How to Stand out From A Sea of Accommodation Businesses With Adam Rana

Welcome to the Boost hospitality podcast, season six, episode 10. And in this episode, I interview a good friend of mine, Adam Rana. Adam is based in Birmingham. He's got a nice little serviced accommodation portfolio and the reason why I wanted to get him on this podcast is that his customer service experience is second to none. In this episode, we talk about his 360 model, we talk about how he collects reviews and how he gets instant guest feedback by going that extra mile. There are some fantastic tactics and tips and tools that he uses that you can put into your hospitality business straight away. So, without further ado, please sit back and listen to the podcast interview with Adam Rana. Welcome to Boost Hospitality Podcast. This is season six, episode ten. My name is Mark Simpson. I'm the founder of Boostly and my goal with this podcast series is to help serviced accommodation owners and hospitality owners find out more on what they can be doing to grow their business, increase their direct bookings and cut down on commission costs. Now, today I'm going to speak into Adam Rana. Adam, I was very, very fortunate to meet him. A couple of months ago I went down to Birmingham, stayed in one of his apartments in the city center, got to meet up with him and it was a really good chat, a really good meet up, and I found out so much about service accommodation. It was on the back of meeting Adam that I had the idea to do this podcast series. So we're going to get him on in a minute and he's going to introduce himself and then we're going to get on with the topic at hand. But as always, if you are watching this for the first time, there is a load of episodes that you can get caught up from on. All you need to do is go to boosie.co.uk podcast. You can subscribe on itunes, you can subscribe on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. So, without further ado, let me bring on Adam into the call. Adam, if you could just take a few minutes just to introduce yourself a little bit more about you and just how you got into service, accommodation and hospitality, please.

Good evening, Mark, and good evening everyone who's on live and who will be listening to this podcast. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. First of all, it's a pleasure to be on the podcast and with all your audiences that you got around the world. Just a bit about, you've done, I think, a good job to introduce me, but just a bit about me. So my name is Adam Rana, based in UK Birmingham, in West Midland. I originally got into hospitality end of 2017. So I am experienced, but not so experienced. But my main background which got me led into this was my interest in traveling, stayed around the world, traveled 35 countries, stayed in different hostels. Actually that's what really got into, I wanted to start a hostel, got into hostels, learning, spending time with hostel people who have set up hostels from uk around Thailand, Philippines, you know. So this is where I've got my idea, you know, from traveling, really giving it back to other travelers in hospitality and customer service sense. So when I come back to UK about 2017, one of my personal houses which I own was available to rent and I took an opportunity which I always like taking opportunity. I took an opportunity to use it as an Airbnb and expand from there. Just on a personal level. It was all about giving experiences, hosting families and all people. And I met amazing people from there. So this is how my journey started. And just whilst I was doing that, I was in a manufacturing management company which is a Land Rover. I was in a position where I was a consultant, where I could implement processes, improve processes, work with customers. So all of that knowledge I could use how to create processes to create a good customer experience which, where it came from and, and it all just fit it together with my traveling and having a process driven business. And then that's what led to me in 2018, in the summer last year, to turn into a scaled business where I can expand my knowledge and challenge myself a little bit more rather than just having one house and have multiple houses or multiple apartments around the city and looking to expand in the future to nationwide and maybe international. So this is in a summary, that's my background, you know, traveling, hospitality, enjoyed that when I travel. So I wanted to give back, which I enjoy. And yeah, here I am.

It's really good to speak to somebody from the service accommodation world that has, you know, had a traveling background, you know, sort of experience hospitality overseas and now come back in here to started up totally from doing something different and now is just sort of ventured in. It's amazing speaking to so many people in this series, how they've got down this route into hospitality, into accommodation. And I say your story is a really good one. So talk to me then very quickly about the different type of properties that you have in the Birmingham area.

So what we did once I turned this into a business, I had to strategize and into different customer base. So I have, for example, we have an avatar of a contractor base or a family base or a business, corporate people. So I have a split of property which attract different type of market, just a lot of consumers. So I have three houses which are based just outskirts of Birmingham which we attract a lot of long term direct bookings or rather repeat bookings in my case from contractors and referrals. We run a referral scheme. So that's one avatar that I use to attract to my semi detached house or a three bedroom house around the outskirts of the city. Then I have a property base which one of them you stayed in which are more on the luxurious side on upper end of the market which attract the international crowd. So I've had a lot of from China, Saudi Arabia, we have had a lot of families with kids and nationally in the summer holidays such as now. So I track that out. I mix that with business people as well. I would say business banking, banking, corporate. There's a lot of corporate clients in Birmingham. And then I have the higher end, higher like the highest end of luxury which is attracts the luxurious type and again mixes with the business corporate type with some people who are directors or senior managers of a big blue chip company would like to stay in a fancy pad rather than staying open. So there's different types of consumer based targets that I aim for.

Nice. So you've got quite a few different types of properties. I like how that you've nailed down your ideal guest so you know where your properties are and who they're going to attract. And you've been doing this now for a little over a year. I say 2008 is when you turned it into a business and you know you've obviously done a lot of in that year. You know, compared to a lot of people that maybe have started out in essay, it's phenomenal to see. But you know you've had a lot of time to reflect. What I like about you, you know, you're very mindful, you reflect as well as look at goals in the bigger picture. But looking back then over the first year, what was or what has been one of your favorite failures that you've made? So something that you've done which was an error that you've learned from that you can maybe pass on to somebody else who may be where you were right back in 2018.

So favorite failure in terms of. I always take a failure as an opportunity to improve and a positive thing. I've always had that. So when I started I had one, well two properties a year and a half year back. Sorry. And now we have a portfolio of around 15 which is managed and owned properties of Saddam So one of the biggest mistakes I think I made early on, which has not hurt me so much, but it has. And one of them was when people. There was. Guests were asking for extras or extra. Extra, extra items, extra things. So I can use an example of families coming from abroad asking for a traveling cot. That's just an example I give you. So they were asking for extra. And so this is something I didn't never provided. I never thought of not having kids. I never thought of there would be people looking for a travel cart. And we used to say no. Well, I said we. I used to say no. And I said, oh, look, unfortunately we don't provide that service that resulted in, like, just the mindset of a guest, like, oh, this is not a helpful guest. Even though we supplied everything else and we were happy on hand to help with everything. It was just that one little thing which was not advertised, but they still wanted us to help them because they're not from the city, they're not from this country. And we couldn't do it because I just never thought it was a cost to me. And, you know, it's not. It wasn't part of my business plan giving extras like, you know, some people wanted. They're coming for an anniversary, they wanted a bottle of wine. There's something we didn't do and we just said no. And, you know, took a month back. And I reflected about six months back, we reflected on this. You know, a lot of people asking, what can we do? And one thing I learned was never to say. It's always say yes, never say no. But tell them this is the yes and this is what it will cost and this is a charge for service. And in fact, the cost didn't really matter in the end because the service, because we said yes, a lot of people, 90% of people actually said yes and say, yeah, we'll pay for this service because we understand it was not advertised. But secondly, the people who said no, we've never. Then it never resulted in negative feedback or a bad feedback because the service was available for them and they got in their minds that service is all about creating experience for the customer. And experience was available. But it's their choice. The ball is in their court if they want the service or not. But we have a rule in our company with me employing people now is we always say yes and then we come up with a solution. So to summarize that one of the. That was one of the biggest failures, which may have cost me some money and cost me some reviews. I Would say some reviews. Well, but now because we offer that, it's not necessarily we make extra money, it's just that we provide the service and we keep the people happy and leave the choice in the customer.

I like that. Customer service, customer experience is something that instantly impress me about yourself, straight from the off from the point of making the book into the little extra things that you and the business and the company does. And now that you're growing your team, obviously you're going to pass that on to your team members. So customer service. Then you mentioned about your other job, what you do that's not property. And could you just please just take a couple of minutes just explaining what you do in your other role for your other company, for the other job that you consult for and how have you sort of cross matched those skills and brought it into accommodation?

That's a good point you touched there, Mark. And I say this, a lot of people that work with Orama Network use your other skills and transfer them into a business that you're passionate about. So for example, for me, I work as a consultant improving processes of our supplier base, putting in processes, improving our last customer experience, the end customer experience. So that is my essentially what my background was and to a limited extent it is a little bit still. I know I'm focused on my business now, but the thing that I learned from there was working systemizing, processing processes, having a process map, having a value stream, mapping. This all come from my corporate strategic world, which is transferable skills. So when I'm going out to suppliers, I'm improving the process or coming up with a new process. And I decided to take the same mentality and put that into a new business that I started last year and create that into a customer experience. So we went away on drawing board and said, okay, how can we create a process for a customer experience? So it's something that I can touch on and it might help. So of your audience did we have something called a 360 customer experience model which every customer should go through? Not necessarily. They might not see the 360, but behind the scene we run a 360 experience for them. So from booking, what I mean by 360 experience is from the day you book to get you to come again to our apartment or a house. So what that involves, that involves every little thing that we give away, as in like we have digital guidebooks now to explain everything, how it works. Some of the discussion that I had with you about digital guidebooks of each item, how it works, how they check in and all of that's part of the experience from the day go from the booking, from a confirmation email which is automated. So it's part of all of the systems and processes which are automated during their stay. How is the stay going? Can we help with anything? Can we improve anything before they leave? Essentially they're happy all the time and comfortable and then when they'll check out, you know, we ask them is can we help them with anything to do with the checkout, where to leave the keys? And all of that is all systemized and it's come from my background and feeds into the custom360 experience which we have as a model. And then it's after sales. That's what you would call in retail. What we do is create an automated system where we market to them, where we have collected data to start to understand if they come into Birmingham again, what the purpose was at the start. So we have all that data to market remarket to them. And I would say from looking at data numbers earlier, about 60 to 50% of people are coming back to my business in the last year, which is for us it's quite, quite high return. And that's creating, bringing them back into the same experience and that creates that 360 experience for our business.

You mentioned something at the start which I picked up on, which I liked, and you call it your referral scheme or your referral program, something that I haven't heard a lot about from the service accommodation world. I do speak about it to the Boostly academy members and to my hospitality world. But could you just sort of expand on that a little bit, Tell people a little bit more about how you work it and what, what have been the results that have mean you're getting a lot of repeat bookings, right?

So this is one of the most important, one of the most productive. And then which resulted in one of the biggest revenue schemes, I would say revenue income is the referral scheme. And we trialed different ways of running a referral scheme where we were giving Amazon cards or gift cards for different retail or whatever. But what we ultimately decided was to give a percentage booking on a cashback to the customer, which has stayed. So what they do, if they've enjoyed this day, they will recommend us to their friends, family or anyone they know and they will get an 8% return on the booking that they create. A successful booking, they create, they get an 8% return. And this is something we implemented about three months ago. And it results for people that gives their interest, gives them A reason, not just because of the experience that we're giving them, but there's a monetization of the. Of them bringing someone to us. So there was a lot of people literally referring their families. So yes, this is our process of giving them money back type of thing.

That's a really, really good idea and it's good to see, but it is working. And you know, I'm watching from the outside in. I love how you document your journey on Instagram and Facebook and it's been phenomenal to watch. And you've actually just very recently hired your first full time member of staff. So you are growing, the business is growing and scaling. So how does it feel right now? You know, how did you. What made you think that this was the right time to grow? Like what is your feeling towards the future for you and the business in sa? And how excited are you in all of this?

I'm not sure I can put it into word, but I am really, really excited and which has been one of my goals and part of vision on this hospitality business in uk. It was to create a team. By creating a team we can serve more people and help more people and make sure customers are happier rather than just running a business with one person. So it's really important when you hire someone. When I hired someone, excited. But it's creating the same values and the principles that has got me to this successful level, which I would call somewhat successful, of a decent sized portfolio of a good customer feedback. We have been running on very good reviews from customers from different portals to make sure we continue that. What I do is I have a set of values and principle and a mission statement. So I have a mission statement that I filter down to that one employee is an operations manager, runs my guest management, guest handling issue management essentially what on the grand day to day business. And he's a customer facing person now, so he needs to have the same value. So this is very important for all the listeners out there. Make sure why you started your business filter down to this person. It's very easy to get lost hiring people and getting excited. But if you don't write those values down and stick them up in a bedroom that you're running it off or a basement, which we do, we have team meetings in a basement in the house. But we got it on a 3 which values are there. So it might be new for this gentleman, but he can see this day and day out that these are our principles and these are values. One of them being customer first. It's in a Big, big role, but bold writing. Customer first and customer first always is on top of head. So yes, having set values, vision and making sure your top level employees are even filtered down to your day to day employees which are doing the cleaning or the maintenance. Understand what your vision is and a firm believer that if they align with your vision and your goals, I think they will perform better and they will understand why you're doing something and why you want these standards. And so I have certain standards, certain audits in cleaning part of the business which is a backbone. So yeah, scaling and having a contractor team or a permanent full time employee. The values and the mission needs to be filtered. Amazing.

You mentioned a couple of little tools there, digital guidebooks and whatnot. And you also mentioned about automated emails. Could you just give a little bit of insight on the tools, the software that you're using? For example, who is the digital guidebook with? Who do you use for your channel manager? Who do you use for your automated emails? Just for anybody that is at that stage where they are maybe where you were three, four, five, six months ago, where they are looking to maybe grow or they're just right at the start and they're just like where do I go? I think it'd be really helpful if you could just share a bit of the tools, the names, the software, what you're using.

Yeah. So one of the main one which is a digital guide, which is a customer facing tool is what we use. It's a houseguideapp.com houseguideapp.com which is, which is a really. Yes, it's hazwareapp.com which is a really useful tune because very visual, very easy to use. It's not an app, even though it's called an app, but it's not an app. It's a link which allows the guests not to, they don't need to download anything, just click on a link and it gives them videos from check in videos for how to use, how to use a tv, how to use a remote, how to go on smart home. Just creating that visual experience and an easy experience. And the customers love it because it gives them the ease of use. And this is what it's about in a customer experience. So that's one of the tools we use and it really changed my business, set me apart from competition. You know, competition, there's always going to be competitions. You set yourself by these tools which makes other people's life easy. You providing a solution. So that's, that's one of them that I've used behind the scenes I use, like auditing apps, something called an I auditor, which we use widely. Other industries like construction, building, health and safety, just to create checklists and for your employees or your contractors to use and what you want the standards to be done by, to allow pictures to be taken. So these are some of the apps that we use alongside my channel manager that we have to run our service accommodation business, which is Tokeet or I use. And these are LinkedIn into our business model and a day to day on your phone, they can be used on your phone and they can be used on your MacBook or your laptop. So it's essential to have tools around your processes because you have right tools for your people. You won't deliver the promising results that you have promised people.

Amazing. Really good. Some really good little bits of advice there. These are some websites and some apps that I've not come across yet, so I'm definitely going to go check them out. So obviously now you're starting to grow, grow the business. You're also starting to help out other people in Birmingham that are looking to get started as well. It's a question that I've asked every guest so far. What is the one thing that you see people getting started with property, with hospitality, with service accommodation? One of the big mistakes that you see majority of them making from time to time, what was that one thing that you see him doing? That the big mistake? So anybody else, like I say, who's right at the very start, can sort of avoid that pitfall.

The one big mistake I would say is relationships. People think a lot of people that I've known around the world in business and stuff is they missed a little trick. It's so easy building relationships. Some of my business, my business has grown. I don't like to talk about numbers to a portfolio of 15 units. It's because of relationship. Most of my business has come because either on the buying or the landlord side has come from because I've known someone and I've spent time with them, gone for a coffee, just like yourself. We spent an hour and a half, two hours having a drink on a Wednesday night, I think, and it was really productive. And I wouldn't be here if we didn't do that. You know, if you just came in and just left and, you know, just as a guest and it wasn't just you. I do this with Most of my 31% or 32% of repeat bookings that come in or direct bookings. Most of them are because I have built a relationship Whether it's on a teleporting, a telephone call and while the guest is staying or come going to meet them because I may have the same interest as them or helping them out somewhere but going there personally. So relationship skills, literally it takes you, yes, it might take out of your day, but if you want to create a legacy, you want to create, you have a vision. You get stuck in half an hour in city center Birmingham traffic, it's worth it because you can monetize that relationship or you become friends. If nothing else, I've gone and become friends with people from Korea, from China, and when I'm traveling in this Christmas, I'm going to be traveling in Southeast Asia and I will be meeting up with them people. And you know, this is just the beauty of having relationship. And yes, and this is the only one of the main reasons I'd rather say not the only relationships have got me where I am. So just the people who are listening out there, I think just keep building relationship, think the long term game, don't think short term, don't think. I didn't get business today, but you might get business in three months, 100%.

I think again, one thing that you told me that you do differently is you just pick the phone up after somebody has paid you a visit. Especially like those direct bookings, you just pick the phone up, give them a call and you ask some very, very good questions. So I think the final thing that we'll cover on this interview is those questions that you ask to get feedback and good feedback. Could you just go through what they are and why it works and what have been the results of asking these questions that has helped you grow.

Definitely. So about to touch on reviews. The reviews are key, customer experience is key. And growing your model, your business model. And one of the things that we implemented is called something called Net Promoter Score. And what we do is literally run it by Red Promoter Score so people can go and Google that and have a look. It's just a star rating 1 out of 10. How likely are you to stay? How likely are you to come back to our service apartments? And they will rate that 1 to 10. And if someone rates a 9 or 8, there is an opportunity which allows me to ask why and take constructive feedback to improve that. So the next one is a 10. And it's always better than asking how was your stay? It's better to ask and ask them to rate a stay. And a lot of big blue chip companies do that. When you probably a lot of people will remember when you put a phone down, you get a survey to rate out of 10. And I recommend a lot of everyone to go out there in hospitality to do that. Whether it's face to face or on a paper based or it's on a phone call. We as a company have a compulsory phone call that has to be made two days after this day which asks these questions. And if it's a 10, yes, happy days. And we always offer a discount for a customer to come back. But if it's less than a 10 allows me to continuously improve. The very important to continuously improve by taking this feedback and not getting hurt and continuously improving and keeping your business growing. This is how you will win against your competition. Wherever you are in the world is always going to be competition. Take these reviews and take them as constructive feedback. Uses tools like Net Promoter Score and this is what's allowed me to grow the business.

I think that there are a lot of things that you've been talking about in this interview tonight that so many people aren't talking about. So there's a lot of people that can watch this whether it's live and I know there's a lot of people tuning in live or whether you're watching this black back on the replay or whether it's by audio in the podcast. There's a lot of things that people can be picking up from and all of those tools, those tactics, those tips, they're going to be in the show notes of this episode. So don't worry if you've missed it. Now. Adam, we really appreciate you coming on tonight and doing this. If there's anybody who has watched this or listened to this and wants to find out more about you, what is the best way to reach out and say hi.

So you guys can reach me out on Facebook, obviously if you're watching on Facebook Live. So Adam ADM and surname is Rana and I'm mutual friends with Mark. So you can find me through Mark. You can always also get me on Instagram, which I document my journey there. So it's Adam, Adam R777 and you can get me and see how I'm growing a business, what I do day to day. So it's really helpful just to get content and it's all free and you guys can see how to improve your own businesses. And finally I've had a chat with Mark earlier and it's something I'm willing to do in my busy schedule. I'm offering three discovery calls if someone wants some help or free content or some of the tools that I use and someone's stuck on a cushion. So if you. I'm only offering this to three people. First three people to book on my discovery call and I'm happy to spend half an hour with each person to give them any advice you want on a service, apartment, hospitality business, just generally in business. So yeah, hit me up. And for first three people and my. I will put this in the show. Notes mark is calendar.com Adam Rana. So that's calendar.com Adam. Rana Rana.

Nice.

You can get, you can go and pick a time and just book a 30 minute call in. It's only for three people and so please go ahead and I'll be happy to talk to some of your listeners and I'll be delighted.

Superb. All right, buddy. I really, really appreciate you coming on tonight and thank you to everybody that has tuned in. As always, this has been the Boost Hospitality podcast. This is season six, episode ten. If this is the first time that you have ever tuned into one of these, you've got a lot of episodes that you can go and catch up on. It's available on itunes, it's available on Spotify, it's available if you prefer video, but all the videos are on YouTube right now, on Instagram, TV, LinkedIn, you name it, there are videos there. So go to boostleet.co.uk podcast to go and find out all the individual episodes. And please, before you do leave, go to itunes. Leave one of those lovely five star reviews. It helps this podcast grow and to get more and more people aware of it. All right, this has been Boost Hospitality Podcast. My name is Mike Simpson. I'm the founder of Boost Lee. To go find out more about what I'm doing to help people increase their bookings, go to boostly.co.uk.