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

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 sponsors spontaneous.com. this is an awesome, awesome website which you as a host need to know about. So, Zach, introduce yourself if. And your business.

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, and of course the show. Yeah, a little bit about me. So I, I'm a marketer by trade. I have spent the, 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 got to get out of here. Like, we have to find like a 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 get us out of our lease. And so then we hit the road and we actually spent the next year and a half living full time on Airbnb. And what I mean by that is we literally lived on the platform full time. We actually, 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, 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 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 in travel.

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. You know, the workations as since the pandemic, the rise in the people who are traveling and, 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 a, 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, 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, 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 to access excellent WI fi. Obviously this is limiting depending on, you know, where in the world you are, but get the best WI fi 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 from, 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 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. So optimize, 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. Um, so that, 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 love from our days in the office. I think that that is a fantastic investment. It's incredibly cheap, it's not expensive. But you know, being able to store something like that in, 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.

Let's talk about sponsor. First of all, awesome name. How did you come up with that?

Thank you. Well, it's, it was, honestly, it was kind of just a. Again, I work in marketing. I work, I help many, 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, you know, 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 word spontaneous.

How does it work from a host's point of view? So is it. Is it for anybody? Is there particular criteria that hosts have got to meet to be able 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 over everything else. And then we are really selective with the actual stays that we feature. So, like, we, 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, um, but 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 any time 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 place is free, what we always do, we always curate four weeks ahead of time. So you know, today, 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 hosts. 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. Like a boostly website, right? Well, 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'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, 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, you know, if you could have. If you could have that happen instantly, the minute a booking comes through, it would. It could save you a lot of time, right? Um, 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 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 paying. We've got about 15 customers that we're in this private beta in right now, but going to be expanding that very, very soon.

To everybody, 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. So 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 too. And Liam and Mark, no one paid me to say this, guys, but 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. Thank you, Zach. And yeah, bye for now. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks, guys. Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, Like Bruce Lee? Cause it's so hard on the tea Is loose leaf making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely.