How to increase your direct bookings with confidence - with Chris Maughan of i-Prac

Podcast season 7 episode 13 and today I'm going to show you and talk to you about how by showing confidence then you will increase your direct bookings. Now, what does confidence mean? It's confidence in the guest that by booking directly with you that they are going to turn up to a property. There's been a lot of news over the course of the last couple of months. Airbnb bookings that have gone wrong, people signing up and booking directly with a property that they think is going to be there. But after spending a lot of money realizing they're turning up to a fake listing. Now I invited on Chris from iprac. He's the founder of iprac. He's been based in the south of France and he's been involved in the rental industry for nearly 20 years. In 2014, he will tell this story. He had a family rock up in Cannes in France, spent over £15,000 on a holiday on a booking for it to be a fake. Now, with a heavily unregulated industry as the one that we're in, there needs to be something done about this. And Chris started IPRAC 2014 after that experience. And what he's trying to do is he's trying to create a platform for guests and hosts to have a safe place where people can make a booking, check that they're validated and just have that peace at mind. He'll go on to talk about a lot of things in this episode, but I really want you to go and check out iprac www.I-pracprac.com go and check out the work that they're doing and if you're not yet involved, please do reach out to them, have a discussion and see if it's worthwhile you putting your property on their service and their website. I think that it's amazing the work that he's doing. We had a great chat and I'm really looking forward to seeing what he achieved over the next few years. He's got an ambitious goal that he'll tell you about and he'll also let you know how you can find out more about the work that he's doing and what IPAC are doing. Now, Chris is actually going to be speaking at the same event as me. In one month's time, we are going to be in London for a more direct bookings conference. You can go and check out more by checking out the show notes, but we're both going to be talking. I'm going to be doing a talk all about email marketing and how GDPR should not have scared you off from doing so. And obviously Chris is going to be talking about rental fraud and how by displaying confidence in your property, you'll increase your direct bookings. Right now though, without further ado, I just wanted to quickly thank the Hostfully. They are our sponsor of the Boost hospitality podcast. Go and check out more. Go to boostly.co.uk guidebook. You can then go to Hostfully and get two months free when you put in Boostly to him. Without further ado, let's jump in and get on with the show. What is the one big tip that you would pass on to a hospitality owner when it's about getting more direct?

Simple. It's, you know, display credibility and confidence. If you haven't got that, then your conversion rates are just far too low. So credibility and confidence. So the only way really now is by giving all of your details just to a third party verification system and saying check me out and then show me a verification.

How can you increase direct bookings by showcasing trust and confidence. So as we sort of mentioned it then, and I think a big problem at the moment, if anybody would be looking in the news articles. Over the past month to six weeks, Airbnb has been in the news a lot about rental fraud. And it can work both ways, the guest and the host. So could you just take a few minutes to explain how it works both ways for the guest and for the host and how that fraud may harm their sort of experience?

Let me start with the consumer first. I mean, the consumer, obviously they're booking properties through people they don't know. So whether it's from a booking platform or direct. So let's talk about direct. When you're booking somewhere, whether that you don't know, that's when the problem can come because you're paying in advance for a property that you don't know exist. So that's where the consumer can be affected because they just don't know if the property is going to be there when they arrive. They've created their own new fake listing which they will then throw onto somebody else's platform and start renting it out as a fraudulent listing. That's one of the reasons how we get with the verification process of photos. When we can Google verify where the photos are on the web, you can see whether an owner's photographs are being used, various other listings, and we can find out whether that owner is aware of that to know whether it's a fake listing or not. So there's a lot of, there's a Lot goes on behind the scenes, but I think that's the main areas of where consumers and hosts can get, you know, can experience a level of fraud.

So I guess the next question is like, what is the one most common mistake that you've seen? I mean, you've been doing this for a long time. You know, you've been property yourself and now you're doing eye practice since the middle of 2010s. What's the one mistake that you see accommodation owners make when they start to list their property online? And when it comes to what we're.

Talking about from property owner point of view, I think they think they're too eager to accept the booking. And I think that comes from a varial, you know, various points of view when, I mean, listen, most people who are looking to rent their property, they're not doing it for the. Because they love it, you know, they're doing it for the incomes. Let's be honest. Some of them want to maximize their incomes and do as many rentals as possible. Some choose certain periods to minimise and just pay certain taxes and different things. But I think generally is that they tend to not do enough checks on whether these people are the right people. You have to cash the caution because checks just, you know, we all know the difference in checks. But the day you cash the caution is that's when you know that your client is serious about protecting your property and doing the right thing because they know the caution is going to come back at the end on checkout. So make sure you get the right documents and follow the points of making sure that they pay the caution.

Can you just explain a little bit more of exactly how I PRAC works and who and how it benefits from, both the guest and for the host. So, yeah, big chance here just to sort of delve into it.

I realized that something had to be done that could protect consumers from fraud. And the way to do that was by building iTrack. But I mean, it certainly wasn't overnight. You know, we had six months of research to find out whether there was anything on the market that was doing what we, what we planned to do. We certainly looked at the costings of it. How could it, what was the metrics of it, how could it be built? Who would it benefit? How could it benefit? So there's a lot that went into that. And then when we came up with the platform, it turned into that we could protect consumers, but also offer a platform for legitimate operators to show their credibility through the IPAC approval, through the iprac Logo and online verifications.

How does it work in terms of when the booking is made? So say somebody comes and finds it, makes a booking, booking goes off to the pms, the channel manager, the booking engine at. What part do IPRAC get involved in this? Part of the booking process?

One of the ways, because this was part of our development when we were building iprac, we had to find a way that could verify the booking. And when you go onto the IPRAP website, you will see there's a section on there which says register booking. When you go to that point on the page, you actually put in all of the details of the reservation that you have with that member and you put in the ID number of that member and register the booking. And when you register it, IPRAC receive a copy, the owner receives a copy directly and also the consumer receives a copy and that booking then becomes guaranteed under the IPRAC guarantee. So that's. But if you don't register the booking, then we can't do the guarantee.

So what would you say is at the moment your struggle in trying to get the explanation of IPRAC out there, not only to the consumer, but to the host? Like where, as you sort of say would be your pain points at the moment in trying to get more eyes on this.

I think it's actually just like industry. The actual. The industry itself doesn't seem to see the problem as what it is. I mean, like when we were speaking prior to going on camera, I didn't realize the size of the problem until 2014 when I was looking into it in depth and realized a lot of the problems that were out there. And then with a lot of the research that we've done through our, through our articles and, and media, we've realized that this is quite scary, that only 4 out of 10 victims will report it. So that's like, let's say in percentage, percentage rate, that's only 40% of the people who were getting, who have been frauded are reporting it and 60% are just putting it down to a bad experience or whatever. That's scary. But that's also because there isn't anything out there that, that offers anybody to report it. You've got action. Fraud in the UK is probably the best, but other countries don't offer it. So, I mean, we've got it on our site.

But I was going to say, when you say reporting it, who do you mean reporting it to? You mean, like, say, for example, if somebody makes a booking on say, Airbnb, they rock up and it's it's not there. Are you saying reporting it to Airbnb, are you saying reporting it to the, to the higher people?

Well, it just, I mean, actually taking it to it, taking it to a level of, you know, asking somebody else to do something about it. I mean, let, let, let's be, let's be clear on the fact that most of the fraud that happens is through direct bookings. 90%. I mean, there is a lot of fraud that goes on with the booking platforms and the booking platforms do tend to want to keep it on their hush hush. But if the media get involved, like today with the one with the BBC, the couple in Berlin. No. Is it in Ireland?

Ireland, yeah. Yeah.

As soon as it goes into mainstream media, then obviously the fucking platform, like, oh, we want to do more about this to protect it. But we've heard victims through the platforms have been brushed aside through booking platforms. It's nothing to do with us. If you didn't do the checks, we can't help you. If you're booked off platform, it doesn't matter. So there's a lot of facts that go into it, but generally most of the fraud that's happening is through the direct booking processes, people booking direct from, from Facebook, ads and that type of thing.

In your opinion, is the book Direct Movement a harm at the present moment in time? Because the public or just. I think the general concept is that if you book via booking.com or Airbnb or one of these big platforms, you've got the security. And I think that without something like IPRAC or, you know, something that is out there to say, yep, this is, this is a, this is a solid business, then the book Direct Movement is being harmed at the moment without something like this in place.

Because like I was saying before, if you want to show trust within somebody who's booking directly with you, then they're paying you direct. There's no platform or brand that's protecting you in the middle. Now, you would expect when you're booking through booking.com or Airbnb, you would of course expect that you're protected in some way and you kind of are because of the way that the models work. Because as the consumer pays, the platforms don't release the money to the host until the guest arrives. But that doesn't help the host because sometimes hosts, they can't manage, you know, investment portfolios when they're, you know, getting booking in January but not receiving the money till August.

So I'm a host, I want to, I want to get involved with IPRAC what are the benefits? What sort of things do you do to help that? Like, for example, is there a widget or a logo that goes on the country on the, on the host website? Like, what else do you do to sort of give the host the tools to say, yeah, you know, by booking with us, you're booking securely.

The key factor is the logo and one of the, one of the key aspects of how it works and if you, if you see how the ICRAT logo is, is you have the IPRAT logo and there's a unique ID number in the logo. So every IPRAT logo is unique. There's not one the same because the ID number changes for each member. So when you put your logo. So like certain things like abta, their logo is just an ABTA logo. So fraudster can quite easily take the ABTA logo, put it on a fake website. Consumer confidence there are there an ABTA member and they've created that confidence. With iprac, you can't do that because your ID number is in your logo. And on the IPRAC website, when you type in the ID number on the search box, then that goes directly to your IPRAC profile. Yeah. And that's how it's, and that's how it works. So as soon as you put your IPRAC logo on the site, you, not only are you telling people you're approved, they can actually check you're approved by going onto your profile and checking all of your data. And the data consists of, you know, your name, you. And all of these identifies as approved aspects. So your name, your phone number, your bank account, proof of ownership, the last five digits of the bank account are displayed. So that should match the last five digits of the invoice that they're sending. Yeah, you know, so, so we do a lot of the verification, so. And then after they can prove that that person is legitimate. So that's why we go into so much detail to be able to guarantee that consumers can know that they're protected. And I think just the more mainstream media reporting the problems is affecting hugely the industry, the confidence of the industry on a whole. So I think that so many people are losing a lot of business through not being able to, you know, showcase credibility. So I think we expect that regulation and the way that the direct booking movement is going to leave is that the level of investment that you need to become ITRAC approved is more than affordable against the average that you're earning on a rental for over the year. So when people might turn on and say, you know what, I'm going to invest in a plasma TV. Don't invest in iTrack approval. That will increase more bookings. And I think once people start to understand what iTrack does more, the industry, they'll understand the value and the benefits that they can get out of it. I think that's key. I mean, and we're doing a lot of work next year with BDC and itv, so I think that's going to be quite big for the uk. But we're also looking at building a bigger team and we're actually creating more offices around Europe. And I just think generally it's an achievable goal, but we know that it's going to be difficult. But I think it all depends on how the market changes over to the direct booking movement.

So if I'm tuning into this, I want to go find out more. Where is the best place to go? Where's the best place to find out.

More about IPRA on the website? Everything's on there. The website's been created to cover all aspects, so whether you're a traveler, agent, property owner, ambassador, whichever media, so you can get everything from the website. So www.I-prac.com really appreciate it and people.

Will obviously be going and getting in touch afterwards. Do you have a preferred social media channel of choice if anybody wants to come and find and reach out to you after this?

Me personally, LinkedIn. I mean, I practice on all of the other channels, but I would say LinkedIn is our main focus of social media at the moment.

So if you're on the LinkedIn, go check out Chris. Chris. How would you spell your last name just in case someone wants to go and type it in?

Maughan. M A U G H A N. Great.

Go put that in on a Google search. Put Chris Maughan IPRAC into Google. LinkedIn will obviously come up. Go check in, go connect and say that you discovered him via the Boostly podcast. But for now, thank you everybody that has tuned in. We are, as I said, right at the very start, season seven, episode 13. If this is the first time that you've tuned in to boosted podcast, please make sure you go back and listen to all the other seasons and all the other episodes because you will find out so much more. We've got a season dedicated to direct bookings. We've got a season dedicated to what goes through the guest process when they're making a booking. There's a season dedicated to how to even run a Facebook giveaway. If you want to go find out more, go to boostlead.co.uk podcast, please make sure before you leave to go, rate, review and subscribe. You can do that on any of the platforms that you listen to your favorite podcast and I'll be back for the next week for Season 7 Episode 14. Sa.