Is This the Easiest PMS for STR Hosts? Let’s Find Out!

Welcome to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence so you can go out there and get more direct bookings. We're doing something slightly different on this episode and I'm going to call this behind the pms. We've been asked by many, many of our clients and I see it often in the Facebook group saying, what PMS should I go for? And here at Boostly we are one of the most connected website partners with many PMSs, so there's not one that we favor over others. But ultimately we, we figured that if we get people on who use different PMSs and they can then talk through what is good about the pms, what they'd like to see more from the PMS and just give you a bit of an insight. So today we're diving into Free to Book and to help us with that we've got Harrow. He is the owner of the Hive at 52, which is an amazing bed and breakfast and we're going to dive into a little bit about his business and then we're going to dive into Free to Book so you can find out more. Welcome along Harrow. Thank you for joining me.

Thank you, Liam, thank you for having me on on the podcast again.

So Haro, you're very welcome. And I know it's been been a little while since we last saw you. I think you guys have just won an award, am I right?

Yeah, that's absolutely right. We became the winner of the small accommodation or serviced accommodation provider for Marketing, Cheshire. It's the second year we actually entered the award. Last year we came highly recommended and this year we came out as a winner. So yeah, that's quite exciting actually.

That's, that's always good to hear. I like to see people getting these awards in hospitality and especially good people like yourself. So I know we're going to be talking about free to book today, which is the PMS that you use. But before we do, can you give an introduction to your business so people have an understanding of where you're coming from, hospitality wise and before we dive into your software?

Yeah. So as you say, my name is Harrow and I run the Hybrid 52 bed and breakfast. It's a small bed and breakfast in Cheshire in the northwest of England. We in our 10th year this year, so we opened 10 years ago in November, but prior to that I've been in the hotel business for 20 odd years and I've did all of everything from chef to reception, revenue manager, operations manager, and revenue sales as well. And then about 11, 12 years ago I was in between jobs and we start thinking maybe we start something for our own. And 10 years on we're still going nice, nice.

And so you mentioned this, it's bed and breakfast. I know a lot of people listening to this will be in hospitality, some will have short term rental, but bed and breakfast for people who aren't familiar what is the entire setup. And I know it sounds obvious but just for everybody, so it's really clear.

Well, it's funny you asked that question because I've been talking to a few other people in Bruce Lee about it and I put on the, on the group last week as well about asking if there was anyone still doing bed and breakfast or guest house. I mean some people call us the dinosaurs of the industry. You know, we do the old fashioned welcoming people, cooking breakfast for them and looking after them. We're on property, a lot of us, so the setup we have, we actually live in the house as well. So it's a big detached house with three guest rooms. Front of the house is the bed and breakfast and the back of the house of our is our property for my family. And as I said, I do everything really. So I do the marketing, I do the social media, I check people in, I check people out, I cook the breakfast, I serve the breakfast and then once the guests have gone, I actually service the rooms, clean the rooms, do the ironing and everything. So it's really just me doing the whole dinner breakfast. I do get help from my wife and when my eldest daughter is back from university, she will help as well. But 99% of the time it's me just looking after the guests really. It's a bit like a kind of hotel, but not as many facilities.

Yeah, that's cool. And ultimately you're doing a fantastic job, hence the award. And just before we move on to free to book, who tends to come and stay in the property.

It's it really. Well, it's been quite a mixture actually. I've been really lucky that for the last year and a two, three months I've had two corporate guys stay with me Tuesday to Thursday or Monday to Friday. But generally speaking, my clientele is people who visit their friends and family locally who can't stay with family or don't want to stay with family, a little bit of business. And then during the summer we get the weddings, people attending weddings and also visiting some of the local gardens in Cheshire. So I would say 80%. Usually it's 80% leisure and 20% corporate. But as I said for the last year and a bit it's probably more 40% corporate and 60% leisure. And with being busy in the week sometimes or most of the times, I actually can close out the weekends. So it's getting a little bit less. But yeah, so about 80, 20. And as I said the last few years it's more 40, 60.

That's cool. And the reason I wanted to let everybody know the background because obviously when we choose software, sometimes we're looking at different softwares for different reasons. But ultimately it's good to get an understanding of what the person who's using the software is, is using it for and how it's helping them. So let's dive into Free to Book. What made you choose Free to Book given that there's so many different softwares out there?

Well, it was really an old friend of mine who. Well, let me just go back a little bit. So in my, my, a lot of my roles I was a revenue and sales manager in, in large chain hotels and the large chain hotels have, have PMS systems, but they're big ones because they've got everything filtering into it. So the spa, the food and beverage outlets and things like that. So when I started doing it bed and breakfast, I didn't want to have a paper diary, I wanted to have it automated. Automated because it avoids double booking or errors with it and things like that. So when I then opened the bnb, a friend of mine was running a bed and breakfast in or a guest house in the Lake District and he just started to use Free to Book. He used another PMS before but he was very, very unhappy with that. So he could actually tell me the bad and the good of both PMSs. And then I had a call with Free to Book and they're explaining what they're doing and I thought, yeah, it's a, it's a nice system. It was relatively cheap to set up and then with all the add ons you can make it more expensive. So I just like the simplicity of it really. So I was recommended by it.

That's cool. And as you say, there's, there's a whole history you've got before doing the Bed and Breakfast. And for anybody who hasn't heard Harrow's episode, he came on behind the Host, which was a little while ago now, but you can go and check out his behind the Host episode and hear about his hospitality journey and some of the lessons that you learned along the way, which were very cool and I know we haven't got time to dive into now, but for anybody who wants to go and check those out, go and have a search on our boostly, either on the podcast or on YouTube. You'll be able to find Harrow's full episode there. So let's talk about the features of free to book. You were recommended this by your friend to go with this one. What features do you like the most? What ones really stand out?

I like the simplicity of it. You know, the calendar view gives you an easy overview of what you've got in house, the next few days arrivals or the next month arrivals. Personally, I also think that the customer communication is very good as well. You get response quite quickly. I don't tend to phone because most of the stuff I have is not urgent, but when you then submit it through their help desk, it actually you get quite a very good response on that. What I remember it Obviously it's about 10, 11 years ago now, it was easy to set up, it's easy to use and they seem to still be developing as well, although not as quick as probably some of the bigger ones, but the continuous looking at improvements. So then I think about a year and a half ago they introduced something called Bloom and it's actually their part of the, of the booking engine. So I know you've probably seen it as well and many people have that when you're on your website you've got your, your lovely pictures and your, your brand colors and things like that. And then when you go to the booking engine it's very clunky, it's not in your colors and things like that and they've changed it. So now when you go from my website on the book now button, it actually almost looks like he's still on my website. So they introduced, I think it's about two years ago now or a year and a half ago and I'd really like that. It just made it a bit more professional. Also then last year they introduced improvements on their channel management as well. So it's now easy to close out or restrict OTA channels or 1 OTA 10 or 2, so the whole system is a little bit easier. And then also as a small pms they introduce Room Price Genie, which is the dynamic pricing tool. Again in my past experience I've worked with dynamic pricing tools or yield management tools or revenue management tools quite a lot and I wasn't sure how it would work for, for me as a small business. But I still use it now and I love it and it also, it was affordable for me I don't really know the prices for the likes of what they call price. What's the other price labs? That's price lapse, you know, I don't really know. But for me, as a small bed and breakfast, I think I pay 30 pounds a month plus VAT for my dynamic pricing, which I think, you know, is. It's actually pretty, pretty affordable. And the other good thing I think as well about freetabook is that you can make it as cheap or expensive as possible. So you can use it as your pms, not having any connections with channels, you can use their Reputation product where they send out message emails to try to get reviews. You can have the automated messaging system, but you can also not have that. You have to do it yourself, set it up yourself. So there's a wide variety of things you can actually add on and obviously it makes it more expensive, but if you don't want to do that or you don't have a need for it, you can just have it as your PMS and that's about it.

Nice. Build your own type of, you know, you can pick the bits you want and leave the bits you don't.

Yeah, exactly. So I used to use Reputation Suite and I think it was something like pound 99amonth, a year. But it wasn't doing anything for me. I wasn't getting any more reviews so I just knocked on. That was saving me £100. So, yeah, so you can, you know, and even with dynamic pricing, I, I was on it for about six months two years ago and I was like, it's not really doing anything for me. So I switched off. There's no contracts with it or anything like that. But then I'm back on it now for a year and, you know, I like it. So there's a quite a bit of flexibility there as well. If you don't want to use anymore, you just turn it off.

So. Yeah.

And then during COVID obviously Covid was a little bit different, but they introduced a digital registration form as well. It's still on there and that sort of helps me collating email addresses of guests because they just have to do a tick box on there saying, would you like to receive news from us? And you know, and then I upload them once a month or once, once, once a quarter and upload them to, to my CRM. So it's, it's quite a simple system but you can make it as difficult or complex as you like it, really. And that's what I really liked about it.

Nice. And I know in the industry and certainly we mentioned this just before we hit recording. It's my, I've never used Free to book so it's my kind of preconception that it is one of the ones which are very good price point as is that right in saying that it's, it's super affordable.

Yes, it is. Although I have to, I have to sort of say a little bit that they have now increased that or from the 1st of April they have put a minimum charge on per month which caused a little bit of a stir but I still think even beside that I think it's still an affordable option to use again. I've looked at some other ones and they're sort of comparable but you know you just, when you read through it there's always something hidden there. So personally I think even with these price increases I think they're still a very affordable option.

Yeah, that's really cool. And one thing that's really important particularly in your case obviously is you've got one address but multiple rooms there and I know certain PMS can struggle with, with that. Whereas it sounds like Free to book does that absolutely fine and you know can, can manage different rooms at the same address. Is that correct?

Yeah, yeah. So I mean my mate had, I think he had nine rooms and he was fine. He's copes with that. So. So I don't really know how it would work for a short term rental accommodation because I don't really know how, how the setup is for that but looking at it I'm sure you can, they can set it up that way as well. It only works and, and as I said it's not just small hotels B B's using it. I know there' holiday let's using it as well.

So that's cool, that's cool. Well, thank you for giving us the overview of features. Is there any features that you'd like to see come to that PMS in the future? So what would you like to see as additional features coming to it?

For me I think it's not really use. I mean I think it'd be handy if it links in with my website. So is it the API? I'm not very technical on that side but the API links in with three to boot. That'd be good because then I LinkedIn to my boot Brucely website and the other thing I think some of the reporting with Room Chart Price Genie I quite like to know where they get my competitors rate from and that's quite restricted with Room Price Genie and that's probably because it's the price, you know, for a low price that you can't really give me that sort of information. But I quite like to know where they get my rates from because then it gives you a bit of an. A better idea that if my rates are going to £150 and there's nothing going on in my area, but maybe they're looking at the likes of Liverpool or Chester and something going on in the city, which, but, well, chester is about 12 miles from me and Liverpool is about 20 miles from me, so that would help. But otherwise, no, I think, I think they're listening to their customers and they're developing areas they've been asked to develop. So to be honest, no, I don't really have anything except those two. Really.

That's cool. And when there's, when you're in need of some service from them, is, is it. What, what is their support like?

I don't think it's 24 hours, but again, I don't know because I've never had the, the, the, the need to use it. They do have coverage in the weekend, but it's very minimal. But otherwise, you know, you can call them or you can just message them through the system. And as I said, the response time, normally it's very good. You know, I've had responses within 10 minutes and probably the longest response I waited for is probably a couple hours. So. But as I said, I really can't remember if it's 24 hours, but definitely seven days a week.

That's cool. Well, Harry, thank you for coming on and sharing the features, what you like about them and all the things to do with Free to Book. If somebody's listening to this episode now considering Free to Book, can you share how it's impacted your business since you started using them and any advice you'd like to share with them?

Well, for me, it has to make the process easier, you know, and I think that would have been with any, any PMS I probably used. You know, it's like, why still use a paper diary even if you have one, two or three properties, you know, it's so much easier. You can, you know, I've linked in with booking.com at the time I was LinkedIn with late rooms. I've got Airbnb, but it doesn't really do much through the Channel Manager. So then the exposure, you know, I've got a much wider exposure. When somebody makes a booking on booking.com it goes straight into my PMS. I don't have to worry about it. I get an email, the booking comes through. So it's made the process easy, it's easy to work this. I would say there's less stress as well. So you don't have to say, oh, I need to close that booking.com because I've taken a booking on my PMS or in my paper diary and things like that. So it alleviates a lot of stress, I think, and a lot of work. As I said, I do really think that the communication is very good and the response times are very good. And in regards to the, you know, the dynamic pricing tool, it has actually grown my rate not by huge amount, but three pound fifty in 2023, 2024 compared to the year before and it's almost four pounds year to date. So it's a considerate amount for me as a small business, so that helped as well. And again, I haven't really had much contact with Room Price Genie but again, it's a relatively small company and the response from them as well has been quite good. So I think it's always worth having a look at different ones and I think sometimes Free to Book falls a little bit on the wayside because they don't advertise or they, you know, they shout about themselves. But it's not a very well known pms, although I know a lot of people using it. So yeah, you know, give them a ring and ask them to show what they can do. And if anyone has got any questions, I'm more than happy to help as well and sort of show them around. Free to Book really.

So thanks Haro. So how do people find out more about Free to Book but also how do they find out more about your business as well?

Feel Free to book. I think if you just google Free to Book so it's F R E E T O and then book and I think it's free to book.com and then you just can book in a call with them for them to show you what they can do for you and get in contact with me. I'm on all the socials, the Hive@52bnb on Instagram or you can email me at harrowthehive@52.com or just put a comment in in with this podcast and or put in the Boostly group. Sorry or the hospitality group and I'm more than happy to to contact you.

So thank you so much again Harrow and yeah, really enjoyed hearing about Free to Book seeing you again on the Boostly podcast. So if you are looking to find out more about a particular PMS or you've got questions you want to carry on this chat, all you need to do is go onto Facebook, go onto groups and search the hospitality community. You can tag in me, you can tag in Harrow, who's also one of the admins of the hospitality group, and we're happy to answer any of these questions. If there's a PMS you'd like me get more information on and go and find somebody who is using that PMS so we can do an episode exactly like this. All you need to do is come and join us in that group and we'll be happy to accommodate that. Thanks for watching this episode of the Boostly podcast. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.