How to make your property standout on those busy OTAs - Full Interview with Ronni Bartles

I mean, you've been doing this for a while. I know the product is new, but you've been doing this for a while and you can see a lot of things that people are doing. What would you say from the time that you've been doing the research on this? What is the biggest mistake that you see people make when they come to list their properties on these OTAs?

I think the biggest mistake they make is that they go into it thinking, okay, I have 10 minutes. I'm going to take these 10 minutes and just get it up. As opposed to really taking the time to think about what am I actually writing, what am I actually putting. I'm finding that travelers are different now than they used to be. They're very savvy. All the research is showing that millennials spend more on travel than any age or generation. They'll spend anywhere from about $5,000 a year just on travel. And they're big on experiences. That's what they really are looking for. They're looking for an experience. I do think photos are really the crux, particularly on Airbnb. Look, you just can't get away with amateur phone photos anymore. You've really got to invest in some professional photos and it'll come back to you twofold for sure.

So when you talk about in the blogs that you wrote, staging, staging your short stay properties, is this what you mean about that? If you could just delve into a little bit more. What does staging mean?

Staging as far as, like, making sure that you have everything in the property that a guest is going to want or need, but not overdoing it. I think that one of the things that we talk about in a lot of our staging blogs is to get rid of the clutter. We do it in our, in our homes, we do it everywhere. But get rid of all the stuff you just are personal to, you really need. They don't want it too much clutter. They want more space. They want the necessities they need, but they don't need all the other stuff.

All right, welcome everybody to the Boost Hospitality podcast. We are in season seven, episode five, and in this episode we're going to be talking about how you can optimize your OTA listing to make sure that you can stand out from the crowd.

Sam. So I actually, I live in Charleston, South Carolina, and today I'm visiting in Savannah, Georgia. We are definitely a southern company, but we're very lucky to be in Charleston. And so Bookful is a free property management software for short term and vacation rentals.

Where are the majority of your customers? Where the majority of your clients would you say? From around? Is it very much America based or is it everybody in all areas of the world?

Really? It's. To be honest, it's everybody in all areas of the world. We've been really surprised because we are, you know, a small company. We're brand new. We just launched. We've been a company for a couple of years, but just launched the software.

Last month that I read. And the topic is how to stand out on those crazy busy ota. So when I say an OTA for those who don't know, it's booking.com, it's Airbnb, it's Expedia, it's Home Away. We're really going to delve into that. But before Bookful, what's, what's your personal career? How did you get to book for? Where were you beforehand? Just sort of shed us a little bit more light into that, please. If you don't.

I come from actually the marketing research background, So I spent 15 years in consumer behavior research, the marketing side of all of that. And so I spent many years in that and then kind of ventured off on my own, did some consulting for some small B2B, a few things that were retail as well. And about almost three years ago, a friend of mine came to me and said, I have this opportunity, I think you might be really good at and really like and enjoy. And so they persuaded me to come onto Bookful. I was hire number two. So that's been really nice to be able to build that.

So the first thing that we're going to go on and Ron, if you could just delve into this a little bit more, you've had a really good blog on the Bookful website where you talk about listing quality. And if you could just delve into what listing quality means for me and just explain it in simplistic terms just so everybody can get on board what.

We'Re talking the listing quality on any OTA is really going to dive into one. You're a really good headline, a really great description. We're obviously going to talk about photos, that's always a big topic, and really making sure that your listing is completely filled out. Because in the algorithm of all those OTAs that is actually weighted within that algorithm is making sure that your listing is filled out. So the higher quality that you have on that listing, the more likely you're going to show up in a search for somebody that is looking for your area, your neighborhood, for specific times that you have availability.

I mean, you've been doing this for a while. I know the product is new, but you've been doing this for a while. And you can see a lot of things that people are doing. What would you say from the time that you've been doing the research on this? What is the biggest mistake that you see people make when they come to list their properties on these OTAs?

I think the biggest mistake they make is that they go into it thinking, okay, I have 10 minutes. I'm going to take these 10 minutes and just get it up. As opposed to really taking the time to think about what am I actually writing, what am I actually putting. I'm finding that travelers are different now than they used to be. They're very savvy. All the research is showing that millennials spend more on travel than any age or generation. They'll spend anywhere from about $5,000 a year just on travel. And they're big on experiences. That's what they really are looking for. They're looking for an experience. I do think photos are really the crux, particularly on Airbnb. Look, you just can't get away with amateur phone photos anymore. You've really got to invest in some professional photos and it'll come back to you twofold for sure.

So. But when you talk about in the blogs that you wrote, staging. Staging your short stay properties, is this what you mean about that? If you could just delve into a little bit more. What does staging mean?

Staging as far as, like, making sure that you have everything in the property that a guest is going to want or need, but not overdoing it. I think that one of the things that we talk about in a lot of our staging blogs is to get rid of the clutter. We do it in our. In our homes. We do it everywhere. But get rid of all the stuff you just are personal to you. You don't really need. They don't want it. Too much clutter. They want more space. They want the necessities they need, but they don't need all the other stuff, really. I've been using this term quite a bit lately with a lot of people. When you go into your property and you're looking to design it or stage it, you want it to be Instagram worthy. Like, that's how people judge where they're gonna stay anymore. Can I post this on my Instagram? You know, because everything there is beaut. And so it's the IKEA world of being Instagram worthy.

Instagrammable. Hashtag Instagrammable. Is what I noticed. I spent a lot of the first part of 2019 in Bali, and a part of Bali is called Shangu. And every villa, every restaurant, every cafe, every bar has got something in there that is Instagrammable, whether it's a big flowery wall or there's something pink flamingo ish. And you've got to do it because you want to make your guest walk in and go, that's going on my Instagram later.

Exactly.

Which crazy is in the world we're in. But like you say, millennials are the ones that are dictating this travel industry right now. And next it's going to be the Gen Z. This is what you've got to sort of pay attention to when it comes to Airbnb, which is different to booking.com, which is different to Home Away. What advice? Let's focus on Airbnb for a minute, because I think Airbnb is just going to grow and grow and grow in popularity over the course of the next few years. What would be some of your advice when listing your property on that platform compared to all of the other platforms that are out there? What do you really have to pay attention to with Airbnb?

I think that on Airbnb, the top things to really pay attention to are good quality photos that are very modern, light and bright. The other thing I think that is very important on Airbnb is when you're doing your headlines and your description of your place to really tell a story. So if you create your description like it's a story, like you're telling the story of your place, why it's yours, why you love it, what's the uniqueness about it? That's when you can really stand out. I mean, you still need to kind of like give the basics of what everybody needs to see, how many bedrooms, how many baths, all that kind of good stuff. But people want to feel like they're in that experience already and get excited about going to it.

You spoke earlier about experiences because that's Airbnb's whole thing philosophy now is edging people towards there. You're talking about pictures and light. And this is exactly where the sort of Airbnb are going down. What I notice really with a lot of these OTAs is that they are really heavy set. And we mentioned about it earlier at the amenities. Different websites really push other amenities. Like for example, in the uk, over the course, I would say the last four years, there's been a massive push towards properties that have got hot tubs. Now, I don't know what it's like in America or elsewhere, but that is a real big thing. If you've got a self catering unit or units around the uk, they really push the ones that have got the hot tub. That was a feature that was put in recently. Now, what from the research that you've done and from the studies and things that you can see, what are the other amenities that are popular at the moment, which is the ones that people should be maybe looking to bring into their properties that maybe others aren't? Just from your experience, I think this.

Is where we also get into kind of really knowing who your guest is. Because if we look at millennials, the oldest millennials will be 40 years old next year. And so when you're thinking about a 40 year old versus a 25 year old, they're in a very different life stage. So those older millennials are going to be geared more towards family activities. So amenities that are definitely family geared will resonate with them more. The younger millennials who are also spending a lot of money on travel are just in a different life stage. So kind of if your target is there, then things that are captivating like hot tubs actually makes a lot of sense. The one thing I think that universal across the board, and I look for this when I'm booking anything as well, is free WI fi. Even if you think about business people, I mean, business people aren't like, even if they're traveling and staying a short term rental, they want free WI fi. That's, that's their livelihood. So business people, families, you know, young millennials, gen zers for sure. Free WI fi is just one of those things. I think that's what we all look for. We still have a few of our clients that are still charging for WI fi and I'm like, look guys, you'll be much better off if you just offer this for free. It's not that big of a deal. You're not losing that much money. So that's, that's always my big key is free WI fi.

Just to narrow down on what you said there about knowing your guests. So for example, if you are catered for business travelers, if you really want to attract the business people into the town for a conference or whatever, not only just have WI fi, but what else are you doing? Do you have a work desk? Do you have those plugs that have got loads of USB ports at the top? Do you, you know, have you got it where they can hook the laptop up to the tv? Have you got that sort of a menu. So you just look at it and just don't go yet. Business person will want WI Fi. You've got to go to the next level. Let's focus a little bit on Bookful. I've all the tools that you guys are offering is really exciting. There's loads of beta things going on and everything. I just would love for you just to fill us in on what you guys are doing and why you decided to focus on these. I really want you to focus on the listing review because I think that's a beautiful little addition to what's not out there at the moment. So just let us know what Bookful are doing that to help short stay accommodation owners all over the world, please.

So Bookful is the industry's only free property management software. And so we, like I said, we just launched last month. So the software has been kind of our main focus in the past few years is to really develop that and make it into a platform that will for people. And kind of how we started was our CEO Kevin High owns a property management company in Charleston. They have, you know, around I'd say 80 properties at any given time. And you know, he had tried several different softwares out there that it just didn't do all of the things that he really needed or wanted for his business. And so he was like I'm going to solve this problem and started developing the software and wanted to has, you know, a lot of property managers in the industry. So he wanted to be able to offer it for free. And so really it's a robust software that's like any other software out there. We just happen to be free. And I always, every single time the very first question people say to me is so then how do you make money? And kind of how we do that is we do have additional services. And so the listing review service is one of those add ons that you can hire us to do. And it's really just review and an audit and we kind of take our team, we're still kind of in beta on that. We're working, we're getting a few people in to get a few under our belt and kind of see how it goes. But it's a really exciting service because I think from an OTA perspective it's really helpful. Very simple. I'm going to give you actions for you to follow to make this better for you.

If I am a shop stay accommodation owner, whether I'm a week in or I'm 10 years in and I want to find out more about Bookful and what you're doing. Where's the best place to start?

So the best place to start is definitely@bookful.com that'll kind of give you the overview of our software, have a services page on there that you can see all of the services that we offer and then kind of dive into our blog. I mean you, you've read our blog, we've worked, my marketing team has worked really hard on that blog for the past year and creating good content and content that we really kind of go into a lot of the groups out there and go, what are people asking in these groups? And we try and write our content around that because if they're asking it, they want to know. And so we can write blogs on that. And then I am really big on content where reading a piece of content is great, but I love it when I get like a little one page worksheet that can kind of like summarize it for me and help me out. So we really try and get each one of our blogs to have like a piece of content that somebody can really just download and they can use it right then, you know, an inventory checklist, a housekeeping checklist, all of those kinds of things to really kind of help them get organized and just do their business more efficiently.

I definitely would recommend everybody to go to the blog. For those that can't understand how I'm pronouncing it, it's B O O K f u l l.com bookful.com head to the blog. Tons and tons and tons of really good advice on there. That that is definitely where I would recommend you get going. Ronnie, I just want to say thank you so much for doing this. Really appreciate you coming on today and sharing the information and everybody to do would be to go back on this episode, go to the blog and for the notes that are on the blog for the show, go through everything that we've discussed here about looking at how you are telling the story on your listing. Go and have a look at your photos. And again, if you feel like the photos aren't doing your property justice then you need to do something about it. Now we're not saying go spend a ton of money, don't go and try and hire the best professional that you can. In fact, if you want a a little guide that I put together on how to hire professional photo shoot for free, just go boostlead.co.uk Photoshoot There's a Dropbox of a video that I put together about 40 minutes long and it's five little tactics and tips on how you can get a really good photo shoot done for free. Follow that. Put it into practice. Come back to us. Send us a before and after. Send it to Ronnie. Send it to Bookful. Send it to I. You know, I'm sure you go onto the website, you can go and find out the Instagrams and the Linkedins and all of that for all of and we can just show you results. That's all I ask from doing this full podcast series is that you listen. But like Ronnie says, you take it to action. So thanks again for tuning in. Thanks so much, Ronnie, for taking part. This has been the Boost Hospitality Podcast, Season seven. This is episode five.

Sam.