How to Increase Your Direct Bookings With Confidence - with Chris Maughan of I-Prac S7E13

Foreign.

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, 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 sort of 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 list, 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. 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 that 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 of 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 achieves 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 I practice. 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 the 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 will increase your diary book.

Right now though, without further ado, I.

Just wanted to quickly thank the Hostfully. They are our sponsor of the Boost hospitality podcast. Go 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. Without further ado, let's jump in and get on with the show.

Chris, if you could just do us a big favor. We're going to go straight in with the quick fire question. So the first question, what would you say is your company's or your superpower?

Good question. It has to be consumer protection from it. We do a lot of different things, but I think consumer protection has to be what we do there. If we had to say a superpower, it would be definitely consumer protection. It's what I Pratt was built on. So certainly consumer protection.

Consumer protection.

I like it.

Okay, the next one. What is your favorite business book?

Oh, God. Got a few of them. But I would have to say it would be Shoe Dog with Phil Knight.

The Nike book.

Yeah. Okay, have to go with that one.

Nice, nice. All right, so next one then. In the past year, what is your favorite purchase under a hundred pound or euro, because obviously you live in France.

You know what, this is quite strange one, but I would say it's a key finding alarm because I'm terrible with keys and I've got this alarm for less than it was, about €65. And you get six of them and you attach them to the keys and as long as you've got your phone, you can find your keys.

Brilliant.

I like that brand. Do you know what the brand name is? Just in case anybody's thinking I lose my Zapu. Zapu like it.

Yeah.

On all good key alarm shops, I'm sure. All right, so we've chatted off there. We had a little chat about podcasts. Do you have a favorite podcast at the present moment?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, my favorite podcast, I would say is Waking up Sam Harris. I mean that's basically through a private, through a private passion because I'm big on, you know, personal development and biochemistry and this type of thing. So his podcast goes right into how the brain works and I'm, I love all that kind of stuff. So that's at the minute it's certainly Sam Harris.

So I know that he's got an app out at the moment to help with meditation. Have you experimented in that?

Yes. Yeah, I've experienced, I mean, I've been, I've been doing meditation for years. You know, I do, you know, I mean, some people call it meditation, I just call it sitting in silence, just, you know, collecting your thoughts. I mean, meditation is this big buzzword now, isn't it? But I think just sitting in silence is just good as anything to do, you know, to just take control. But yeah, I've tried as I've tried his app and he's, yeah, he's, I mean, he knows everything about it. So he knows all the, he knows all the techniques. So it's. Yeah, he's, he's good at what he does.

Yeah.

I think when you're a father of three children and a busy business owner, just being able to sit in silence is the best way of just saying what meditation is. I could totally relate to that. All right then, so let's, let's finish off, right, with these quick fire questions. With a question I like to ask everybody is what is the one big tip that you would pass on to hospitality owner when it's about getting more direct bookings, those lovely direct bookings instead of those OTAs? What's your one big tip that you would pass on?

It's 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. If you have 100%.

Okay, how would you, a quick, sort of quick answer, how would you best display that someone's listening going, right, I want to do this. How would you best display that?

I mean, without promoting. Obviously I practice too much of the solution. I mean, that is, what is the best solution out there? Because it's third party. And as you know, when anybody can speak well about their own business or their own property or their own services, it's when other people come in and do it for you. And with reviews. Reviews were very popular back in the day, but they're quite easily created by fraudsters. So the only way really now is by giving all of your details to a third party verification system and saying, check me out and then show me your verification for me. That's the only way is by showing your credibility through a third party verification platform.

I like that. Well, you're definitely going to dig into IPRAC later on in this interview because it is a service that 100% needs to get explained for everybody to have a look at. So we sort of talked about this Topic, and the topic is, as we know, 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 you anybody would be looking in the news articles. Over the past month to six weeks, Airbnb has been 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?

Yeah, certainly. Let me start with the consumer first. I mean, the consumer. 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 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 exists. So that's where the consumer can be affected because they just don't know the property is going to be there when they arrive. So that's from a consumer point of view. I mean, as far as a host is concerned, I mean, hosts are coming to a different level now because I think since the growing point of Airbnb is that now this home sharing platforms of like, sometimes not so much people renting the whole house, but actually inviting people they don't know into their own home. So, I mean, I think that's, I think, I mean, 15 years ago you would have said you were mad to think that that was going to happen, wouldn't you? But, yeah, but it's happening and it's, and it seems to be people are making a lot of money out of it, People are traveling on the back of it. And that's one area where people are coming into the owner's home and theft is happening, identity theft is happening. They're taking control of certain aspects of that property. You know, so there's, there's theft that's going on within the property. There's also the, when you're renting the whole house is you don't know who's going in. So even though you're interested in taking that £5,000 a week or £2,000 a week booking, that's the main interest. But who's going in your property? And what we found with some of the research we've done with IPRAC is that sometimes the fraudsters are actually renting legitimate properties, entering the property under the normal circumstances, taking the Photographs as they would, getting all of the relevant information they would need to create a listing on that property and then checking out through ordinary circumstances. But then what they've done is they've created their own new fake listing, which they will then throw onto somebody else's platform and start renting 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 in 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.

Yeah, I mean, you just have to look on the news over the course of the last couple of months, and there was that case in. Well, there's the cases that I see in the hospitality community Facebook group. This is not even media news like the hospitality community group. People coming in, and there's a one owner that had a booking over Halloween, and basically they hired it out for a party. And, you know, there's. They did the check. You know, they did the check of what they needed to do to, you know, the very basic check. But when it came to it, the.

Person who came into it had a.

Party, and the only way that they found out was because their neighbor of the property called them and said, listen, I think you need to get to your property because there's a big party happening. And visa is scary because right now there'll be people tuning into this who will either have one rental or they could have several rentals. They may not be in the same town as where these rentals are. They're just managing it from afar.

Yes.

Yeah, remotely. And one of the things when you do this is that it's something that you can easily forget about because you're so, so enamored. Getting the property ready, getting pictures taken, getting a website, getting social media, getting on these listing sites and getting it out there. This is one of the things that you just don't think about. And 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 too. 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 order point of view, I think they're too eager to accept the booking. And I think that comes from a various points of view when I mean, listen, most people who are looking to rent their property, they're not doing it 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. Because, you know, I mean, a big factor is that a lot of people don't tend to, even in the short term rental industry. I know a lot of people say they do it, but they don't. When they, they say that they take the passport of their, all of their guests, they do not. And I mean, and everybody out there knows who's guilty of it. And you have to. And there is now a technology that can help with that. But that's a big thing because a lot of these people who have intention to cause damage or not respect the rules tend not to want to go down the avenue of giving personal details and passports and things like that because if there's any damage then you've got the passport of that person, then you can have that constructed at the end of it and you could report it and you could probably find that person through their passport and press charges. So people don't really want to, people like to hide, you know, if you've got nothing to hide, then you tend not don't mind to give you a passport or certain information and documents to enter into a rental. But I think owners are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, take the money. And as soon as they have that money they feel that that's the job done and that's the error that they make. So they need to continue down the process of getting the relevant documents to verify who they are. And also the biggest part is to cash the caution. None of this I'll hold the check business, 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, 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. That would be the two advice I would make sure that people do.

So let's dig into IPRAC a little bit more because I think everything, what we're going to say is just going to come around to it. So you created it, you know, in your bio I checked out, you created after seeing a family in Cairns out of pocket because of a dodgy listing.

Yeah.

Can you just explain a little bit more of exactly how IPRAC works and who and how it benefits from both the guest and for the host. So if you have a big chance here just to sort of delve into a little bit more. Okay.

Well, yeah, I mean, that's how it all kind of started. I mean, I, like, been in the industry since 2000. Back in 2014, our office got a call from a pretty distressed lady who had been, basically, she was on the side of the road with her three children, husband and 16 suitcases. And to cut a long story short, we got them to our office, we found them alternative accommodation. But basically what happened is they rented a place for 15,000, a luxury villa in Cannes, 15,000 pounds. And that turned out to be a scam, no way of getting the money back. And they were left absolutely devastated. So where it kind of came for me was I actually had this family in my office, like, literally on in front of me, and as a father as well, and I could see the distraught faces of the three children who had no idea what was going on. The mother and father obviously bickering, and understandably because there was emotions happening, who was to blame, who booked, who paid. But eventually that kind of calmed down. We got them set up in an apartment, and two days later we delved in with this couple and found out exactly what happened. So as an industry, you know, somebody passionate about the industry, I looked into it and found out that this wasn't just an ins. You know, it's not a. It wasn't just a sole incident. And I realized that something had to be done that could protect consumers from fraud. And the way to do that was by building an eye, building ifrac. 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 IPRAC approval through the IPRAC logo and online verification. So basically what IPRAC does is owners and agents can apply to become a member. We go through a in depth robust application process where they provide an application document plus supporting documents such as passport, bank accounts, emails, proof of ownership, several documents that we need to be able to benefit, to be able to verify that particular owner or agent. So once we do that and they pass the approval, they become officially IPLAC approved, where they get their logo, they get their certificates, they get their online verification system which is all linked through their ID number which is in the logo. So from a consumer point of view, if they book through an IPRAC member, they're 100% protected. From a property owner or a property manager's point of view, if they become IPRAC approved, they can showcase credibility through the IPRAC platform. So it's the third party verification. So they're not, you know, it's like John from New York or wants to rent a two bedroom house in London from June and June says, yeah, don't worry about that, you can trust me. Let's be honest, John from New York just, he just doesn't have that confidence. What John from New York needs is somebody else to say you can book with June with 100% confidence. Here's why and this is the reason and that's why I practice building that community of people using it to be confident in what they're booking and agents and property owners are using it to increase their credibility on the market. That's pretty much what it is.

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?

Well, one of the, one of the ways, because this was part of our development when we were building iprat, we had to find a way that could verify the booking. And if, 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 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.

Mmm.

It's not because you just. I saw an IPAT member online, I booked it. I want the guarantee. That can't happen. There's no way we could guarantee that. So you have to register the booking, but it's, it's a 30 second process, but it's the only way you can do it.

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 at present moment.

I think, 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 media, we've realized that, and this is quite scary, that only 4 out of 10 victims will report it.

Wow.

So that's like let's say in percentage, percentage rates, that's only 40% of the people it will be informed of 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 offers anybody to report it. You've got action. Fraud in the UK is probably the best, but other countries don't offer it.

Yeah.

So, I mean, we've got it on that. We've got it on our site.

But I was gonna 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, I'm just, I mean, actually taking it to. Taking it to a level of, you know, asking somebody else to do something about it. I mean, let's be, let's, 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 the hush hush. But if the media get involved, like, like today was 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 booking 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 Facebook ads and that type of thing.

So in your opinion, is the book Direct Movement a ham 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.

100%. 100%. 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. Yeah, you know, this is another problem. Why the direct booking movement is gonna, is gonna boom. But the direct booking movement needs to.

Have.

More protection because if you're a legitimate operator wanting to go into the direct booking movement and slowly come away from OTAs because you can't do it overnight. Because most of these hosts have actually invested 3, 4, 5, 6 years of marketing into the platform and that's 95% of their income and their bookings. So to just turn around and stop the booking, the OTA is just impossible. So you have, that has to be a transition, that has to be a slow transition of generally going from OTAs over to direct bookings. But there is no way you're going to have a firm direct booking business unless you can prove credibility. You can spend 15, 20,000amonth on marketing and generate, let's say, 50 inquiries. But if you can't convert them 50 inquiries because the end person doesn't trust you, then there's no point spending that money on marketing. Always get your trust factor first and then you can concentrate on marketing and service.

Yeah, you've got to have that systems and structure in place. And so I'm a host, 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, yep, you know, by booking with us, you're booking securely?

Yeah, well, 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 IPRAT 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 Fausta 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 IPRAT 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 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. So we do a lot of the verification 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 then you get the confidence, you get the trust and then the bookings will come on the back of it. I like that. So it goes along nicely, what we've been chatting about. Now, you've set some ambitious goals. I read that you wanted a target of 1 million members by 2022.

I love that.

How are you going to. How do you plan on achieving that?

I'm not going to do it alone, that's for sure. No, I think there's a, you know, we've got to look at a few things. I mean, certainly the way that the industry is going, how it's booming in terms of where the direct booking movements coming, 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 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 that the level of investment that you need to become IPRAC 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 ITRAC 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 BBC 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.

Yeah, 100%.

You can do it.

Yeah, 100%. Of course you can. When just having conversations like this and just bringing more awareness to it, it'll definitely help. 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 IPRAC directly on the website? Everything. Everything's on there. The website's been created to cover all aspects or whether you're a traveler, agent, property owner, ambassador, whichever media. So you can get everything from the website. So www.I-prac.com Nice.

Thank you so much for that, Chris. I really appreciate it. 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.

If you're on the LinkedIn, go check out Chris. Chris, how do you spell your last name just in case someone wants to go and type it in.

Maun 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 seven, episode 14.