How to price your rooms in the slow season 🚀

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Welcome to the Boost hospitality podcast. We are in season seven, episode 11 and today we're 12 talking about pricing. Now before we begin, I just want to do a big shout out to our sponsors. Hostfully they provide stunning digital guidebooks that will wow your guests. Paula Butler from Cockington Cottages recently let me know that her guests have said how amazing her digital guidebooks are before they arrive. So it's already enhancing the guest experience. Now today, pricing is a massive part of what I believe is going to happen in 2020 to the hospitality and short stay accommodation industry. With this in mind, I invited on Marelle Monde Brown of Optimize Revenue. You can go and check out their website at any time. You can go and subscribe to their emails. I 100% recommend you do because this episode is packed with so much good. You are going to find out about the apps that she uses for pricing. You are going to find out some of the most common mistakes that other hospitality owners are making when it comes to pricing. She's going to totally change your mindset in how you look at pricing your property specifically in the shoulder season. Now this is going live in January 2020. We are in what is would be known as the shoulder season and she's going to give you some advice on what you can be doing to get those bookings and specifically midweek bookings. You are going to be making so much notes on this. Now if you're in the car, please do not make notes. What I would advise you to instead is when you get to your destination, go to boostly.co.uk podcast. There is a full write up for you right now on the blog. Go down to Season 7, Episode 11, click on the link, it will take you to the full blog. You'll be able to find more about Morelle. You'll be able to find more about her training days. You'll be able to find out more about how to subscribe to her email list as well as all the goodies that she recommends in here. It's an information packed podcast, probably one of the best ones that we've ever done. I've hyped this up as much as I possibly can do. Without further ado, let's jump in what we are going to do today then we're going to talk about pricing. But before we do that, I've got some quick fire questions that I would like to ask. So number one, what would you say is your or your company's superpower?

Yeah, my superpower I would say is really the ability to Help people make decisions and take uncertainty out of their pricing questions and queries. Inevitably, with 25 years experience, that probably is where my biggest superpower lies because I've experience of blocks of apartments, individual apartments, bed and breakfast, the hospitality community and obviously independent hotels and so on. So that's probably where the wealth of my experience lies over that length of time. But yes, ultimately it's really about taking uncertainty out of the pricing question for people.

What's your favorite business book?

This is one that I just can't not to get rid of. That's the wrong thing to say. It's a bible that I started with a long time ago and I keep looking for something to replace it and nothing has quite managed to do it for me up to this point. So it's something by two guys called Johnson and Scholes and it's about competitive advantage and it gives you a load of models in there of some of them a little bit traditional these days, but they still work really well in terms of looking at your environment, looking at your marketplace, looking at demand and supply. And these are all fundamentals for revenue management and pricing. And if you own or you are managing a property, then knowing how to see and view your marketplace and adopting some of those models is really quite positive. I would suggest.

Okay, final one then. What is your favorite purchase under 100 pounds being in the past year?

Actually purchased, it was more of an app. It's a business card reader. Having been at lots of different events, PIN meetings, networking events and the likes of. I was struggling with all of the cards that I was collecting and actually I hadn't realized. I'm sure lots of people out there have already done this and got that. But actually to just line up that business card on that app and put it straight into a database, obviously in line with GDPR regulations, to be able to have that database of contact, which would be brilliant.

So you've worked at and with some of the biggest chains in this industry. What I want to know is what is one of the most common mistakes you see hospitality owners make when it comes to pricing? And it doesn't matter on the size, the largest or the smallest. B and B what's the most common mistake you see people make?

I'd rather say two things. One thing, it's not necessarily specifically pricing led, but it does have an impact and that is the property management system. And based on the day of week pricing, it's really, really important to understand that it's about an average over a period of time that you need to Achieve and not the rate that you're talking about. That's really, really common and a really common challenge and a mindset to try and have to change for people as well.

Obviously, I imagine over the time you've been doing this, you've seen every time. Do you have a personal preference? Is there a PMS that's doing better than others? Is there one that you prefer over others?

There is purely on the basis of the information that comes out of it. And if it was a large independent hotel property, I would be recommending the use of something like guest line. If it's an apartment or a block of apartments, individual units or multi units, then I'm using more often res harmonics, which is purpose built for the apartment and short and long stay community.

Res harmonics. That's the one that I've just heard of as of a couple of seconds ago. I'm sure everybody will want to go check it out. We will provide obviously in the show notes the links to these and where you can go find out more information about that. I'm really interested to find out more about the rate and the average rate as we go out through this topic. But would you give to somebody specifically around pricing when it comes to. When somebody asks you the same question, how would I go about getting those midweek bookies? What's the best tactics and tips you would advise them?

It's quite a broad answer. There's quite a number of facets to answering that kind of question. And I think, you know, in the first instance there's got to be a realization that, you know, having your property, your asset, whatever that looks like, whether it be the apartment, bed and breakfast, so on and so on, various different types. It isn't a plug and play. And I think there's a fallacy that you plug into what's classified as distribution channels. And in the main they tend to be two main ones being airbnb and booking.com There are many others out there. Just it doesn't look necessarily that an awful lot of people are either aware of it or they don't have a property management system that can support more channels. So you need to be familiar with there is, you know, more, more opportunities there on distribution sites such as Expedia.com, hotel.com, Lastminute.com, laterooms.com, I mean the list goes on and on. And a T in order to find out what dot coms are being used in your location is simply to go on Google and type in accommodation in whatever location you're at. There are two and a half thousand agencies plus plus plus in the uk, not just Silver Door and Situ and so forth. There are so many more that are corporate related and you need to understand which corporates operate with which agencies. But before you do you need to set your corporate rate.

Let's just unpack these a little bit because there is so much good golden nuggets that you can take away if you're really listening there. So the first thing that Morrell recommended was to go onto Google, type in accommodation in your area and look what is the most brand businesses that are coming back to jump on that. There's a free bit of training that I did. It's a video that everybody can go and watch boostly.co.uk Listingsites because it shows you a step by step guide on how to do that with a Google sheet because it is as much location based as it is niche based focus that get 30 to 40 results and then all you're going to do is pick apart the 8 to 20. So which 20% of businesses are to going coming up top 80% of the time on a Google search or a Bing search in your area or in your nation, you've got to be looking at those websites and if you're not on those websites and you need to be because that is where the majority of your potential guests are going to be landing because it's the first ones that Google is showing either by spend or in the organic. Then we talk about website. You've got to have your own website, you've got to have your own personal brand of business out on there so people can find, potentially find you if they're not then going straight away to the OTAs. Then we sort of started to talk about emails again. Emails are so important. If you aren't yet building your email list, please, please, please, please do so. It's so important. I talk about this a lot. You've got the slow lane. You've got the fast lane. At the moment, everybody on social media or booking.com or Airbnb when they book for review, they're on the slow lane. By getting them into your email list. You get in a fast lane where people are going to just speak to you on a one on one basis. It's so much better to get to get that email going because like Mirelle says, in a time like now you can start to talk to people, start to email your list and you can sort of say to people, would you like to come to us in these sort of days, chat to sort of think about special offers or rates or whatever that you're going to be doing. For instance, and then finally, which was amazing, was talking about corporates and business bookings. Is there something that we could do if we haven't done the prep? Or are we literally saying here right off this shoulder season, let's start prepping for the next shoulder season?

Of course, it depends on how you set yourself up. There are two things in life when it comes to pricing and you can either constrain your demand or you can unconstrain your demand. And when you're getting into high season, you want to put factors in that might constrain that demand. Slow down the pickup so that you can capitalize on it when you arrive in that time frame. Conversely, when you're in a soft shoulder period, you need to unconstrain your demand. And by that we're talking about really making it as simple and as easy for your guests or prospective guests to purchase from. You don't go onto a search and look at 35 or 355 establishments in your area. It becomes analysis paralysis. You won't see the wood for the trees, but select for yourself five competitors, plus yourself as being a group that is the most like for like competitors.

Fantastic. And there's so many people that will be listening to this. They'll be scribbling notes and notes and notes away. So as always, this full transcript from this blog, from this interview, sorry, will be on the Boostly blog. Go to boostly.co.uk podcast click on this episode. You can get the full transcript with all the links to everything that we've talked about. But before we finish, I just want to talk about pricing tools because it's something that is going to become a bit of a buzzword, I believe in 2020 we've got things like air, DNA, price labs and there's many, many other. Now, when it comes to location pricing rates, do you have a favorite tool and if so, what are they that you use in your on your day to day?

The tool I use on a day to day basis is something called HQ Plus. This is a tool that will give you. I mean it's a gift really. I mean yes, it's a chargeable thing that they obviously invoice for on a monthly basis, but it gives you the price, sorry, it gives you the demand per day in your marketplace and you set up your competitors, your chosen competitors into that tool and it will give you the competitors pricing on a daily basis so you can map quite easily and see quite easily where you fit against that competitor pricing. It will also give you the events in your location that will impact the demand. So if you're in a major town or city center that has got large events, you know, marathons and running events or sporting events, entertainment events, things like that, that can impact the demand for your property, those are already listed and they get updated regularly into this HQ tool. So that's my, that's my lifesaver really. That's my day to day go to place to double check where things are. On top of that of course it's I use for, for some of the more established multi multi unit blocks and independent hotels I use something called Ideas which is a revenue management solutions. It's quite sophisticated. It's not something I would recommend if you have, you know, less than 20 units, but if you do have less than 20 units, including sort of one, one individual property or unit, then you know, as I said before, there's nothing to stop you using something like Price Lab. So a large proportion of my customers do that and we can work with it really quite well if we've set it up and we're monitoring it closely.

Many takeaways, so many links and I guarantee that there are people who are watching this and as long as they're not driving they are currently now on their phones, on their computers checking out STR Global and all the other ones. And again if you've missed anything, do not worry, it'll be on the full blog write up. Now there's going to be people here who are going we want more Morel, we want more of the pricing Queen. I highly recommend everybody who is listening to this to go to optimize revenue.uk is on there. You can go and subscribe to Morelle's email list which she will obviously keep you in touch with ways and means and if you would like to work with her. Now obviously one on one, Morel is pretty much fully booked but she told me before we went on air that there are some training days coming up in 2020 London, Manchester, Glasgow. Is that right Mirelle?

That's right, yes.

So there's going to be training days and these are a workshop based where you can really get into pricing for your property and real focus it down because there's so much to take away from Mirel. Is there any social media channels that you like to hang out on? If anybody wants to go and say a quick hi to you, Is there any preference that you want that you.

Have I'm on Facebook. So certainly look me up on Facebook and certainly do a private message. If you want me to just give you a quick call at some point, we can schedule a. You know, not every, I appreciate sometimes people, there's that old saying is that they don't know what they don't know. And I've had lots of conversations with people who've said, you know, I'm a bit worried about not knowing what to talk to you about when I get on there. I know what I need to help with, but I just don't quite know. It doesn't matter. You know, at the end of the day, just say it how it is. You know, I work with all sorts of different people with all different experiences. So please don't be, you know, don't be too bashful. You know, just phone up, no problem. Or PM me on Facebook. Alternatively, I hang out quite a bit on LinkedIn also.

Morel, thank you so much for doing that. I know there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be reaching out to you afterwards. If you want to share any of your personal recommendations for any apps, if any pricing apps that you use or sefware, please get in touch. You can do so via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. We're all everywhere nowadays, so UK. And if this is the first time that you've listened to the Boostly podcast, please do me a massive favor. Go, rate, review and subscribe. It helps get it higher up the ranking and as well just go and check out the YouTube channel. We've got all the video content from this audio is on there. We've got the live, the full video and we're broken it down into five to ten minute little sections, segments so you can again watch things on the go. That's all available now on the YouTube channel. Boostly on the YouTube. Thank you so much for watching. We'll be back again with another episode but for now my name is Bean Mark Simpson. I'm the founder of boostly, founder of the book Direct Map and have a great day.

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