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

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 Booster 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 have been the results that have mean you're getting a lot of repeat bookings.

This is one of the most important, one of the most productive. And then which has 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 or a cash back to the customer which has stayed. So what they do is if they've enjoyed this day, they will recommend this 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 what gives their interest in, gives them a reason, not just because of the experience that we're giving them, but there's a monetization of them bringing someone to a.

Welcome to Boost Hospitality podcast. This is season six, episode ten. My name is Mark Simpson. I'm the founder of Boostly. Now today I'm going to speak into Adam Rana. Adam. I was very, very fortunate to meet him a couple of months ago. 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 some service, accommodation and hospitality, please.

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 go around the world. Just a bit of 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 Midlands. I originally got into hospitality about end of 2017. 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. So this is where I've got my idea, you know, from traveling, giving, giving it back to other travelers in hospitality and customer service.

So talk to me then very quickly about the different type of properties that you have in the Birmingham area I.

Had to strategize and split into different, 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 distribute consumers. So we have, 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, 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 I say on the luxurious side on upper end of the market which attract the international.

So you've got quite a few different type of properties. I like how that you've nailed down your ideal guest. 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 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 service accommodation. 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 asked extras or extra? Extra, extra items, extra things. So I can use an example of families coming from abroad asking for a traveling card. That's just an example I give you. So they were asking for extra. And so this is something I didn't never provide it. I never thought of not having kids. I never thought of there would be people looking for a travel cop. And we used to say no. Well I said we. I used to say no. And I said oh look, unfortunately you don't provide that service. And that resulted in like just the mindset of a guest like oh, they cannot help the guest. Even though we supplied everything else and we were happy on hand, helped 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 in this country. 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 somebody as 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.

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, 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 customer 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, a value stream, mapping, all come from my corporate strategic world, which is transformational.

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 Boostie 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 have been the results that have mean you're getting a lot of repeat bookings.

This is one of the most important, one of the most productive and resulted in one of the biggest revenue schemes, I would say revenue income. It's 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 out of 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 of people what gives them interest in, 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, really.

Really good idea and it's good to see that it is working and you know I'm watching from the outside in. I love how you document your journey. 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 am really, really excited and this has been one of my goals and visions Hospitality business in UK it was to give create a team. By creating a team I think we can serve more people and help more people and make sure the customers are happier rather than just running a business with one person. So it's really important when you hire someone, when I hire someone for some stuff, excited but it's creating the same values and the principles that has got me to this successful level which I would go somewhat successful of a decent sized portfolio of a good customer feedback. We have, we're running on a 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 employees and operations manager runs my guest, guest management, guest handling, issue management. Essentially what on the grand day to day business he wants 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 it's filtered 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 that which we do, we have team meetings in a basement in the house. 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.

Could you.