How to Maximise your profits for your accommodation with some simple interior tweaks with Marilynn Taylor S7E1

We are back with season seven of the Boost Hospitality Podcast. Welcome. My name is Mark Simpson. I'm the founder of Boostly. I help hospitality owners how to get direct bookings, show you how you can get the OTAs to work for you and not the other way around. If you want to go find out more, head to boostly.co.uk if you want to find out more about the podcast, there are six other seasons that you can go and check out. Right now. Boostly.co.uk podcast this season we are talking all about hospitality rentals, hotels, guest houses, serviced accommodation, glamp sites, you name it, we're going to talk about it. And in every episode I am going to invite onto the podcast an expert in their chosen field. My goal with this series is to help you be more aware of what you need to be doing to increase your direct bookings by getting the help of some of the best known people in the world of hospitality marketing. And today I am joined by Marilyn Taylor. Now Marilyn is based in California. She has had a rental property for over 14 years and she has done 8 years in interior design. She helps you optimize your space to maximize your profits and this interview was recorded in August 2019. It was one of my favorite ones for a long while, but because we dug into some topics that I have never spoken about before, you're going to learn about customer avatar, about your demographic and how you should style your property. About why by buying cheap isn't always the best way. In fact, when you buy cheap, you buy twice. You're going to find out a little bit more on how Maryland discovered that by trying to cram as many people in as possible into your rental space isn't always the best idea. And so much more. Make sure you listen to the very end because Marilyn will give you a link to where you can go and get a free download of five of the best tips to styling your property and designing your listing to get the most eyes on it. Before we start, I just wanted to say thank you so much for tuning in. Please make sure you go and rate and review the Boost Hospitality podcast wherever you are. Tuning in from itunes, Spotify, Google Playlist, you name it, it is on there. And for everybody that contacts me via Instagram, it's Ostler uk. Send me a message, say that you came to me from the podcast. I will give you a link to where you can go and get a very special freebie from me on how it will help you with your direct bookings. So without further ado, let's begin this interview with the amazing Marilyn Taylor.

So welcome to the Boost Hospitality podcast. We are in season seven now, episode one. Yes, there are six other seasons that you can go back and tune in on if you head to booster.co.uk podcast to do so. Today we are going to be talking to Marilyn Taylor, based all the way over in California in usa and we're going to be talking about interior design and why is so important for your accommodation business. Before we begin, if you could do me a massive favor, go rate and review this podcast. It just means that we get more eyes on the podcast and this season. So let's get started. Marilyn is 14 years as a rental host and eight years as an interior designer. And when I sort of thought of the idea to kickstart season seven, I couldn't think of anybody better to get onto this show so we can talk all things about interior design and optimizing your space. So without further ado, let me bring in Marilyn now. So, Marilyn, welcome to the Boost Hospitality podcast. For those people who don't know you or don't follow you on the social, could you please take a couple of minutes and just tell us a little bit more about your story, please?

Hi, thank you so much for having me. It's so exciting to be here and I've been watching what you've been doing too, which is very exciting. And I think it's so important for new rental owners and existing rental owners to be educating themselves on how we can just do this the best way possible. Did you want me to share where they can find me now or.

Yeah, let's do it straight away. So if you're, if you're tuning in and you're thinking, okay, great, we've got the nice intro, but want to find out more right now then? Yeah, sure, go ahead, please, and share the website.

So Instagram is my jam and so you can find me there. And it's just at Marilyn Taylor and it's Marilyn with two ends, so. Or you can find me on our website, which is Marilyn Taylor dot com. Try to keep it straight there.

And if you missed that, we will definitely get them in the show notes and we'll spread the links on how to find one who sent Instagram and the website. Instagram is your jam and that is where I first discovered you. So, yeah, just tell us a little bit more about you, your journey, how you first got into the rental accommodation business and just sort of try and shed a bit more light into the life of Marilyn, please.

Sure. So I Many, many years ago, I would say beginning of 2000, I got into mortgages, actually, which then got me into real estate investing, which then got me into purchasing homes on Cape Cod. My husband is from Cape Cod. That's where he grew up in Massachusetts. And so I bought my first vacation rental there. I had owned some other just standard rentals before that, but I wanted to get into this vacation rental thing. And so some friends of ours were selling a house. I got a great deal, and I had my first house in Eastham. And then his parents were selling their house, and they. It was in Wellfleet, which is a great spot in Cape Cod. But we bought that house again to turn into a vacation rental. So in that process of doing that, I lived in la. Those were there, and I had to design them and plan everything and order everything. And so basically the East Ham house was the first one. I put everything together in that house in four days. So I was a lot of planning. And it kind of sparked the idea that maybe I actually could do this design thing, because it was something I had been interested in all the way back from, you know, in high school. I just never got around to actually doing it, you know, my past lives. I was a professional dancer. Then I became a makeup artist. And I've always done something creative. And real estate investing really was interesting to me because I liked making ugly things pretty. So then when we bought my husband's parents home, it was, you know, it was built in the 70s, and it was kind of like grandma's cottage. And so that one I did differently over the years. I would say over about five years, I slowly DIY remodeled that house and noticed that as I improved the aesthetics of the house, it made a huge, huge difference in how much I could charge, the quality of guests that I got, and the overall guest satisfaction. So this made me realize, okay, this is powerful. And I was one of the first on Cape Cod to ever actually put a photo of the interior of my home as my primary photo. And that sort of started a trend there. And then I've watched it become a nationwide trend. I'm not going to take full credit for starting that trend, but I figured it out all those years ago, and I realized that that was always the thing that set me apart part in my market.

I like that. And again, it's not reinventing the wheel as such, but you find out what others have done really well. You put it into yours. You found out that other people in your area weren't, and that's how you stood out from the crowd. And that's a massive, massive lesson in business. Not just hospitality for everybody. Just don't always try and reinvent the wheel. Look at what others are doing really well, and try and model it for you. So we're talking about the first rental, and, you know, it being successful because it's grown to where you are now. But do you have a favorite failure? And this is something I ask a lot of people when they come onto this show because it's so easy to talk about the positives. But as we all know, in business, not everything is a success. There are a lot of failures, and along the way. But do you have a favorite failure, something that you learn from and now meant that you haven't done it again? And so can you share that with for everybody that maybe right at the start of the journey.

This is something that I did kind of early on with my rental is as I improved it, I realized how important photos were. And so I don't think I did it intentionally, but the photos that I took made the house look really, really great. But then what ended up happening is people's expectations were set a little bit too high for what the home actually was. So while the decor was really beautiful, which, in actuality, now, all these years later, as a professional designer, I look back and I cringe. I'm like, oh, God, it's embarrassing. But, you know, for Cape Cod back then, it was really beautiful. And when people saw the beauty of the aesthetics and their expectations sort of rose on the amenities as well. And I'm talking about things like appliances and, you know, and bedding or the quality of mattresses and pillows and all of that. And I was still using a lot of, you know, the original stuff that was there in the house. And so I started to get some negative reviews as a result. And that was, for me, a huge, huge learning lesson that you can't go over the top in making your house look like something it's not. And again, it wasn't intentional, but it's a very easy mistake to make. And you do have to make sure that as you improve the aesthetics of your home, you also have to improve the amenities and the things, you know, the experience in the house.

Was that the inspiration for the blog where you wrote about dealing with criticism, or is that something else that that has happened during the time you've been doing this?

Yeah, so this was actually just in the past three months.

I had.

This was kind of a new experience again after, you know, you just never stop having new experiences in this business, that's for sure. But I had a woman who, again, I think it was a similar situation, but where she didn't read everything and she didn't read anything that I had sent her to help her prepare. So she, she seemed great. The whole time she was there at the house, she seemed happy, her communication was great. I felt I was taking great care of her. And I got a horrible review from her. And I felt so sideswiped by this because she said nothing while she was there. But it was, I realized in this particular situation where she lambasted me in an email and nitpicked every tiny little thing about the house, and of course I'm panicking because I'm a Virgo. Everything has to be perfect. Like, are you kidding me? And I've got another company that's currently managing the home, and I call them and I lay into them. I'm like, how dare you present my home in this way? She made it sound like everything's falling apart, nothing's new. And basically, long story short, once I really dug into it and I took a breath and stepped back from it and realized, okay, the two people right before her gave me five star reviews. Now we're a few weeks later and I'm still getting five star reviews. I realized, you know, in this particular situation, this was about her and who knows what kind of a person she is in life. But it came across to me that she loved the beauty of my home and that was enough for her. And she didn't read everything and she expected everything to be brand spanking new, you know, as if I had just remodeled the house six months ago. And, you know, and that wasn't a fair expectation. And I think what she did to me was really unfair in her review. And. But it happens, you know, and then we have to move forward the rental owner and say, okay, what can I learn from this? How did I fail for this person in my communication to her that the expectations weren't set? I think that she holds a lot of the responsibility in the. In the fact that she didn't read what she was supposed to pack and what she was required to bring and that kind of thing, because those were some of the complaints too. But, you know, at the end of the day, we always have to look at what can we do better? What can we learn from this? Brush it off, take a deep breath, approach that person with empathy and realize, okay, somebody who's that miserable to turn around and treat somebody that way and damage their business after they've been treated very kindly by the host. That's they're living a much more miserable life than they could ever, you know, than any misery they could ever impose on me. So I just kind of, you know, exhale, let it go, move forward and enjoy the five star reviews that keep coming in.

So many takeaways from that. And I know that there are a lot of people who listen to this podcast are from the hospitality community Facebook group and they are nodding right now when as soon as you said the words, didn't read the email. That is just, yeah, I guarantee there are at least 100 people who are watching and listening to this going, yep, that has happened to me. And just to sort of go like jump onto the back of what you said, like when it comes to reviews. And it is so damaging when you get a bad review. Like when you click, when you get the email come in saying you've got a new review on whatever platform you're on, do you want to go and see it? You click on it. And just as the page loading, your heart does literally skip a beat because you know, you put your life and soul into this. But I think what, what I've always said and what so many other people have said is you always judge it on, on 10. So out of 10 reviews, if nine of them are positive, five stars and there's that one bad, just brush it off. So it's a poor one star review, brush it off. It could be the person could have just had a bad day, bad experience, bad whatever and they just need someone to take it out of or it could literally just have been a one off. If our 10 reviews, however, 7 reviews are mentioning negatively about one certain thing, then yeah, you've got to fix it. But especially like this is being recorded August for a lot of people tune into this. This is the heat of their silly season, bank holiday weekend in England and Wales just now. So there are a lot of people who are overworked right now and they are feeling this and I guarantee they can relate with us. Thank you very much for sharing that story. Now, you've obviously progressed and progressed and progressed and I say you now show through your blog and through your Instagram and through everything that you do, you show other rental owners and accommodation owners how to style their property. And again, there's a lot of people watching this, tuning into this who are styling their own properties. Now, what do you see is the biggest mistake that so many people make when it comes to the interior design of their property? And what sort of advice could you pass on.

I would say that the biggest mistake that I see people making is that they go to. I don't want to use the word cheap, but cheap, you know, they. They go to whatever. You know, I think out there, you guys have T.K. maxx or T.K. maxx. We have T.J. maxx, you know, which, which is great. I use them all the time, don't get me wrong. But if, if you're, you know, sometimes people go too bland. They're afraid of color. They're afraid to get too exciting with the design. I feel like it's really important because people have figured out aesthetics matter. And so I would say the majority of us owners at this point are trying to make our place look nice, right? We care. But I would say presentation of beds. So, you know, like, when I see people put their bed where they just have a bedspread pulled over without any throw pillows, it kind of looks like a college dorm bedroom. It doesn't speak luxury. It doesn't speak, you know, excitement, or that this is. Oh, wow. I would love for my home to look like this, right? Because that's. As an interior designer, that's what I've always, I've always designed with my gut. Now, as, as rental owners, we can't. We either have to do it one of two ways. I have one of my rentals, so I have a total of five current rentals. One of them is my own personal home, right? So that space, if you are, if you're renting out your own personal home run with that, make it completely your own. Let it be a total reflection of who you are, because that's going to be interesting, right? Some places I've seen, and on Instagram, a rental that is in a blank, he's a famous writer that they themed the entire rental after. And it's very moody and, you know, very British looking and dark colors and, you know, Chesterfield sofas and things like that. And it's so cool. My house is very maximalist, very saturated colors, very Hollywood Regency. But my other rentals, I have three other little rentals that I call my mod pods. And, and they are, I know the demographic that's going to rent there is either going to be snowbirds coming from Canada because it's in the California desert, so they're going to come in the wintertime or the rest of the year. It's millennials. It's people coming from LA and San Diego and nearby for the most part that are, I would say, on the average, my renter is 40 and below. So that is what I cater to. So you want to know your demographic when you are designing your space, cater to them. Even how you write your copy in your advertisements, you want that to cater to those people, speak their language, you know, advertise where they are. So, you know, if you're in Nashville or let's, let's think of somewhere where, if you're nearby London, you know, you want to think, okay, am I in a flat and a high rise or am I in a cute little cottage somewhere on the outskirts? You want to make sure that everything kind of works with the experience that you want to give the demographic that you've already identified. Another really quick point I want to make that I find has worked very well for all of my rentals is.

I.

I design with new and old, right? So I brought up TK Maxx. And you don't want to furnish your entire place with everything brand new. It feels stale. No matter how pretty, no matter how cute or trendy you make it look, it feels stale. But when you start to bring in vintage items, vintage furniture that has character and age and a history, it just feels more interesting. You know, books, you can have old books in your, in your space, or photographs, old black and whites. There's just so many different ways that you can bring interest into your space. That was a very long answer I did not just overwhelm, but this is so my heart.

I can tell it is your heart with the answer that you gave and the passion that you gave it. So thank you. And there's so many takeaways and I think the biggest one for me was know your demographic, know your customer avatar, hundred percent. And like you said, it's not just in the way that you style your property, but it's how you write your copy, it's how you structure your website, it's how you position your social media page. You do it to match to the person that you want to stay because if you try and appeal to all, you appeal to nobody. And again, to go back with the first thing that you said, something that someone has said to me my whole life, buy cheap, buy twice. So it's one of those where know your customer avatar, don't scrimp where you, you don't need to and style it accordingly. If you are catering and if your, your demographic is families and people with young families, I've got an 11 month old baby who is almost starting to walk. You're not gonna style your property. Where there are things at his level, you know, that he can just knock off or whatever, you know, so you got to think about these, these little things. Now this moves on nicely to the next topic. And this is one of the things.

Can I interject just one more, One more thing, what you just said, you know, that's a very good point because at my, at my personal home, I don't accept children because it has a lot of beautiful decor and there are a lot of vintage items and everybody would feel bad if a child went in there and broke it. It's not baby proofed and that sort of thing. But yeah, I mean, that's. I just, I have a concept that I used in design as well because I've always catered to the budget minded client, whether it's a design client or for vacation rentals. And as investors, we also have to think like investors, right? We have to know where to stop. Sometimes I have my designer cap on and I want to do all the things and go completely crazy and nuts, but my mod pods in the desert are budget rentals. They're little tiny homes. They are not. They can't. My profit can't support me wallpapering the whole thing and putting in fabulous lighting. And I had to figure out where to stop. And have I reached the point in which I have happy clients or happy guests that are arriving and feeling great while they're in there and commenting on that? Okay, good, done. I don't really need, even though I want to, I don't need to add anything more. And so sometimes I will, sometimes I'll do things just to add interest on Instagram or to show a project that I'm doing and that kind of thing. And that helps bring interest to what I'm doing. And then people want to stay there. So, you know, you can use it in that way too. But you know, again, know your demographic, but also know your price point, know when to stop, know when you need to be luxury, you know, and the high, low concept is know when to spend money on things that need to last and be quality. And then, you know, go to TK Maxx and get the adorable decor that you know, and throw pillows. That's a great place to go discount. Because people are going to drool on them and sleep on them no matter how much we tell them not to. And you want to be able to toss them and put something fresh in.

So I like that. Make your. And again, make your property Instagramable, which is which. Which is a term that I hear more and more and more. Okay, so something that I really like about you. And again, it's the title of this episode is about optimizing their space to maximize their profits. So this is something that I picked up from yourself and I'd love it now if you could just spend few minutes just explaining to everybody how they can optimize their space to maximize profits and just sort of explain it in more detail, please.

Okay, so this is going to be probably more relevant to, you know, larger units. Like with my mod pods, it's 400 square feet. You can only fit so many people in there. Right. So I'm not going to try to stack eight people in there with bunk beds.

So.

But I'm going to use my Cape Cod home as an example. So in that home originally I think I slept six to eight. And as time went by, I realized that I probably could compete the size of the home could compete with the homes that sleep more people. I want to premise all of this by saying that you have to find the right balance for your home. Because if you're just thinking profit, profit, profit and not balancing that with the experience that people will have, if you're trying to cram too many people in, that's it's. They're just not going to have a good experience. They're going to be on top of each other. They're going to be trying to, you know, 12 people trying to share three bathrooms. So you have to really, really, you know, keep the reins in check. And so examples of what I did at my Cape Cod house was one thing that I did is there was a huge attic over my garage. And I realized that if I finish off this space, I now have a large bonus room that people can. And I put all the gaming things in there. You know, the tables for cards and ping pong table and. Right. You know that I don't, I don't have a ping pong table, but I want to put a ping pong table. But that's where you would put all that stuff so that it's this gaming room. Right. So if you have a basement or a second structure on your property or a garage that isn't filled up with stuff, try to think of how you can expand into those spaces to make them additional living areas. Especially if you want to sleep more people. Bunk beds are a great way. And there are bunk bed companies that cater to adults. And you know, they're not rickety, they're solid. They have king over kings, they have queen over queen. So they're. For example, this is somewhere I stayed. It's not One of my rentals. But in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, there are these massive, massive homes out there, Right? And we were wanting to do a family reunion, and we were struggling to find homes that we could all fit into. We really wanted to be in one home. And we found a lot of homes that said they could sleep 28 people. But there was six bedrooms. And I was like, how would that work? And I was the one ringing the bell to the whole group saying, you guys, let's think about this. There's six bathrooms and 28 of us in there. How is that ever going to. Well, that'll be miserable, you know? But they had four sofa beds and bunk bed rooms. Literally. Like, it looked like summer camp when we were 12. And I was like, okay, I could see that working for maybe girls weekend, you know, where everybody. Or for younger people, where everybody's okay being on top of each other. But again, who's your demographic? What is your price point? And who do you want in there? And think of the wear and tear as well. So this is something that's unique and individual to each rental owner, but you really have to think about all those different bullet points when you're optimizing. But I can say that by adding an extra bedroom in my. In the basement of the Cape Cod house, adding that extra space above the garage, and I even had an additional part in the garage that I rent out in the off season to people who need storage. So I just partitioned off my garage. So I just found ways that I could monetize this home while keeping the expense really relaxed and lovely and where people are not. The whole idea was for people not to be on top of each other. And it's worked out great. People love it. Usually the garage area is the man cave. The downstairs den is where all the kids hang out, and all the women are up where the kitchen is chatting and having fun.

I like that. Again, so great. So my takeaways now, something that I've noticed from yourself is you now help other accommodation owners with their listings. Out of all the ones that you have done. I do some. At seminar, I do a thing called a marketing review, where again, I see what people do and put it into. I give them advice. So all the reviews that you've done and all the hosts that you have helped, what is the most common advice that you see that you are giving at present to these people and what they can do to improve just in case there's somebody else here who is literally making the same mistake?

Yeah. And I'LL differentiate right up front what makes you and I different and how we approach our clients and how what we do is a little bit different. I approach everything from an aesthetic point of view, so that is my forte. So while you are a tech and marketing guru, right, and you know how to get, like, the structure and SEO and all that fun stuff, that's not my brain I'm going to look at. My clients are coming to me because they want the presentation not only of their home, but their. Their marketing to match their home. Right. It's branding. And I would say that the most common thing that I have to help people correct is their photos. It's not just the quality of the photography, but it's also the order that they put them in. It's the captions. It's the way that they present. Doesn't tell a story. It doesn't walk people through the home. When I order my photos on my listings, I always think about what room are they going to see first and then where are they going to go from there. And in my captions, I try to give some idea. Okay, you're upstairs. This is a hallway bathroom. So they can look at the main photo go. Oh, that's where the hallway is. That door must be that bathroom. And they can get an idea of the layout and how it's going to feel in there. Because I used to get complaints about, oh, we didn't realize that all the bathrooms were upstairs or the full baths, you know, and there's only one half bath downstairs. So then I started incorporating floor plans into my listings, which really, really helps. So that's, I would say, photography, it's so important.

I love that. And just to circle back on captions, so many people don't utilize captions. And they are there for a reason. They are there, like you say, to tell a story, to guide the guest. Now, you captions is key, but I'm really intrigued about the order. What order do you sort of recommend going? And when we're talking about order, let's just say we're on Airbnb now or on booking.com or VRBO or whatever. Or you're on a listing site that you're paid to be there. We're not talking about your website here. We're talking about a place that you list your property on. When you're talking about an order, obviously the first one has to be, well, the best one. And then, so how do you sort of go from there? So that's the first six. How are you sort of breaking it down just generically. Obviously, everybody's going to be a little bit different, but how would you like to structure it?

So for me and my. My properties, I always use a photo of the interior. I have toggled back and forth and done what they call split testing or AB testing. On one listing, I'll have a photograph of the master bedroom, which is probably the most spectacular design wise. And in others, I have a photograph of the living room as the first photo. And I've been testing to see which one works the best. But let's say that you have a gorgeous little cottage in the Cotswolds or something. Your first photo may want to be of your actual property. If it has extreme charm or the location is amazing and it's right on the water or with mountains in the background or something along those lines. And I apologize for the dogs in the back. My husband decided now is a good time to walk the dog. I apologize. But life, right? This is real life. But, you know, you just have to think about that. First photo is key because it's got to stop them from scrolling, right? So quality. But then the order that it goes in from there, again, I would. If you have an exterior photo, I would then take it to the primary living space first and then walk them through the house. So, you know, some people like to go living space, then all the bedrooms, then maybe bathrooms at the end or something, but it doesn't give them. You want them to understand what's upstairs, what's downstairs. Maybe you have multiple levels. So where do they enter? You know, I have a home where they could enter downstairs or upstairs, but I put my keypad upstairs because then they enter into the most beautiful space. So that's the primary photo, and then I order it. How they would walk through the house, once they go downstairs, what's the first bedroom they're gonna see? And then I show them those bedrooms and I literally say, now, you know, in. In some places, Airbnb, I don't do this because I don't think people really pay attention. It's a younger demographic. So there I just try to quick and fast, right? They have very short attention spans. HomeAway and Vrbo, places like that, I tend to give a little bit more detail and say, now to your right is where you're gonna find the den. And then you walk through the den and into the back bathroom. And then through this bedroom, you'll find the outdoor shower. So again, always thinking about who am I speaking to and how can I speak their language and what do they want to see and in what order.

Yeah, definitely being flexible on the system that you're on. Now, obviously this podcast, the whole of the hospitality community and everybody that's tuning in to it, this is all about direct bookings. But what I will say, when we're giving advice on listing sites, it is crucial that if you're going to list your property on there, you have to be flexible to the property that you're listing on. Now, there are ways and means of once you get a book in via these sites on how to turn it into a direct booking. But make sure that when you're on there that like I say, you look at the demographic Airbnb, statistically, depending on the regions and the countries, is a younger one. So like Marilyn saying, you can just throw up your pictures, make sure that they stand out. You can get creative with the title, you can get creative with your description. So you can throw in some emojis to stop the scroll. On Airbnb, places like Vibo, HomeAway booking.com, you don't have that luxury. So you've got to then use the pictures, use the captions. And a big thing that I recommend, Marilyn touched upon it. Floor plans are really, really popular now, specifically on Airbnb. If you would like to get a contact of somebody who draws amazing floor plans from just looking at your listing on Airbnb, she's a lady called Carmen, she's on Instagram. Let me know, send me an email marketer.co.uk and I'll send you her email. Because she has helped so many members of the hospitality community and she's helped me with my listings create a floor plan, hand drawn, which looks stunning on somewhere like Airbnb.

I was gonna say too, you know, on your website, this is equally as important and you can. Sky's the limit there. And in addition to the order of your photos and how you present them on a website video, you know, walkthrough videos. And now they have, there are, there are companies that will I actually have my Cape Cod house listed right now where they will do and I see this on more and more of the higher end listings where they will take a 3D video of the inside of your house. It's not an actual video, but people can walk through your house on their computer and that is huge. So if you can do something like that, that's even better because then they really feel like they can actually walk through your house.

Boost Virtual reality tours are becoming popular and popular and popular. And right now, if you Go to the Boostly website. I am actually getting involved in virtual reality tours because like you say is so key for hospitality businesses. Now we know people don't read, we know that people want to find out more. And like you're saying you were booking a family vacation for 26 people and if you're going to be booking something for that big, doesn't matter how many people are in there, when you're going to go and stay somewhere, you like to know where things are. And again, thinking back to your demographic, if you have got property that is catered for the disabled market, say that you've got disabled facilities. It's so crucial to them, for them to know a will my wheelchair fit through this gap? Like where is the, where is the layout from the entrance to the bedroom to the bathroom and what sort of, what are the variables? And by having a virtual reality tour you can do all of that. And I've seen now Expedia, you can upload a virtual reality tour to booking.com they are starting to allow 360 virtual reality tours in Google Business listing. They have that automatically in as part of the Google Maps program. And of course on social media you can add virtuality to on as as well. And the more that these headsets are becoming more popular, people can literally be on their living room, they can put on one of these virtuality headsets and they can be transported to your property without going anywhere.

So that's a whole other level right there.

That is a whole nother level. But you've got to think about again, how do you stop the scroll? How do you stand out from a very, very, very popular industry now with hospitality? And this is it. And this is why like I say, you can go to boostleady.co.uk and you can go check out the VR tours if you're in the UK only I am getting involved and I'm working with a company that can help do that. So things like that, amazing. And we could literally talk for ages about this. This is a topic that I find so fascinating and I thank you so much for your time. But let's leave people with a way that they can find out more about you because I value your time, I know you're busy and I really do appreciate you doing this. So if someone wants to find out more about you, if someone wants to go and get a maybe a little download, where's best place for them to go?

Right now the best place is and I'm gonna hold this up for the people on Facebook So you can see how to spell my name. It's Marilyn Taylor.com and Marilyn has two N's on it. So M A R I L Y N N T A y l o r.com and hit the start here button right at the top of that website and there is a free download that is called Free top five Decor must haves for short term rentals. And that's just gonna give you some quick tips of ways that you can judge your existing listing or if you are creating a new one, it's gonna give you some good guidance there. And then of course, if you want one on one consulting, I offer that I can help you design your space from where I am. I can, I do just listing reviews and website reviews and again, my reviews are focusing on the aesthetics and the presentation and I can usually come up with a quick 10 easily 10 things with just about every single client right off the top that are quick and easy, actionable things they can do to just instantly see improvement in engagement and and bookings.

Beautiful. Thank you so much.

Instagram, social media, you can find me there. It's just Arilyn Taylor. So I try to keep that really easy. And on Facebook I'm found thetaylordhome and Taylor is spelled like my last name. T A Y L O R. I like that.

Yeah, I really, really appreciate. I know that so many people are watching this, whether they're watching this on the YouTube, the Facebook, or if they're listening to this on their podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time out to do this and I really do hope that so many people get in touch with you and get that guide because that guide would be phenomenal. And again, if anybody gets it and more importantly puts it into practice, please share your results with Marilyn. Please share your results with me because it's phenomenal. When we can do this sort of thing, we can get guests on like Marilyn, but when people actually take action and get results from it, this is what we want to hear.

So yeah. And you can find me inside of the hospitality community as well. I'll be in there jumping in, answering questions and helping out where I can.

So fantastic.

Phenomenal. Really appreciate it. Okay, so Amanda, thank you so much and thank you to everybody that has tuned in to this episode. If you want to go and find out more about the Boostly podcast, head to boostly.co.uk podcast. We have got six other seasons that you can go and download right now. From picking or finding the guest process, the guest booking process, to five ways that you can Boost, your direct bookings to even how to run a Facebook competition is literally all that. And we've even got interviews from people from the hospitality community on the podcast series as well. So for me, for now, thank you for tuning in, and I'll be back for another episode very shortly of season seven of the Boost Hospitality Podcast. And before you leave, if you could just go and rate and review and tell a friend about this, it would mean the world. It doesn't matter if it's on itunes or Spotify. Wherever you get your podcasts, Boost Lee is there. So thanks very much for tuning in, and I'll see you very, very.