suzy the host. Another ping customer just, you know, sent, sent us an email the other day saying like, hey, you know, they, they had somebody that came off of a discount and then again, like six months later they came and they booked direct, but they booked direct at full price. Right. Not with a discount. So I do, you know, I think anytime people talk about repeat guests, it depends on, you know, the home and the market and all that stuff. But it can also be a really great strategy to get people in the door, especially to your point, Liam, if you have a unique space and then again, if they have a great experience, they'll come back and they'll book directly with you and hopefully they'll book directly at like, you know, the price that, that you, you normally charge during that season. So I don't think all that is to say is I don't think offering last minute deals means that you have to like always offer people that, you know, that low price. I think when it comes to repeat guests, you can actually increase the price if you've delivered the value that your listing promised.

I love that. That's, that that value is the key thing, isn't it? Because it's not about price, it's about guests feeling they've got a little bit of higher value than what would necessarily normally happen is there. And that's, that's the key thing. So one thing I'd love to ask, and this is going slightly off piste, is that you've stayed in obviously a lot of Airbnbs. And one of the messages which I always like to convey to hosts is that you need to be consistent as a host. You know, if somebody comes and stays, especially if it's a repeat guest, they can't have a different feeling about their stay each time they stay. So one time it's a meet and greet, the next time it's a lockbox, the next time the wi fi doesn't work. Do you know what I mean? As in it's always pretty consistent. Did you find that having stayed in so many Airbnbs and for that long period, a year and a half of staying in, in Airbnbs, did you find that there's a huge difference in consistency from stay to stay, from host to host? And if so, what advice would you have for hosts if you were speaking to some of those hosts that you stayed with?

Yeah, so short answer is yes, there, there's a lot of, there's a lot of inconsistency in like, guest experience. Right. Which I actually think is like a remarkable opportunity for, for the hosts that, you know, want to rise above and the people that want to not just like, you know, rent out their spare bedroom, but I want to build, you know, something of like a boutique hospitality branch. Right. And I think a couple things come to mind. One is there are like, table stakes that exist that people think are like, amenities, but they're just expected. Meaning, like fast WI fi, right, is not a true amenity. It's, quite frankly, unfortunately, it's, it's just, it's a necessity. Right, right. In, in this day and age. Now, again, obviously that depends on kind of like where in the world you are and then, you know, whatnot. But the reason Airbnb now gives you the opportunity, right, to like, upload your Wi Fi speed right on your actual listing is because that's incredibly important to people. So that isn't fast WI fi is not like this, like, selling point in the way that it might have even been like two or three years ago. What I'd say in terms of just a consistent guest experience is Airbnb's short term rentals. You are competing with other hospitality brands. Like, people are choosing to stay in your place rather than staying in a hotel. And unfortunately, it's not always just because they want to bring more people and it's quote unquote, cheaper, right? Sometimes that's the case. But for a lot of travelers it's, hey, I want, you know, I still want sort of that vacation feeling. I still want that like, luxury experience that I might get in a, in a hotel, but I also want to be able to cook my own meals, right? And so they're looking for spaces that are larger, that might accommodate, you know, a full kitchen, but, but they still expect, right, the, the hospitality component of the vacation to come through in the same way that you walk into a beautiful hotel room, right. And everything. It's the illusion of perfection, right? And I think that that illusion of perfection still needs to be applied to the short term rental space, especially for, for hosts that like, want to increase their prices over time. They want to do well, they want to build a hospitality brand for themselves. I think that there's a dearth, quite frankly, of like, you know, boutique hospitality brands in this space that are managing portfolios of homes that are doing so in a consistent way. Oftentimes you'll find a couple of hosts with two or three properties and, you know, their two or three properties are in Totally different places in the state. So the likelihood of me going to more than one of, of Liam's properties in the United States is probably slim. However, if I have an exceptional experience at Liam's, you know, chic cabin in Connecticut, right. I might tell my friends and family who live in California, oh, by the way, I just stayed in this Airbnb. This guy was amazing. He's got this other place in San Diego. You should go and stay there. Right? So it can, it can help with referrals and whatnot. But at the end of the day, to answer your question a little bit more succinctly, unfortunately, I don't think that there is been a great like standard applied to the industry about like what a great Airbnb stay or what a great short term rental stay looks like. And I think the, the reality is there's so much diversity in short term rentals in terms of like homestay and home type and location and region that it's hard to do so. But I guess the last thing I would say an encouragement for hosts is always deliver more value than you think you should. And if you always deliver more value than you think you should, your guests are going to have a great time. If you're trying to skimp on value for the sake of saving money, don't do that. Instead, increase the price, right. So that you can increase the value and then, right. Once you do so, deliver an exceptional experience. Never cut the value. If you cut the value right, that's where you get into like terrible, like scary waters of somebody leaving a four star review or you know, God forbid, something lower than that, right? If you are worried about cutting value, increase price a hundred percent.

A hundred percent. And you know, I've, we sometimes have conversations or I see conversations on Facebook friends of how many dishwasher tablets should we leave or how many of this. You just go, really? If we're down to measuring, you know, a seven pence tablet at this stage, well, we need to, we need to really be thinking about the end user, about what their experience is and what that kind of conveys to a guest as they check in.

100%.

I think it's so important and we've so many awesome tools around, like dynamic pricing. I spoke to a host yesterday who was surprised to see some of the rates which we've got set for for June and July. And I said, yeah, but you look at the rates now and there is a difference. But that is what pays for the extra value that I can then provide. It's not like that's just all bottom line profit. That just means that we can get the better duvets, we can get the better pillows, we can make this stay more comfortable for people, you know, putting a few extra amenities in and things like that. So I think that's a great point.

Zach, if you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boostly and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only your niche, but could be in your location as well. Boostly has helped over 2, 000 hospitality businesses all over the world increase their direct bookings. And if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to Boostly. B o o s T-L-Co.uk call and booking an appointment with one of our sales team.

One thing I'd love to ask is obviously you've got background of marketing, so what I'd love to ask is, is there any top tips that you have for hosts regarding branding, what they should be doing and what mistakes they should avoid?

Yeah. So one of the things that I see that's maybe a little bit of like a hot take is that not every Airbnb, not every short term rental needs an Instagram, right? Like you absolutely need an Instagram if you're trying to build a true hospitality brand. If you're not, right. And if your place quite frankly isn't that unique, that's okay. You don't need to spend time building a brand, right? Like if you, if you have a, you know, a basement apartment that you rent out in the city, right? Even if it's designed really well, I don't think it's worth building a brand around something like, like, and you don't have ambitions of like building, you know, know more or, or being known as like the Lux basement guy, right, in the uk, Assuming that that is not an aspiration of yours, it's not worth your time, quite frankly. Building a brand. Building a brand is incredibly hard. Marketing is incredibly hard. Trying to increase Instagram following so that you can increase your direct bookings, incredibly hard. Totally, totally, totally worth it if you're interested in building a hospitality brand, right? And so what, what I say to hosts all the time, like I, I've. And Liam, I think you mentioned this at the forefront, but I host a podcast called behind the Stays and I interview Short term rental hosts all across the spectrum who have homes of all shapes and sizes. But I feel like I've sort of found my niche in like the Instagram, like worthy homes and spaces where, you know, I talk with folks on, on our podcast who have had, you know, 50, 60, 70, sometimes 150,000 followers to like their cabin, right? And for them, building a brand is 100% worth it because, you know, 90% of their bookings are direct. Because they've done great work on Instagram, they've built a unique stay, they've marketed the heck out of it, they've leveraged influencers, they've done all that. That's also a lot of work. It's a lot of work, right? What I say to folks all the time is don't worry about building a brand. Don't worry about marketing. Unless you are interested in actually doing something other than, you know, one listing. If it's really just one listing or even just like two listings, in my opinion, quite frankly, it's, it's not worth all the work unless these listings are like remarkably unique. If they're remarkably unique, even if it's one, totally worth it. But I think why I'm saying all this, and not to be like a Debbie Downer or whatnot, but I see a lot of people who, they have very average, very standard kind of accommodations that are trying to post about them on Instagram and build up a following there. And I just, I don't see it working. I don't see it working. I actually think your time would probably be better spent thinking about how do I increase sort of the value of my space or how do I just deliver exceptional, exceptional experience to my guests who are going to come from the OTAs, rather than trying to spend all this time building up my own brand so that I can increase direct bookings. I don't think it works for everybody.

That's called, it's one of those things where we see hosts trying to build an Instagram for each individual property. Whereas if they're looking to become a property manager, one of the things we do talk about is having a brand which sits above the 100 individual listings and then, then it's worthwhile. But yeah, sure, we certainly see some hosts which we talk to who are more aiming towards midstay and contractor bookings. And you know, sometimes when we first speak to them, they go, yeah, we're trying Facebook ads. And you go, well, contractors don't necessarily spend time on, on Facebook. They're not looking to book their work. Stay on, on Facebook. So it might be better to look at, you know, making sure you've got a good direct book and website and concentrate on LinkedIn or focus on scraping the OTAs to bring bookings to your direct bookings. There's lots of different ways to do it. But I think you're right. There's that traditional path where people think, hey, if I'm going to get more bookings, I'll just post on Instagram and it'll bring me bookings. And it does for the wow Homes and it does for brands. I've certainly seen certain brands build up huge followings. But when it comes down to, it comes down to what do you want, doesn't it? It comes down to what, what is the aim? And even in the book Direct Playbook, which, which Mark writes.

Yeah.

It talks about, first of all, you have to know who is, who's coming to stay.

Yeah.

And then figure out where they hang out. So if, if who it is, who's coming today is contractors and workers. Don't, don't go and post it on Instagram. It's just not going to work and you know, it's not where the market's going to come from. So, yeah, I get, I get your point. And it's an interesting one and quite diverse as well.

So one, one last thing on this, Liam, is it's just, I love that you brought up sort of like focusing on other pawns to sort of like source guests. Guests from. What I would just say, to even take it a step further is like, if you don't have a particularly unique space, you're way better off playing the SEO game and trying to build your direct booking site. And then think about, okay, I am going after contractors in this particular country or region or town. How do you rank for those long tail keywords? Right. So like, and I'm searching for, you know, affordable stays in X town in October or something like that. Right. Like, that's, that's what we would call a long tail keyword. It's a very specific search. Right. You are way better off spending your time and energy and attention in building up your direct booking with those keywords, with content around those keywords so that you rank for that searcher than you are posting on Instagram. Like, if that's, if that's your target market, if you know that that's like the guest that's most likely to stay in your place, forget social media entirely and instead invest in your website and SEO.

I love that. And you beat me to it that was going to be. My next question is how do you feel about SEO? So absolutely. That is, that's so important. So let's talk more about just generally hospitality. Is there anything that you're excited about in hospitality at the moment or anything that's happening with the future of spontaneous.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So the short answer is I'm super excited about this space because I think it's just, and people talk about sort of like the Airbnb bus and people, you know, there's definitely like a lot of like, you know, doom and gloom news out there right now. However, I think that this is, we're like in like the first couple innings of this like, you know, hospitality, you know, 3.0, dare I say of sort of like this, this moment where we have, there's obviously a lot of institutional capital that's coming into the short term rental space. But beyond that, I do think what we're seeing is we're seeing more entrepreneurs who are coming into the space, right. And thinking about like, huh, what would like, you know, the Ritz Carlton of short term rentals look like? Or you know, what would it look like to be able to build a super boutique collection of container homes across, you know, North America or something like that. And what I get excited about is I see people who have built businesses, I see people who have entrepreneurial spirits, I see people who really understand branding and marketing coming into this space and, or you know, people that have been in the space for a long time kind of pivoting and learning more about these, these kind of like new school thoughts and strategies. And I, I get really excited because I think what's happening is we're living through a moment right now where he travelers myself and you know, my, my peers included are actually designing vacations around staying in particular homes. So we're going to like, you know, the middle of nowhere Vermont, or we might go to some, you know, coastal, you know, English town, whatever it might be. It's not London and it's not, you know, New York City. Right. But we're doing it because we want to stay in this, a frame or we want to stay in this container home. And we'll figure out like what to do, what, what else, you know, there is to do around the area once we get there. Right. And I think like, this is not a unique experience. This is not like a one off, like anecdote. I'm hearing this more and more and more and more and more and more with people to the point where the folks that I have on my podcast, I mean, they've got like waiting lists of like, you know, a couple thousand people that want to come and stay in their place. And so I get really excited about more entrepreneurs coming into the space. I get really excited about brands like Wander. I don't know if you've looked at Wander and what they're trying to do. They're trying to like verticalize the space a little bit more. They're, they're, you know, venture backed and a lot bigger. But I think what we're going to see is this radical revolution of prioritizing incredible, unique experiences and then being able to charge appropriately for them. And that people are going to come and they're going to stay and they're coming to the stay as the pinnacle of their vacation. And then everything else that they do around that place is like an add on or a, or a bonus, but it's not their primary reason for travel. And I think that that shift culturally is massive and it opens up a lot of opportunity for the hospitality space.

That's cool. That's cool. And that, that plays into obviously Brian Chesky's sort of, you know, people used to go, hey, I want to go to, I don't know, the Gulf Shores or I want to go and then select in the place to go. Whereas what you're saying there is that actually people are going to start to find out about these awesome places and go, do you know what? I love the idea of that experience. I can picture. And people don't book, do they, based on budget, they book based on the emotive, what they feel about it. And I mean, obviously comes into play. But it is first and foremost they picture themselves there. They picture how they feel, spending time there, and that is where they're going to go and stay. So I really like the idea of that. So as we come to the end of these, there's two more questions which I would love to ask. So in fact, let's, let's go for three as a quick one. Where was the last spontaneous stay that you had?

Ooh, the last sponsor day that I had was in. It was actually in northeastern Ohio. And it was because I was supposed to say a place last minute. The host had to cancel and I was on a road show for our podcast. The host had to cancel for some reason and I had like, I was literally on my way to their place. So I had a few hours to try to find another place and book it and I did. I was able to find another place and book it within like a couple hours. So. So, yeah, that was not very exciting. But yeah, Northeastern Ohio.

Hey, it goes to show that the whole system works. Yeah. Is there a mantra or a saying which you really like to live by or one that resonates with you?

Oh, I, I always struggle with questions like this because it's hard to not just pick like super cheesy things, but the thing that I say the most kind of like my, my sign off in like emails and like in letters to people is, is always like, greater things are yet to come. And I think that, like, that's just the optimist in me always, always sort of like, you know, realizing that it's, you know, life, life is going to throw a lot of things at you. A lot of things that are unexpected. But I don't know, I always, always, always hold on to that mantra that, you know, greater things are yet to come. So, yeah, that one's kind of cheap, but yeah, there you go.

I love it. I love it. It's one which, which I believe as well, you know, that is that eternal optimist is entrepreneurial optimism. So, yeah, how can everybody who's listening to this, I mean, we promised some great value today, Zach, and you've definitely delivered on. Talking about branding, SEO, some of the tips just in general for hosts and of course talking about spons. How can people come and find out more about spontaneous and also give you a follow and podcast as well?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you can just go to spons. We actually also rank. If you Google last minute Airbnb deals, we rank number one. So we've done a lot of SEO work there and that's been a lot of a huge moment for us a couple months ago when that happened. So. So yeah, you can just Google last minute Airbnb, Airbnb deals, you can go to sponsaneous. Com and then you can find our podcast behind the Stays. Wherever you get your podcast, where we're everywhere. You could also go to behind the stays.com, if that's easier for you. And then in terms of, you know, me, I'm very active on, on LinkedIn and Twitter. I can just give you my handles, if you don't mind, Liam, and we can drop them in the show notes for anyone that might want to, you know, connect with me there. But the last thing I would just say too is I'm super, you know, excited to, to meet anyone and everyone in this space. And so if you are listening to this and you, and you want to, and you're a host or an entrepreneur in the space and you want to be on my podcast. I'm always looking for great guests, so would love to interview any, any of the Boostly fans out there on my show as well.

There's some amazing hosts I know in the community, so I'm sure you'll get some people get in touch with you. Zach, and thank you so much for today. And thank you too. If you're watching this on the Facebook Live or listening in on the Boostly podcast, I know there's a lot of places you can put your attention. And we really thank you for spending it with Boostly. I hope you picked up some wonderful tips today. And I'd just like to say thank you again, Zach. You've been amazing. Anything I missed or any last moments before we sign off?

No, other than just thank you so much for the work that you all do. I believe for what it's worth to you and you know, Liam and Mark, no one paid me to say this, guys, but like, direct bookings are the future. If you're interested in building a hospitality brand and figuring out the right tech stack that you need, the right solutions that you need in order to do that. We're really just at the cusp of figuring out everything that we need in order to be successful here. So I think that what you guys are doing is incredible for the community. I can't endorse you all enough. And yeah, I'm excited to, in a very small way, help contribute to that. So thanks for the opportunity and thanks for the time.

Thank you for that wonderful endorsement as well. I mean, he genuinely wasn't paid for that and I didn't know. So thank you, Zach. And yeah, bye for now. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks, guys.