Is Now The Time to Go Listing Website Independent?

Foreign. Season 8 Episode 8 and today I want you to do one thing for me. Share this podcast with somebody that you know from the world of hospitality or just in business. Because the advice that I'm going to give you in here is going to show you how to bring in additional income to your business during the Corona crisis. Over the course of the past eight episodes we've gone through so many different advice how you can survive during the Corona crisis, how you can get tactics and tips on how you can get bookings during this and what we're going to do today show you how you can bring in additional income, but also as well how you can save a potential cancellation via booking.com or Airbnb and turn it into a direct one. We filmed this live on Wednesday 25th March, so obviously with the current event and everything's changing so quickly, depending on the day that you're listening, some of these tactics and tips may not be applicable. But watch and learn and then put it in to practice before you go. Before you listen to this podcast in full, do me one favor, go check out the podcast sponsors which is hostfully you get one free digital guidebook. All you need to do is go to hostfully.com you can create digital guidebooks that will really help your future guests. Not only places to stay, places to visit, places to go check out in your local area, but also as well you can help them with pre arrival information such as food deliveries, you can tell them the codes to get in and it's all done for free. You get one guidebook. If you want to go and upgrade, all you got to do is click on the upgrade button. If you put boostly 2m you get 2 months free just for being Boostly podcast listeners. Tonight it's just me. I'm joined by Boostly Academy members. We had a little pre show chat where we shared some little tactics and tip and I just want to give a big shout out to Jenny McCabe of Mount and Bond Apartments in Manchester. She was fantastic full this week by doing proactive steps, contacting key workers, contacting the NHS Hospital Trust, just offering her apartments out to those key workers and guess what, it worked fantastically well. She's full. So big shout out to her and a big shout out to Georgina Bearman out of the Seacroft. She has managed to pivot her business and is now doing takeaway breakfast, pancakes, full Englishes, you name it, in a local 2 mile radius. And again she's got income money coming in and when all of this is over and the upturn is coming back. She's got an additional revenue stream right there. So these are just two tactics that people have been doing. Please listen to this episode in full. Tell a friend about it. Go and leave a review on Apple itunes so more people can find out about the podcast. And if you want to go find out about all of the back catalog, go to boostlead.co.uk podcast let's just talk about the last sort of 24 to 40, 48 hours in the world of hospitality. What has been happening? What has been going on? What I have noticed. And everybody will have got this email. Booking.com have basically sent out an email to every one of its hosts, every one of its property managers. And what they have said doesn't matter what your cancellation policy doesn't matter what is going on. You have got to refund any guest that's put in a cancellation within five days or. Or we're going to refund it for you and bill you. Okay? Now, this follows on from what Airbnb just recently did, and they are literally throwing all of its hosts, all of its partners underneath the bus. Now, if you've had this email and if you've been affected, then let me know in the comments. Boost the academy members, Let us know in the chat if you've had this email. If you've had to make this enforcement, then let us know in the comments. Now, the reason why I'm not a fan of this is because they sent out an email very recently saying that we are here for our partners, we are here to look after. We even got a call on Friday from a booking.com rep just to check in, you know, and I thought at the time, you know what that is? That's all right. You know, that shows that they're being proactive. And this was after all of the bad Pierre that Airbnb had done, where they just cancelled again, all of our bookings. No, I can. I can totally understand why a guest would want to cancel. And we've had cancellations. We've had people that have booked and they've obviously cancelled. And you've just, you know, you've got to. You've got to suck that up and deal with it. And, you know, you. You can go to cancellation policies and all of that, but when they literally just throw you under the bus like that, and then to say, doesn't matter what your cancellation policy, you've got to refund them. And if you don't, we will refund them for you and then we will Bill you then. That just doesn't sit right with me. What I noticed today, I was walking around our property, walking around the farm here, and I spotted one of these. Now, hands up, if you have got one of these in your property, in your B and B, in your hotel, have you got one of these just laying around? Now, the reason why they do this is marketing on their front. They send it to you because they want you to put this up on your wall. They want you to show it off, they want you to have this in their eyeline because it says AttheTopBooking.com, it makes you feel good because you get that decent award, that decent number, that decent things, you can show it off. And again, I'm going to take an example that I saw a friend of mine, good friend of mine, Steve Kapandi from the Book Direct Symposium, he did this at the event when I was there in Greece and Athens with him. And it was really powerful. And I think today more than ever, if you've got one of these on your wall, if you've got one of these that is in your property, if you've got this on your website, if you show off about this, then here's what I want for you to do. Rip it up and throw it away. Because if they're going to treat us like that, why should we actively promote them in our properties? Now, there's going to be a lot of people that are on the end of this that are really going to reassess partnership with booking.com, partnerships with the OTAs, partnerships with these third parties. Now, I'm not advocating leaving them, I'm not advocating getting rid of them off your platform because at the end of the day, they spend so much money when all of this is over and the upturn is that they are going to spend and heavily invest so much money in ads and ad spend to getting people back onto their platform. You need to have a listing on there, you need to have a presence and an eye on there, because if not, then you will literally believe in money on the table. I am going to be massively stepping up how we can convert OTA bookings into direct bookings. Moving forward, I am going to have no qualm or no nothing at all is going to prevent me from taking an OTA booking and doing that very best to convert it into a direct booking. Because how them and Airbnb have treated hosts, treated you, treated its property managers, treated its partners over the course of the last week is shocking. Now, here's what we have been doing. This is what we have been doing this week and this is how we have been converting potential OTA cancellations into a direct booking. And it was something that Jessica Lorimer said on last Friday's interview. Now, last Friday, for those of you who haven't watched it, I'm just going to go and have a look at the date. It was Friday, Friday the 20th of March, Friday live was with Jessica Lorimer, who is a sales leadership expert. She has got a fantastic group, fantastic podcast. She has helped me massively. And it was a drop in phase that she mentioned in the podcast, but it stuck with me and it was change, not cancer. Okay? And these are important words. And if you're watching this now on Zoom, or if you're watching this on Facebook, or if you're watching this back on the replay, just do me one thing. Just put in the comment section, change, not cancel. When you get a potential cancellation come in, there's very little you can do, especially if this is dealing with an ota. But you get a bit more power with a direct booking. What I like to do, if an email's come in or a potential cancellations come in, or even if you get that little notification to say booking.com guest is cancelled, we have got their details, so we've got their phone number. The first thing that I'm doing is I'm picking the phone and I'm giving them a call and the conversation is going along the lines of, hey, insert name. Just got your email with the confirmation or the request to cancel. I totally understand that. With these uncertain times, who would want to travel? Right now, we are literally in a lockdown. We can't unless it's a key worker. So I totally get it. However, what I would really appreciate, you've obviously wanted to come to stay with us for a reason. What I would love is that we could just change your booking. So instead of it being, say, next week, let's just change it to a date in the future. October, November, whatever, I don't care. Any date in the future. We'll just move it to an unspecified date. What we'll then do is that as a, as a gesture of our appreciation, is that we will give you a 10% reduction. And what we'll do is we'll book it directly with us. So you've got no fees to pay if they're booked through Airbnb and we don't have to pay the commission to Airbnb. Let's say we'll show appreciation. We'll give you that discount, you then can change that date at Airbnb anytime when all of this is over. And this will be over. It's important to stress you will be able to change those dates anytime, obviously subject to availability. And we'll do that for you. And like I said, we won't put your price up. We'll actually give you a discount, 5, 10%, whatever you want to call it. And that'll be a massive show of appreciation from us. It will help us because we will then be able to have money in the bank so we can then afford to continue in 612 months time. And you as well, you can guarantee to come and stay, stay with us. All we need to do, Mr. Customer, Mrs. Customer, to do that, we just need to do two things. Number one, just confirm for me your email address. And also as well, we just need to take down your card details so we can put just a little payment aside and you can mention what that is. You can take the full payment or whatever you can say to them. Listen, your cancellation policy is exactly the same, if not better, when you book with us directly. But would you be able to do that? You know, we've had that conversation. Out of one out of every ten calls we are sort of getting at the moment, the average is about 40%. So four out of 10 are changing and we're getting the direct booking. So instead of booking via an OTA, they're booking with us directly. Sometimes we're getting maybe 20, 30, 40 pound is just a little bit of money up front. One or two of the calls. We're actually getting the full payment and we're getting it direct. We're getting it on our system and we're getting the email address. They are then obviously cancelled on booking.com so it's no longer their guest, no longer their client. Their customer is our data. This is something that you can be doing. For those of you that have had all the cancellations and you've not tried this tactic, then why not give it a go? What everybody needs to start realizing is that if you're just going to sit there and wait for government bailouts and wait for funds and stuff to come, then you're going to be waiting a while. You're in the reactive mode. My goal with this series, Series eight and for doing these lives every single night, is to get you to be proactive doing things like that that you wouldn't normally do. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to list off a of things that you could potentially be doing right now. So you've got a lot of guests that have stayed with you in the past who already know, like and trust you. You've got an email list. Hopefully, if you've been paying enough attention to the words that I've been saying over the last four years, by now you will have an email list, you will have Facebook followers, you've got people that you can reach out and talk to. What I would love for you to do, number one, go back on everybody that has stayed with you in the past and you've got an email that you can send which basically goes along the lines of, hey, Mr. Customer, I hope you're doing well. Whatever the name is, if you know them personally, you can add a bit of personalization into it. You could say, obviously these are crazy, uncertain times. But, you know, if you know anybody that is needing accommodation, so a key worker, NHS staff, whatever you want to want to call it, who needs accommodation, please let us know. This is for those obviously who can take accommodation. Now, we have got properties available, X, Y and Z. As you know, we are based here. If you please know anybody, send me a message straight away with their contact details. I'll give them a call. If they book on the back of your referral, then we will look after you by giving you X. Now, this could X could be Amazon vouchers, it could be whatever. Right now, as much as there is people spending money, there's also people who do need money and if you can just give them a referral just for saying, just something, saying, we thought about you, we recommended you and that'd be a long way and that will give you a lot of good karma moving forward into the future when things do go back to normal and people do start booking. Second thing, offer your skills online. There are so many people in the boostly Academy. There are so many people in the hospitality world. I've got careers that are so different than hospitality. You know, I speak to so many people, I do market interviews and I ask them to give me a, give me the story, tell me what they were doing before. And so many of you have got so many different types of careers, there's so many different things that you are skilled in, why not offer them out? Now, I know there's a couple of people who are teachers in. Well, check out nicetalk.com website that I discovered, a one on one teaching website. So those of you that are skilled teachers, whether you're a language teacher, whether you've done your TEFL in the past or anything like that, you can go on there, you can register your services. There's loads of different websites like that one. Just go and, just go and check them out. You may be really skilled or you not even be really skilled. You could just, you've discovered a real good talent for Canva. How many of you have got those Christmas presents that you've been looking to shift but you just haven't had the time? Well, guess what? Now you've got the time. Get your products listed, get things that are spare around your house, things that you don't need, minimize, cut down, minimalization, whatever you want to call it. If you've got stuff that you don't need anymore, then ebay because somebody else will buy it. And now is the perfect time. Post offices are still open, people are still buying online. Prime example. And I'm speaking personally here. Let me tell you a story. So obviously I'm at the farm, I'm in Scarborough, my house is in Javier, my co working office is in Javier. All of my podcasting equipment, all of my things that I do to record everything is in the desk in the co working space. So I this week have tried looking for a webcam, Logitech webcam, really good one. It shoots in 1080. It's fantastic. I can't find them. Why can't you find them? Because everybody is now having to work from home. Everybody's now having to be, you know, PTs are all going online and all those sort of things. Can't find them. Found one on ebay, managed to get it on ebay. It's arriving next week. People are putting the stuff that they don't need, putting it online and you can buy it. Prime example. Now obviously there might be some places in the world where post offices aren't allowed to open. You know, I'm just speaking from where I am right now. So please, please, please check with your local government laws or whatever where that maybe don't get in trouble because I said that, Number four, package up local products and sell them online. Now more than ever, your local shops, your local produces, your local breweries or whatever, they need your help more than ever. So how cool would it be if you could go to those shops, build the networks and go, right, what I'm going to do is I'm going to sell little local hampers online, I'm going to email my, I've got a thousand guests email addresses right here and there's going to be people that were looking to come into our local area so they can come and visit you. Loads of Places of the uk, loads of places of the world that have got their own little uniqueness. So what you could do is you could go to them and just go, right, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put out an offer online to package it all up and then post it off and people can buy these little hampers, get a hamper, or however you're going to package up and do it, I'm going to offer it up. So what you will do is you'll offer to buy a cost rate, whoever you're going to work with locally, you'll make your profit on there and then you can put it out online, obviously working the postage and you can post it off. And again, something like this, something that is unique is a really good idea and it's super simple. So all it involves is a phone call to your local produce makers, whoever it is, brewery, coffee, whatever you want to call it, you can name it something and then you can organize it and tell you what you've got, guests, customers already that may want to buy it. Because again, where are people stuck? They're stuck inside, you know, they're looking for things to do, looking for different things to try out. And again, they could be just bought of the same old pasta that they're gonna be eating because everybody's bought the fucking bread. So again, think about different things that you can, you can do. All it is is just a quick phone call to people in and around your area and you'd be amazed. And again, when this does end and there is the upturn, you've got another revenue stream, something that you never would have thought. So again, all it is is just giving it a go. This is something that you can do as well. And it's going back to the cancellation story that I told you earlier. So any guest that has cancelled, you could contact them and if they say, listen, you know, I don't want to change, I'm good, just going to keep it cancelled, then there's two ways to go. You could do the change. One that I said, the second one would be where you sell them a gift voucher, but you give them it for a crazy deal to pre book in the future. And again, the way I would approach this would be the 8020 rule. So if you've had a guest that was meant to come and stay for say two weeks, that's a large chunk of of your revenue gone. So what I would be tempted to do here would be contact them and say, listen, you've cancelled, I totally get it. You know what we're willing to do. If you were willing to buy a gift card voucher or credit right now, then what I'm going to be able to do, if you come and stay for two weeks in the future, we will give you a big discount. Those of you that have got apartments, so a lot of you have got apartments. And again, this is another idea that I saw in another group and I just wanted to share it with you. Loads of apartments that are dotted around and it could be in cities, so you could offer up your apartments as distribution or packing place. So there's going to be a lot of people right now that are going to be getting a ton of online orders, but they just haven't got the space to be able to fulfill or to pack it up. And they may be looking for offices or places to do this. Now, you could offer up again on local Facebook groups or something like that, your Airbnb, not as a place to stay, but as a distribution place, a packing place or something where they can come in dollar boxes and fulfill their orders. And again, this would be. You would have to check with the laws on this for essential work and whatnot. But again, this is another option that you could do is you could work out a rate so you can at least cover what your bills are going to be for that month. If you can't get key workers to stay in there, look at alternative ways and means of what you can do for that. Let me show you one more. And this is something that I've noticed. So there's going to be a lot of people now who are going to say, I've never done this before. Not confident. I've never done this before. Well, guess what? Like I said, we've never had coronavirus before. You're going to have to, whether you like it or not, do new things. You're going to have to pivot, you're going to have to experiment if you want to survive. Prime example. And this is something that I've seen so much in the hospitality, community service, accommodation groups and just other Facebook groups that when I do come online, and I've done really well that past week from Monday to now in turning off the noise. And I'm going to do a live video on Turning off the Noise on Monday with a mindset expert. But what I've noticed is that it's been about six days since the government have told us in their headline deal that 80% of employees are going to get their pay packet. For those who are on for A long period. It's been eight days since the government told us about zero percent loans, insurances and grants of all that. But we're still not the rise the wiser at the details, the actual specifics to it, you know, so let's just say, let's just call it 10 days. And in the same time, in these 10 days, what I've noticed is that every day somebody's coming online and going, does anybody have any information on the grants? Does anybody have any information on which insurance companies are paying out? Does anybody have any information on here or. I've been on hold for hours trying to find out more information. You just wasting your time. In the same time, I've seen people that have go out, pivot and make money. Friday is when I'm going to bring in a financial expert, my financial advisor. He is going to be sharing practical tips on how you can cut costs in your business and in your personal life. And I've been doing this this week and I've managed to trim back about £4,000 that I was spending over a yearly basis. So what I've asked him to do is, if he's free, he said he'll turn up as long as he can drink. So I said, listen, Friday night drinks, we did it last Friday, let's do it this Friday, turn up with a drink, it's going to be about 8pm UK time. I'll have a drink, you'll have a drink, he'll have a drink and he's going to share practical advice on how you can cut costs. That is what I want everybody to bring by Friday. These tactics, these tips, these things that I'm doing, not all of them are going to stick. Some of them you can, and some of them you can't do. Everybody can contact previous guests, everybody can potentially sell gift vouchers, gift coupons, credit or whatever. Everybody can do one thing. So I want you to put a plan together and let me know on Friday what you're going to do. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much to the Boostly Academy members for being on the Zoom and for letting us share this with everybody. Thank you for everybody that is watching this live and for everybody watching back on the replay. Now, all I want for you to do is to do me one big thing. I want for you now to take a picture of the screen and I want for you to go and share this on your social media. Go and share it on Instagram, go share it on LinkedIn, go share it on Facebook, tag us in Ostleruk. If I see a tag I will share it on my wall. I will make sure people see this, but we got to get people share this. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll be back tomorrow. And again, if you want to get live notifications via messenger when I'm going to be doing these live videos, go to boostly.co.uk dailyboost and I'll speak to you again very soon.