HOW To Make Sure Your Guest NEVER Books Via An OTA Again! 🚀

Okay, everybody, welcome back to a new episode of the Boosted Podcast. My name is Mark Simpson and I give hosts just like you the tools, the tactics and the training to get more direct bookings. And today we're talking about direct bookings. And I'm going to give you another tip on how you can convert an OTA book into a direct booking so they never ever book with an OTA again.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee cuz it's so hard on the T is loose leaf making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you're better book direct. Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.

So I've always said this, that if you are a host and you get a booking through an OTA and they come and they stay with you and then they leave, and if they ever come back and stay with you again and they book you an OTA, you have failed. The OTAs are very aware of the fact that as soon as they step foot on your property, you're going to be doing everything in your power to try and, and get their details, etc. So you can market to them. They're not naive. You know, I've, I've been doing this game for long enough. I've got to know people at Airbnb and booking.com quite well and you know, I've mentioned this to them and you know, they're not naive to the fact they're fully aware of this. But the problem is that we don't and we don't keep in contact, we don't email, we don't reach out, we don't, you know, do everything that the big hotels and the big chains are doing. My whole career in hospitality, when I've come back and you know, since 2011, going back into like a full time basis in it, I've always been looking at these angles and what I do for my research is I always go and look at what the big boys are doing. Success leave clues at the end of the day. And the, the tip that I mentioned yesterday obviously was focused around the Hiltons and the Marriotts and whatnot, but we can be doing these. It's just a slight change of mindset, slight change of wording and a bit of systems and structures and whatnot, but it's, we can do this. So the main thing that, what I want to say to you is that I want to ensure that you never have a guest rebook via an ota. And the easiest way to do that is via email and text message. Simply that is put there are really, really cool and really effective and really cheap automation softwares that will do this job for you. For example, on your email triggers that you have with your PMS provider, you can have one for, for where it's three months and six months after they've booked with you and you can send them a little quick email just saying, hey, how you doing? Well, if you want to rebook with us at any point, you know where we are, please do keep in touch, etc. Etc. And again, these emails are automated, real conversation driven. It's not pushy, pushy sales, it's just keeping in contact with them. And these emails always go down really well and they'll get a response. Now you can also have reminders and systems and setups in place for where you can maybe even drop a call or a WhatsApp message message. You can even go a step further now and there's more CRM. So customer relationship management software platforms that have been built for hospitality businesses that have just been, you know, exclusive for the big hotels in the past, but now they're being made more readily available to smaller businesses that will again help with this. So you can collect your guests date of birth, you can maybe collect important date information like anniversaries and whatnot, load it into the CRM and then you can have triggers sent out. So say when it's a month before somebody's birthday or a month before an anniversary or a month before whatever, they will get an email to say if you need somewhere to get away for your special day, you know where we are, give us a call. Here's a little coupon, something like that that's experienced, it's personalized, that can go straight into the inbox via email. It's really powerful. So have a little look, have a little look around. What can you do? What have you already got set up? If you haven't got anything set up mailchimp.com totally free, it can deal with a lot of these things that I'm talking about. If you can't even do Mailchimp text message, super simple. You've got things like WhatsApp and Telegram that make it really easy to do. Nowadays you can contact anybody for free and just keep in touch with your guests. As hosts, our biggest problem, well, not just host business owners in general, we're always chasing new money, new customers, new money. When really the big profit, the big bookings are the ones that have already stayed with you, the people that already know, like and trust you. And if you can keep in contact with them, if you can make them feel like a million bucks, they will not only be your best guests, they'll be your biggest superfans for the rest of your career. So focus on that. I'll be back tomorrow with some more help and advice and tactics and tips and everything to help you. But for now, if this is the first time that you've tuned into a podcast or a lesson or an episode by Boosie, then please make sure you stick around. Hit like hit subscribe Turn on the notification bell. If you want to go and join our our email list, go to booster.co.uk on there you can input your email and I'll send you seven tips. Seven tips and tools. Free tools that I recommend right now. So head to Boost UK if you want to go check out the podcast boostlypodcast. Com. Take care. I'll speak to you tomorrow.

Having a blast. Can I get it on the Boost Lee podcast? Bruce Lee Like Bruce Lee because it's so hard and the T is loose leaf making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.