How to idiot proof your business

At the show, I want to very quickly say thank you to our podcast sponsor, which is Hostfully. So those of you that have been.

Hiding under a rock for a very.

Long time and don't know who Hostfully are, they are one of the market leaders in the digital guidebook world. If you haven't yet got a digital guidebook for your hospitality business, please make sure it's the thing that you do today. The best thing about digital guidebooks is it is free. To get started, go to H o s t f U-L-L-Y.com and you can get a free digital guidebook today from Hostfully. What you can do from there is you can inform your guests about any changes that are currently happening in your local area. You can tell them WI FI codes.

You can show them how to use.

The dishwasher and all of those amazing things. It's not just for rentals, it can be used for bed and breakfast as well. So go and get your free digital guidebook by going to hostfully.com there is a freemium option you can upgrade to get more digital guidebooks and more features where you can when you do that, if you'd like two months free, please put Boostly 2M B O O S T L Y 2M in the coupon code section. You'll get two months free. I'll be back later in this episode just to mention Hostfully one more time, but just want to say thank you so much to all of the team at Hostfully for continuing to sponsor the podcast.

It means the world.

So let's get on with the show.

I don't know about you, but one of my pet peeves working in a hospitality industry for so many years is always having to answer the same question time and time and time again. And it got to a point, I always remember this, it got to a point in the season where you just wish that you could just staple the answer to the most common questions on your head so that they literally don't have to. You don't have to answer them anymore. It always got me thinking, how can you make sure that your business is idiot proof in a nicer way of saying it basically so how that anybody can understand. So I've been always been thinking about that ever since being in a hospitality industry. And what I want to explain to you today is steps that you can do to make sure that you never have to answer a pre arrival question from a guest ever again. So my name is Mark Simpson and I give hosts just like you the tools the tactics, the training and the confidence to go and get more bookings. Now today is a really essential episode and so thank you very much for tuning in. If this is the first time that you are tuning into a boostly daily podcast episode, please make sure that you hit the thumbs up button. Go and leave a comment, hashtag bookdirect. Go and tell guests, not guests, hosts about this channel. Because my goal is to help 1 million hosts increase their direct bookings and cut down on their over reliance on the OTAs. Now the most important thing that I recommend everybody that you do is I would take some time and I would go through all of your emails, all of your inbox and go and look for the most frequently asked questions. Now what we're going to do and I want everybody to do is to go and create number one, an FAQ page on your website. An FAQ page on your website can be so powerful and what I would love for you to do, save it. You can get down 10 questions, put the answers down and in your email signature, go and put the link to your faq. So this could be some things, this is pre booking. So this could be, do you accept pets? Do you have parking? X, Y and Z. Now then what you're going to do is you're going to have questions put together for post booking. So pre arrival, post booking. Now for this, it may be a little bit more detail. So what I would be looking to do would again, you need to go and get a digital guidebook. I've mentioned hostfully many times, times at a sponsor of this podcast episode. H, O S T F U L L Y. Go and do a Google search. You can get a free digital guidebook with hostfully and in there I would be putting in your digital guidebook the answers to any pre stay questions. So pre arrival, so pre arrival could be things like have you got a high chair? If you're family friendly, do you provide cutlery? Do you have plastic cutlery? I'm thinking of like, you know, questions that I've maybe asked in the, in the past. You know, is it plastic cutlery? Is it, is it glass cutlery? Do I have to bring anything for my family, for my baby, et cetera, wifi speeds, where is wi fi, how do I access the property? Is there parking? Is the parking spaces big, small, et cetera? I would literally be again going through all of your FAQs and I'd be answering them in a digital guidebook form. So these aren't the sort of things that you would put on your website, these are the sort of things that you would put in your digital guidebook that you can send to a guest after the point of booking. Now the final thing that you need to do is, is you also then need to have the, the post arrival. So after the guest has checked in their questions as well. So for example, if you've got an apartment, if you've got a rental accommodation, you know how to use the oven, how to use the cooker, how to use a coffee machine. But I'd be going a little bit step further here. I'd actually go around your property, take your phone or a camera or a GoPro and just record lots of little videos. I would then take the little videos, upload them to someone like Dropbox or Google Drive and then have them in there and I would label them, for example, how to use the oven, how to use the cooker, how to use the washer. And in the property you can just put a couple of little QR codes and it would be for example, how to work the tv, how to how to work it, Scan the QR code to find out more. Because then once the guest is in the property and they've got that question of how do I turn on the tv, so they then don't have to disturb or disrupt your evening or your day or your member of your staff of a message at 1 o' clock in the morning, what in the WI FI code, they can simply just scan the QR code and they'll be able to find the answer in the Dropbox or the Google folder. And again by doing it once. And yes, it may take a lot of time to do it once, but by doing that then your life will be so much easier to the point of where the guests will have a good experience and they don't have to disturb you by asking Those questions at 11 o' clock at night, how do I turn on the tv? So this is things that you need to be doing to idiot proof your business so that you will never get asked a question again. The best place to start is to go through your frequently asked questions. Now if you haven't got a lot of them, just think along the lines of your customer avatar. Think along the lines of what are the questions that my customer avatar will be asking? And then go from there. Now the beauty of all of this with a digital guidebook, with a Google Drive, Dropbox folder, videos, etc is that it can be amended at any point in time. So you can look to readdress this in 3, 6, 9, 12, months and you can update it as you go. But by doing this, you'll get a lovely back catalog and it just means that you will have an easier life. So go and do that. And I would also love to know the question of the day, are you already doing this? And let me know to the extent that you're already doing this. So leave a comment below. If you listen to the audio version, jump onto the YouTube channel, jump onto the Instagram channel, Boostly UK. Come and find me on LinkedIn, Mr. Mark Simpson, and let me know in the comments of this video. What are you doing to idiot proof your business? Do you have digital guidebooks? Are you doing the videos? Are you? Have you got an FAQ section on your website? And if not, let's make a start doing it. Okay, thank you so much for tuning into this episode. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow for another Boostly podcast episode. Until then, if you want to go find out more about Boostly, go to boostly.co.uk podcast right there is where you can find the full back catalog of.

All of our podcast episodes.

We've got almost 300 episodes, so thank you very much for stopping by and I shall see you tomorrow.