[live🔴] The #1 attribute you can bring into your business to increase your direct bookings

Or watching back on the replay. All I want for you to do in the comment section is let me know where you're tuning in from in the world and let me know what does trust marketing mean to you. Today we're going to talk about trust, we're going to talk about direct bookings and we've got the founder of IBRAC with us to do so.

We have some breaking news now. The Boostly podcast is about to begin. Make sure you like this post comment bookdirect and share this video in Facebook groups. But now let me hand you over to your host, Mark Simpson.

All right, welcome, welcome everybody. Chris, thank you very much for joining us. Founder of iprac. What we're going to do, we're going to cover so many topics today because we've got a real good podcast lined up talking all about trust, talking about direct bookings, but just talking about marketing in general and the importance of it. So just to get us started, for anybody who has never heard of IPRAC before, can you just give us a very quick overview of what you do, how you do it and how you came about and where we are right now? Thank you.

Okay, all right, I'll try and keep it as brief as possible. So, so yeah, IPRAT was founded back in as an idea in 2014. We brought it to market in 2016, which was basically on the back of when I witnessed fraud for the first time here in the south of France when a family got frauded and lost £15,000 to a fake website, fake business. So they obviously arrived in the south of France and had nowhere to stay, lost all that £15,000. So that was, it was pretty horrendous. So I looked into the market and thought there has to be some way that we can, you know, fix this problem because the industry had it, you know, and it was bigger problem than I originally thought. So that's how I pract came about. And IPRAC is basically stands for International Property Rental Approval Certification. It's exactly what we are. We certify and approve legitimate trusted professional short term rental operators around the globe. We operate in 28 countries and basically we go through a robust application process and certification before we approve our members who then get the authorization to show their IPRAT logo on their website and on their marketing material. So it's a, it's a trust logo for the short term rental industry, the certification behind it. So it's, it's, it's proven to be very, you know, it's proven to be successful and much needed tool for the industry for sure.

So for those that are part of iprac, please make yourself known in the comments whether you're watching live or on the replay. And if you're tuning in on the audio version, do jump over to YouTube and LinkedIn and Facebook, because we will be there. The video will be up. So just to give us a bit of sort of overview of the numbers. So started this, had the idea 2014 came to fruition and live 2017, we're now sat here in 2022. So five years later, can you please share the number? So how many members are part of IPRAC and how many properties in total do you currently have under IPRAC?

Yeah, so members, members wise, over the last, since 2016 when we launched, we've had a steady growth and at the end of 2021 we were just short of 11,000 members and that covered just around 260,000 properties through all of our members. So some of our members have one property because they're private owners, but a lot of our members are actual property managers who manage anywhere between 10 and 150, 200 properties. We've got a couple of members who are higher than that, four or 500 properties. But over the 28 countries we, yeah, we're covering. The IPRAC certification is covering like close to 260,000 properties. Which is, which is great. I mean it's a short, it's not a big number compared to the number of properties available for rent around the world. But considering when we started that in 2014, it's steady growth and you know, we're looking to get, yeah, we're just looking to get every property proof at Consumer Trust.

Yeah, I mean it is amazing that so many properties that so many, so many members. And it's a, it's a testament because when you started this, like I say, it wasn't for any financial gain. It was literally just to help bring trust into the industry. And what has, has grown on the back of it is, is real trust. So I guess the most important question to start off with is why is trust important? Why are you doing this? Why is trust something that everybody should be focusing on when it comes to building their business and their brand? I think that's the best place to kick off.

Yeah, and that's a fantastic question mark because, you know, if you, if you look at any business around the world or any kind of purchasing, consumer purchasing, trust plays a huge, huge part. So especially in the short term rental sector because it's, you know, it's high revenue and it's actually people who are, you know, going into a contractual revenue, you know, contract that don't know each other. So if you're expecting to pay like £5,000 euros, dollars to somebody you don't know, that's very difficult. You know, that's very, it's a very difficult, you know, hurdle to get over. So trust becomes huge part of being able to get potential guests to book with hosts or property managers. So trust is huge and if you don't have it then you're just not going to, you're not going to work and have do any business in short term rentals really. So trust is like the, it's the base, it's the concrete of building that you know, respected and trusted brand around short term rentals. So if you don't have trust then you're going to struggle to build that business.

Okay, so we're talking about trust and everybody thinks about marketing in terms of maybe putting a social media post out here and there, maybe having a website, maybe having banners up or doing offline advertising, whatever advertising, referral marketing, whatever you are looking to focus on, on your business. I honestly think that the trust side is one of the last things that people think about. But as we all know it is so important. So can you, let's just, we've got two different types. Let's just say product and when we say product, this is the property, this is the property, product from property and we've got trust. So how do we then go along the lines of building that? I'm talking about trust marketing over say product marketing. How would you bridge that? If someone comes to you saying Chris, I need help promoting the trust aspect, why they should book me, etc, what's the advice that you would give to somebody?

Well, stay away from the product. You know, then that's the first part that you need to do. You know, people need to trust you before they buy into you, you know. So a lot of people on, in today's world did short term rentals and you see far too much product marketing and not enough trust marketing. So product marketing for me is people just kind of posting out there that they've got a three bedroom apartment, putting some nice photos on a, on a post offering 10% discount and that is hopefully, they're hopefully trying to generate income from that. My advice is to concentrate on trust marketing and that's a completely different, it's a completely different ball game because you're not really talking about your product, you're talking about your values as a company and a lot of people want to understand who you are as a company, who you are as a founder, who you are as a brand. And this is all about a different style of marketing and it's called trust marketing for a reason. Because you're putting out specific content that is revolved around trust. So you're going to be talking about why trust is important to your business, why it's important for your guests to trust who you are as a, as a company and all of these aspects in articles without going into trying to sell them a product. You know, sell them on your business, sell them on you as a person, as a founder. And once you've got them attracted to you as a business like because they trust you, then you can start product marketing. But if you tr. If you're just throwing product marketing out without people trusting in who you are, you're just wasting time and money. So you've got to concentrate on trust marketing. And that's a different factor. It's using your website so it's like trust content. You know, if you read somebody's website of a short term rentals, does it, does it heavily rely, does heavily favor product and how good we are or does it favor the values of trust and you as a business and why it's important for your guests to trust in you because they guests will hone more on the trust than the product and once you catch them on the trust then there'll be more attention focused on the product. See.

Trust is such an essential part of any tool. I mean building, I practice same as building Boostly. When we started going into this at the very start you've got to, you've got to get across the trust factor. Why someone would say, say maybe join our company, say join the, join the brand, join the movement. You've got to display that trust. So and this is what Boostly did. What I did to do that is I went to go and get my training accredited. So I got the CPD to accredit my training because that's the way that I felt that it would really help stand up my brand against any other training that's out there on direct bookings. Because it's not just me going yeah, this is great. It's like every, I had an actual governing body, somebody that was overshoot like with membership and what. And I was saying right, well this is actually decent, this is actually someone to help. So IPRAC is doing a similar same thing for the world of hospitality and short term rentals. So can you just on a very sort of 60,000 foot view, somebody looking at it for the first time. They've maybe gone to the website, but they're still a bit unsure. How do you build that trust with what IPRAC is doing and sort of just go over sort of the process, the roadmap and how it and why it's working?

Well, let's, I'll try and go back a little bit. So let's, let's go to, let's understand where the, the power of short term rentals is at the minute with the OTAs. Okay, so let's talk about Airbnb and how powerful they are in the industry and booking.com and, and verbal and Expedia. So they are billion pound companies for a reason and it's basically because they have a consumer base that trust in their brand. Okay, so what we have to do as short term rental operators is give consumers the same level of trust and guarantees. So when you can talk about accreditation as in, we have invested as a company, we have gone out into the industry, we've identified who the accreditation trust factor is within the short term rentals and we've invested and we've become approved. And the key factor there is from the consumer point of view, everybody knows the value and what accreditation is. It's third party, you know, so that means that somebody else on from a third party value has come in and said, listen, your business is certified. And that shows and holds so much value because of the fact that, that we can all talk very well about our business. It's easy for us to talk well about our own businesses. Okay, what you what the most powerful tool is when a third party verifies you as a quality business and a professional business. And that's why accreditation is so powerful. And that's why IPRAC comes in as a tool so that you can showcase to your potential guests and guests and partners that you've gone out and achieved your industry trust accreditation. And that's powerful because you have to introduce that into your business. But you'll definitely see a change in psychology from your potential guest if they know that you've actually gone through an accreditation and been certified 100%.

So people may be looking at IPRAC and maybe thinking, well, there's something in my country that I've got that I'm part of something and I don't want to name any names because I don't want to call anybody out. But how is IPRAC different than say a country specific accreditation program?

Well, the main factor is when we decided to launch IPRAC as I mentioned previously we had two years of research and development and one of the main factors here was accountability. Okay. So we don't want to be just a logo. And we find that a lot of the independent country associations or you know, or anybody else who's looking at bringing out like a certification. If you look at like the AA Good to Go logo during the COVID time, it just had no accountability. So it was just a logo that you could pay £20 put on your website and use it as a conversion tool, which is wrong. Okay, that's not an accreditation. Accreditation actually gives the consumer a guarantee. So like if you're accredited by IPRAC for example and you register your booking through your, through the, the member's profile, basically all of your payments to that member directly a 100% guaranteed against fraud. So you're actually giving the consumer the accountability to be able to go in and say listen, I prac if something goes wrong and we arrive and that property doesn't exist, then we've got IPRAC to give us back our money. A lot of the other independent accreditations don't do that. They don't give any guarantee. So if something goes wrong it's like where do they go? What are you guaranteeing the consumer? So it doesn't become an accreditation logo, it's more of a conversion logo. And because there's no accountability behind it, IPRAC has accountability behind it. And we built that in for a reason. And it's also why we're the only accreditation logo that is unique to every member. There's no one IPRAT logo the same because we embedded that member's ID number in the logo. Which means a consumer can go onto the IPRAP website, type in that ID number and check out that members credentials and register their booking. So we've built a platform and an accreditation that gives accountability to the guest. So it assures them that when they're booking with that IPRAP member their payments are protected. And it's not just a logo. There's accountability. And that's the key factor that why I practice different but also built to be global rather than just in a, in a specific country. So like IPRAC would be recognized in America so that an American guest would recognize an IPRAC logo in the uk. If you're just looking at a, you know, an independent country association accreditation and it's not really marketed outside of that country. So it's kind of, you know, it's kept within the realm of that country rather than being a global accreditation. That's recognized by travelers worldwide. That's the difference between what we're trying to do at IPRAC and that's why we're in 28 countries.

That's amazing. So at this point, it'd be very nicely to drop in a link. So everybody who is part of the Boostly community, whether you listen to the podcast, whether you're a member of Team Boostly or watching the YouTube videos, IPRAC is come on board very recently to be our content sponsor. Which is amazing because if we're talking about direct bookings and if we're talking about trust, they come hand in hand. I feel like as hosts and as management companies, we're so focused on do we trust the guest? As in, what are we? Like, how can we make sure that the guest turning up is going to protect. Protect us? Okay, but you've got to look at it from the other side. When it's the consumer that's going to give you, you know, maybe 1, 2, 3,000 pounds, that's a lot of money. How can they trust you? And I feel like this is why this is so important. It comes hand in hand. This is why I'm really excited for the content sponsor. So, which is fantastic and what you can do if you go to this domain and I'll make sure that it's on all the show notes and I'll make sure it's on the screen and some fancy logos when we come to edit this later on. If you've got a Boostly, which you should know how to spell Boostly by now for forward slash trust T U S T, you'll go to the IPRAC website where we've got a very, very special and cool offer for all Boostly peeps that want to sign up and join the movement. So we're currently at 11, 000 members. Do you have like a roadmap for the next sort of 1 year, 2 year, 3 year, 4 year, 5 years on the numbers that you want to. Want to get to, like the properties? Like, what's the big sort of goal for the next, say one to five years for iprac if, if you could just have that shiny goal in the future that you're working towards.

Yeah, it's always good to have a goal, I suppose. Yeah, well, the goal at the start hasn't really changed, you know, I mean, you know, Covid threw a few curveballs into the situation, but the goal at the start was to have a million members because I believe that if we reach that threshold of a million, we would be recognized As a, as a force of a, you know, like a global trusted accreditation, I think at the minute, we are, you know, well below that. So even though we're doing great work and protecting consumers and allow. And helping, you know, hosts and property managers increase their direct bookings and increase their trust strategy and different things, as a global goal, we want to reach that kind of million members and, you know, like5.5 million properties. Because at the end of the day, our whole goal is to make STR a safer place for consumers because we've got a lot of people who do some great work in this space and a lot of great companies, but at the same time, do we sit down and actually get the understanding of the consumer of, like, why do you still use hotels? Why do you still use OTAs? You know, ask these really important questions. And it all comes back to, oh, well, I'm just not that keen on booking with people I don't know and traveling to arrive at a place because there's a lot of horror stories out there as well, as we all know. So we need to bridge that gap of trust. And the way to do that is to have 1 million certified property managers and hosts who are identified as trusted professional and ready to provide that fantastic service. And if we can get to that figure, then I believe that that would be the, you know, the turning point for the brand. You know, I mean, we're doing great stuff. That's not, you know, that's not, that's not questioned. But that's the, that's the, that's the end goal. And I believe if we reach that, then I practice comes that kind of leader in that global trust certification that's basically allowing the industry to operate with more trust.

Amazing. Well, we are massively behind you here.

Thank you.

And all, all of our members and everybody's pushing you towards. And I know there's so many good people that I know within this industry are massively behind you. So. Well, we'll help push and boost towards that big goal, which is awesome. All right. What I like to do, and I didn't give you a warning on this, but I like to finish off the podcast episodes with a. With a little feature. But I'm going to call get to Know Chris. So what we've done, we know about iprac, we know all these cool things, but you've got a. You've got a. You know, we've been, We've done clubhouse rooms in the past. We've done. We have done podcasts in the past, but what I want to do. I want to find out a little bit more. So the first question. Quick fire questions. Let's just say this. You're obviously family man. Business. Businesses. A lot of things going on when you switch off and you want to just chill out. What is the. What's that one thing that you like to do more than any. When you get a chance to relax, chill out? If you could just choose one thing to do, what would that be?

Well, there's two things. If the weather's good. Golf. Okay. I like playing golf on my own with. With some, you know, with, like, people that I don't know as well.

Yeah.

I love playing golf with my son, but if the weather's not good, then I'm a chess man. Love playing. I love playing chess. I played. I've played chess since I was 12.

Yeah. Nice.

I love. I love playing chess. I love the strategic side. Side of chess.

Nice. And obviously you're based in. Based in France, Lived there for many years. So when you want to go on your vacation, if you want to go on a holiday just to escape, whether it's a staycation or whatever, like, short break. Where. Where. Where would you get to get in the car or get on a flight? Where. Where would you ideally like to go?

We. We like to go along to. To Saint Tropez. We've got a place along there in. In a place called Kontiki. It's like a really. It's like a glamping resort. We've got a couple of. We bought. In 2017, we bought a couple of these, you know, chalet huts. Yeah. So we get along there. Love it down there. It's like a. You know, when you get in there, you just don't even. You could be anywhere.

Yeah.

So we like to do that. To switch off. If I'll go out of France, I sometimes like to drive to Italy.

Yeah.

Like to drive to Spain. Barcelona is a nice one. If I was going out of Europe, I would probably have to say Bali. Bali's a place where I would, you know, that's. That's a place.

That is a place I spent many times. I spent a lot of time there. A lot of Bali. Bhusli is based and founded in Bali.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it was. A lot of. It was created there and. And a lot of our work that we do that is in Bali, which is. Which is amazing. All right, Chris, I want to say thank you very much. We're gonna. We're gonna wrap it there because we know your time is precious and we want everybody to go and check out booster.co.uk trust. It will take you to the IPRAC website, which is a special landing page for boosted peeps. From there you can go and find out everything that you need to know. And if you want to join the movement, getting IPRAC and getting trust marketing all over this industry, then please do go and check it out. It really is such an important part of your business and I think that so many people don't understand. And in the research for this podcast, I went and looked at what Airbnb did and you can go and find the actual TED Talk on how basically the co founder of Airbnb said everything was built and founded on trust. And if that's where their focus has been, it's criminal that our focus isn't doing that. Instead of just focusing on are the guests coming into us going to be legit, et cetera, try and think of it from the other way around. As in when you're going to go and book somewhere, is that place going to be there? Is this going to be a scam? Is it going to live up to what they're saying online, which is so, so, so important. So I wish you all the best. Thank you so much for being the boostie sponsor world and I hope that everybody has enjoyed this. Please let me know your feedback. Let me know where you are in the world. Let me know if you are a host. If you're watching this where you are, drop a little link to your website so we can all go and have a look. And we'll be back very soon with another episode of the Boosted podcast. Chris, I'll let you go. Thank you very much and we'll see you all, everybody, very soon.

This is a freestyle going off the dumb.

Ready for my close up.

Good looking, let me tell you. Get more bookings. Oh, that'd be nice. Giving me tips, tools and advice. Yeah, you're gonna get them, hon. You're gonna sit back, listen to Mark Siddharth Simpson having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the T is loosely making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you'll better put direct. Here are the words in the podcast.