Marketing Review [LIVE]

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All right, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, welcome wherever you are tuning in from. This is a very, very, very special one time potentially thing that we do. It is a marketing review live. And the reason why this is very special is that for the first time we've got the host that has filled in the form on the call with me. So they're on Skype, they're behind the scenes in the green room. And we're going to bring him on in a second. You may recognize his face because we're played a video with Mark this morning. But what we decided to do is that we decided to do a marketing review of Mark's business. Harrogate stays. And I thought it would be cool to do it live on Facebook. And he said well why did I join in? And I was like yes, let's do it. There's been a lot of fiddling around behind the scenes but we're going to, we're going to do it live. So you're going to get to tune in and normally when I do a marketing review the host has filled the form already in and then the, the host will probably be tuned in on Facebook. And we'll be answering back in the comments. So when I'm saying something, if they want to let me know, then if they've got to wait till afterwards, which is, you know, which. Which is always hard. So if we can do it whilst we're both on at the same time, if I've got a question to ask, Mark can literally answer, literally live. And then we can, we can go back and forth. We've been having a chat offline and there's some really cool things that we are going to definitely cover. So number one, we're going to talk about pricing, we're going to talk about booking.com, we're going to talk about the genius program and all the other things that booking.com get you in and the commission that they charge. We're also going to talk about direct bookings, how to convert them. But we're going to also cover some little tips and tricks that you can do behind the scenes to take advantage of what these big corporates are doing. So when I say corporates, I mean Hilton and Marriott. But as you are tuning in, wherever you are from in the world, leave a little comment below. Promote your hospitality business. If you are a hospitality owner and you are watching with me, tuning in with me, give your business a little promo. So Tony's gone straight in Villa Lemonade in South of France, which sounds amazing. We've got Charlotte from the Treetop View in Norfolk, which is awesome, deals with us. We've got Christine with us, which is awesome as well. Okay, so without further ado, what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring our guest on and then what I'm going to ask Mark to kindly do is to give himself a bit of an intro and then what we'll do is we'll go straight in. Now, all I ask for doing this and we've got 15 to 20 minutes to do it, is if you could just please share this video on one of these Facebook groups that we are all a part of, not the hospitality community, because we all know about share it in one that will not have heard of this before because one what we're going to talk about will help everybody. I guarantee there'll be one person watching this that will get something from it. So before we go any further, if you're watching on your phone, it's in the bottom left hand corner here. Tap that, hit a share button and share it into a group. And do me a little bit of favor so Facebook sees this a little more. Just tap one of These little emojis as many, many, many, many times as you can, please. So then more and more people become aware of it. Right, so what we're going to do, let's go into, in and introduce our guest this evening. Mark, how are we doing, please? Can you spend one minute while I take a drink? Just introducing who you are and the business and where you're based, please.

Good evening, everybody. So, Mark Hodgkiss. I'm one half of Harrogate's days with my brother Rob Hodgkiss. We've also got a company called In Hot Property. We've been running service accommodation since 2016 in various locations, various sort of different strategies. Our focus now we've moved sort of moved on from rent to rent and we are buying guest houses, refurbing the guest houses into aparthotels and our kind of area is Harrogate. So the brand Harrogate Stays. We've also brought in a commercial conversion of offices into four apartments into that brand. But because of the kind of the market as it is at the moment, they are on longer term rentals for the foreseeable. So effectively we've got two guest houses, one has been closed during the whole of 2020 and should be opening in mid January and then we've got one that's up and running at the moment. So, yeah, exciting times. Looking forward to the end of 2020. It's been a tricky year and the reason for getting the marketing review done now is so that I can implement this over the next couple of weeks, ready to hit the ground running for 2021.

Amazing. Well, thank you for doing this. And again, if there's anybody watching this who would like to do something like this in the future, then all you need to do is go to boostly.co.uk forward/review and, and fill it in. Every month as of January, I'm going to be picking three to five people and we're going to be doing something just like this if you want to want to join it. So if you're watching live or on a replay, please do that. So what we're going to do is I'm going to share my screen now. Hopefully we're seeing the right one. Yes, we are. This is brilliant. Let me move, let me get rid of the Boostly rocket. So everybody should be able now to see the Google form that Mark kindly filled in and you'll see our faces in the bottom right hand corner right over here. So then what we're going to do, just like we've done with every time that we've done this. But we've got the benefit of having Mark on the call with us is that we're going to go through Mark's answers. So I've, I ask a lot of questions when it comes to review because the more that I can find out about the business, the better. So we've gone through the intro, which is lovely, based in England. We got a breakdown. We've done all of this. Okay, so how many people in the team? 6. The average night stay at the property is 1 to 2. Which of the following best describes how you interact with your guest? So it's virtual. So I communicate with guests via email, phone. However, I do not interact with them during that, during their stay. Which is what is your Facebook business page? So I am going to grab that, I'm going to save that for later and the website which we've got here. So we are going, we are going to look at that and as a disclaimer, Mark has got a boostly website we are going to look at in a little bit and okay, so we're talking about Google Analytics here. So Google Analytics has just been set up and so not quite sure exactly the ins and outs of it. If anybody's watching and if you have Google Analytics, please put Google in the comments. And if you don't have Google Analytics, put Google. No, we are going to talk about Google Analytics especially for websites and new websites over the course of this review. Which of the following companies do you use for your online booking engine for the website? So Mark uses beds. 24. And again, if you don't know what an online booking engine is or PMS is, basically it's free to book Avivo like we say here, little hotelier. There's hundreds of them. Let me know what you are, who you are using. Do we have any other beds? 24 people watching live with us. We've got 22 people. Jane, Tony, Jill, they all have Google, which, which is fantastic. Mary's joining us. Thank you so much for tuning in. So next question. Do you email your guests after their stay with special offers? Mark, a little question to you. How many times a month or a quarter or a year would you say that you proactively send emails?

Not as often as I should, but effectively every time you. It's gonna sound awful, but every time you run one of the challenges. So yeah, it's once every. Every couple of months, if that. Once every two to three months, but nowhere near enough.

So when we say when we do a challenge it's pretty much letting people know about the challenge and then the little off of us afterwards. Is that right? So there's nothing in between?

No, not really.

Okay. No, that's fine. It's just that it's a question that I've literally added in just before we came live because I want to find out a little bit more about everybody's emailing pattern. So again, as you're watching this with us live or replay, let me know in the comments. How often do you email your list? So your email list. So mailchimp, etc. How often do you email be really interesting and to know because it's a brand new question that I've just added in.

I think as well we, I do struggle with the content for that newsletter, but we are posting on social media every, probably three, three, four times a week. So I can just use one of the like the best, the best post of that and use that in the emails.

Yeah, yeah, well, definitely that's one of the things I was, I was going to definitely come on to, but 100%. Okay. So obviously 2020 has been madness of a year. So obviously the numbers here may be a lot different to what they may would have been 2019 and hopefully will be a lot. This figure that we're looking at now is a lot less than what it will be 2020 of overall occupation levels, 36 to 50%. What percentage of what. What percentage would you say out of those? Percentage There would have been direct bookings if we're looking at these sort of numbers here.

Probably 30% of those.

So.

Well, so this, I'm just talking those numbers. Those numbers are just Fountains Guest house we've had had 11 flats on a corporate booking which is 100% occupancy and another couple of properties that are all 100% occupancy. But it's just Fountains that I'm really struggling with because that's a guest house. And with all the restrictions that we've had in place, I think the guest house market has been hit much harder than your serviced accommodation market.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I think for obvious reasons because not only is it that with like rental properties, you get the whole property, etc. So with a guest house there's so much rules and regulations and restrictions and you know, all the things that happen in July, but then you've got to throw into the fact that, you know, customers like sentiment regarding it, like do they want to be in a, in a packed building or do they want to be separate and Again, the rules and regulations and the tiers, there's so much madness has gone on around small hotels. Large hotels have definitely been the most effective. Okay, so this is an interesting one and it's something I definitely wanted to chat to you about. Which online travel agents are you listening on? So you've got down just booking.com now. Why is that?

Right. Okay, so we have switched channel manager about three months ago from took heat to bed to 24. And that's for anyone that's not done that. It is a big headache from doing that. And then because the market is the way it is, I really, really want to manipulate into. Into the market and find out all the analytics. So by being on JustBooking.com that, that pie, I'm getting the full picture of the pie effectively because I know what my direct bookings are and kind of the average lead time for those and the demographics for those. And then with booking.com, i'm able to identify the analytics from there. Now, if I'm listed on Airbnb, TripAdvisor and Expedia, then my feeling is you'll get the occupancy levels, but it doesn't mean anything because it's diluted so much between all the various. Effectively, you're only getting that really, really small slice of the pie in terms of the overall picture. So next year we will. Once we now got our systems absolutely nailed on with booking.com and we've got over 500 reviews. We've got 9.8 out of 10 for fountains. So I'm really happy with where we're at on booking.com and that's. And the whole booking process is slick as for with booking.com so I need to. Now I will bring in another and it'll probably be Expedia, but I. We'll sort of see how that goes. We are actually listed with Airbnb for a whole house booking and I've got the ICALS integrated with that so that it's only showing availability for that when. When the whole house is available. So. And that's. That works well for like wedding groups like shooting parties or whatever that want to have the whole whole house booking.

But how often would you say that that would happen, like the way the whole house is available? I know obviously maybe this time of the year, maybe as such, or you.

Know, looking for, I mean, the lead. The lead time booking for that is several months in advance. And like, so we've got, we have got two bookings at the end of March, whether Or not those will go through will be a different matter. But if we weren't in the situation we were in, we do have like big reunions. They all come to Harrogate and I want to book out the whole house so I think that there is a sort of a requirement to get that and I'd much sooner, I'd much rather have the whole house booked up with one group on over a weekend for perhaps a two night stay than have every room booked with loads of different people as well. So I don't know, we'll see, we'll see sort of how that goes.

Thanks for that. That's a really good, real good insight and again this is what I like because it was one of the things that stood out to me scrolling through and to be able to have you live on me with us to answer that. That's good, that's very good. So on average how much do you spend on advertising costs per month? It's got down 20. £20. What do you spend that £20 on?

Just I was playing around with Google. Playing around with Google, absolutely nothing.

So this is again I added this in just before we came on so you haven't had a chance to answer but how are you using pricing software for your business? If so, which, which company is it? So you mentioned off air, something that beds 24 do but you say you've been dabbling with somebody else. Which of these are you using or.

Well so when we were, when we were to key I used Rate Genie and I had a good handle of that for London Properties and that was invaluable. I've not incorporated a price pricing software for, for Fountains Guest House at the moment because within bets 24 there's a yield optimizer and so I can fluctuate the price depending on the occupancy levels which I think in normal times as well that will have quite a good, will have a good effect and obviously when there's an event on the occupancy levels will go up and we'll be able to charge. Once we get above 4 rooms out of 8 booked then the prices start going up and similarly when we don't have any bookings at all, the prices are reduced slightly. So kind of 4 out of 8 is the benchmark and that's the standard rate.

Okay, let's just scroll down a little bit just to speed this up. Wave a magic wand. How would you like your business profit to look like in six months? So occupancy up to 75% plus rooms being sold at the right price and a slick booking process. Where do you feel that you struggle right now? The book, direct process and pricing. And the biggest pain point right now is understanding market conditions, pricing, booking process and marketing. So a quick question that I have going off of what you just said before, prior to that is, with your PMS, that you've got beds, 24. Have you gone into 2021, have you gone in and highlighted the key dates that are in the calendar as of now, and you'd like to think they're going to go ahead and blocked off to the OTAs or have you yet do that?

So I'm not entirely sure how I can do that with better 24, block it off from the OTAS without it being blocked on my Channel Manager as well. So you've obviously got the calendars synchronized. And if I've blocked it on the ota, does that not just come through straight for. Onto. Onto my calendar? So that's something I'll need to check with.

24 support. And again, I've not used them directly, but I'm speaking from the channel managers. And the PMSS that I've used in the past is that you can go into your channel section, your Channel Manager section, on your PMS Channel Manager. So I use free to book. So simple to do. You go into channels and you'd basically close them off. And a tactic that I like to do, particularly at this time of the year, in a normal year. So this time in 2019, we're doing exactly this because at the start of January, what we always found, particularly with the Guest house, was that the first two weeks of January is people just seem to wake up on the 1st of January and go, right, I'm booking a place. Where we going? Where we going? You know what I mean? And they would go, you know, they'd come on, they'd come on to book a holiday. I think it's like the fifth of the sixth is like one of those key days that. That everybody in hospital used to talk about. Now this year is going to be a little bit different. 2021 is going to be a little bit different. But what I would always be doing is I would be going on to welcome to Yorkshire or just any of those event sites and going, what's coming up this year? So, you know, we've had Tour de Yorkshire, you've got the Harrogate, the Yorkshire Show. Obviously, in Harrogate you've got events, you know, that you can literally go into the calendar and block off, because what what tends to happen is that, you know, the dates, bank holidays, where you could literally sell three or four times over. You know what I mean?

Sure.

And our mistake that we used to make before we did this is that we would always, well, schoolboy on pricing on one, so we wouldn't put the pricing up. We would just sort of. Because, you know, you always get to a case where booking.com or everybody is saying, update your pricing and doing all these things, you just go, oh, just, just copy and paste and I'll just move it in for next year and I'll deal with it another day. But the problem is that guests are clever and they'll go in and like, they'll book a year in advance and it's like, how the hell have they got it for this rate? I forgot to shit, I forgot to do it. You know what I mean? So what I would be proactive about would be go into those dates that, you know, that could sell three or four or five times over for local events or county events or just bank holidays and close them off to the OTAs. Now, it's cool that you're dabbling with Google Ads because then what you can do is you can go onto Google Ads and you could run a keyword campaign for accommodation for Yorkshire show, because again, you'd know that that's going to get typed in and Google will tell you how many times let's get typed in. And you can, you can specifically run it for like a, you know, three to four month lead time coming up to it, you know, whatever, you know, because you'll have people coming in for, for whatever. I mean, this has obviously got the context that 2020 Covid vaccines and all of that has gone through and it's naturally just gone out the system and we're starting to get back to what would be a normal event season. You know, even if it's, even if those events don't go on, you can pretty much guarantee the bank holidays will be bank holidays and things like this and, you know, and you'd like to think that people will be allowed to travel, but end of the, end of the day is that you can close them off. And just because you close it off doesn't mean that that's set in stone forever. It depends on how. Yeah, you know, it depends on. It's like chicken in it. It depends on how long you want to go, depends on when you open up again. So I always used to close them off, be really strict with it, put our prices up a little bit. So Then you know it means because you. Again, it's like supply, demand. So we knew that we could sell out these certain dates over and over and over again. So we put the price up, close them off to the OTAs and what we would do at the start of January. And again, if you've got email marketing set up, this is a perfect thing for you to have a little dabble in is we'd send an email out saying, these are going to be our most popular dates. And again, we've only got so much room. We've only got 14 rooms and free cottages. You can only book these dates. So it adds the exclusivity feel to it. You can only book these dates via us directly email phone call on our website. You know what I mean? And you know, if you want to do something, as in give like a little 5% discount. So here's a coupon code. So I know you've come from this email. So again, you can track effectiveness of your email, but again, you're sending an email out, people are on your list. And you know, if you, if you start to do that and you remind people of that, then what you will find is that you don't even need to have the power of booking.com to do this for you, because you can be confident, you can sell your own dates, you know, and you've got yes, guys. And we're going to talk about something else that you're doing really well very soon. But it doesn't have to be just email. But that would be something that I would be looking to do and that's what everybody. I would encourage everybody to do. Like Jill saying that she's got folk. And this is the thing as well, with everything that's happened in 2020, so many events have been canceled, so many festivals, you know, Glastonbury Festival, just imagine. And you can see it now with football. The fans that are being allowed back into. I'm a big Liverpool fan. The fans that have been allowed back in Anfield, only 2,000 fans that have come back in. But those 2,000 sound like 20, 25,000 because it's not where you used to just get people that were getting blase about going to the match because it's been gone for so long. These people that are coming back, they are really appreciative and they are loving every single second, every minute and they are really savoring it. And this is going to be the same for loads of shows, loads of events, loads of festivals and places like Harrogate, places Like Scarborough, you know, they do attract a lot of people that come from, from out of town. And when we are allowed to do these events, when we are allowed to go and there aren't loads of restrictions around it, it's going to be so popular. You know it brings me back to July when lockdown was lowered and there was just this huge surge. I mean I don't know how you found it in Harrogate. Did you find it went bananas?

Yeah, massive. July was the first half of July was the bit sluggish initially, but then second half of July and then all of August was just manic. We had one room, one room was just back to back bookings but it was all just like one night stays. So wasn't actually as profitable as you'd imagine it to be.

Yeah, well, yeah, couple that. Sorry, just to bounce off what you said there, I would couple put in the rates up for example, but also spreading out the minimum term bookings because and this is something that we always used to fall foul of is that every time that we accepted a one night stay we were closing off our bookings to potential two or three or four nighters because there were people. But the problem is is that because they wanted a four nighter, the one nighters had already got in. So what we would do is we'd be really confident in ourselves that we could get the two, three, four nighters is that we would have a minimum stay set for as soon as possible for those key dates for two for three or four nights because then you cut down on cleaning costs and yeah, and then the closer you get to it, you then release, lower your minimum, lower your minimum and open up to the OTAs because majority of the time the people that come from booking.com will be those one or two nights.

One nights, yeah.

Will be especially like coastal area like Scarborough or York, which is a big sort of Staggy Henny, let's go get drunk sort of places is that that's all they're literally looking for. They want to arrive on a Friday, go get drunk, go do all the things and then leave on a hangover on Saturday. But you know, it's like if you, when a guest books directly with you, you know, and you know, if your website set up correctly like, like yours is, is that you know exactly the type of guests you're going to be getting, you know, because they, they're being drawn in by the, by your word and whatnot. So Sarah asked, do you close out the OTAs on your website or your Channel manager. It's all done with your PMS, Sarah. So whoever your PMS is, free to book bed 24. You do it all in there. If you don't know how, give them a phone call or go to their web support because it's really simple to do and they'll be able to be able to show you. Okay, so let's go Ben. Let's delve in and have a little look. So I have the main difference between a normal marketing review and this one. Because I knew that Mark was coming on, I did do a little bit of research. Normally I don't do any research at all. I just go, I just go straight in on, on the thing. But I wanted to just have a, have a quick go over now. Full context. This is a, this is a boostly website. So you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna massively promote. But what I do love about what you have done and I do love about. And again you do the copy, we just put it together. You know what I mean? It's, you've got very, very clearly when somebody lands on, on the page is that you tick off a lot of the boxes. So number one, you make it super simple on how to make sure the guest knows how to book. And you'd be amazed at how many people don't, don't do this. So it's super clear that no one can land on your homepage and go I wonder how to make a booking. Which is good. And also as well you've done another thing which is give people the peace of mind with the COVID update. Super clear right here. Which again which what so many people aren't doing. Now we are going to talk about this in a second. This is, this is lovely. I love this. This is, this is WhatsApp for people who don't know. And we are going to talk about WhatsApp in a second. I do promise that. But this is really good to have like a little chat option in the bottom corner. Now one thing that I think that would, would be good for, for you and would be good for Fountains. And I don't know if you have this or have a plan to do this, but I think you would really benefit from looking into or getting a virtual tour, one of those walkthrough virtual tours of, of the properties, especially with, with the guest house.

Because there is, there is if you go to places to stay and Fountains.

There is, there is one on there.

Yeah, let me have a little scroll.

Down, see what I would be doing. And this is what, see this. The reason why I save it is that I would be personally looking to grab this and get this on the homepage.

Right. Okay.

Now I know that it's slightly different with what you do because obviously you've got more properties and obviously Fountains is a one off. And I will talk about this in a second. Something that I've realized this year with Boostly that could definitely help you next year. But that's very good that you've got the virtual tour. Okay, so we can scrap that. You've already done it. We need to show off a little bit more about it. But if I scroll down here, now you've got your socials, which is awesome. So Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. My advice would be, is only have the socials on here and I'd say this for everybody, only have the socials on here that you're actually active on. So I clicked on YouTube and there was nothing there. Now I would be looking to get your virtual tour on your YouTube channel. Yeah. So you could basically record your screen and, and, or just do a little video walkthrough or whatever, add it onto YouTube. Because YouTube for those of you who don't know is the second largest search engine in the world after Google. Loads of people do use it. And if somebody were to Google, for example, Fountains Guest House, Harrogate, it'll obviously bring up your website because that's the brand search and whatnot. But then what it will also show is the video as well. People will look at the video and they'll see the virtual tour. So the more ways you can bring traffic in, the better. And again that's a simple 10 minute job on that one. You could just put, upload it to the channel but I would be, I would be basically having the social icons here that you are active on. So you're active on on Facebook. Great. Have it. The problem is if you send them to somewhere that's not active, then they will think that, well, hang on a second, you know, do they care about their online reputation and things like that. If I was to click onto Facebook, fantastic. You know I can see one here from five hours ago, couple of days ago. You know, it's, it's a really good example of how to use Facebook, showcasing local businesses. You know, you become in like the, the local place, you know, the brand ambassador for Harrogate if you like. Now one thing that I would be personally looking for then and you can definitely test out with Fountains. And this is something that I have learned personally learned this year with Boostly and a book that I recommend. And I've done a. If you've heard me talk about this or not. But check out Marketing Made simple by Donald Miller and Story Brand by Donald Miller. I devoured these books on Audible this year and it really gave me an idea of where I was personally going wrong with, with Boostly as an example. So with Boostly we've got Boostly websites, Boostly Academy, Boostly content creator, and we've got the main Boostly. The problem was, was, and this is something you can maybe look at for Harrogate Stays. The problem was, is that people were coming on to boostly.co.uk and they were looking maybe for website design or maybe they were looking for the podcast or maybe they were looking for the Academy. And the problem is is that when they were landing on, on the homepage is that it wasn't really clear on where to send them. Okay, now, do you have an individual domain for Fountains Guest House or is it all under this bracket of Harrogate?

We do, yeah. Fountainsharrogate.co.uk, but that's just recently forwarded to this website.

Does it forward straight to the list in itself then? So would it forward straight into. So when someone clicks on that domain you gave me, would it then forward straight onto here?

It. Yeah, it goes to the main page. Yeah. But I could, I can easily change that to forward slash Fountains because that's.

What I would be doing. So there's two ways to do it. Number one is you create a, a whole website dedicated to Fountains Guest House. Right. Or what you do is you buy the domain and you. And when they click on it, they forward straight to here. Because what they're doing is if they're looking for Fountains Guest House and they click on your domain that you're talking about, but then they come through to Harrogate Stays. Now I know you've got this here, but then the rest of the information is, is showing different properties, etc. So one thing that I really learned, and again, I think if you are somebody who is in service accommodation right now, if you're in somebody that's got more multiple properties and you're trying to, to figure this out. One thing that I learned is that if you confuse, you lose. And that's a common theme in that book is if you confuse, you lose. And the problem with Boostly is someone was landing on boostly.co.uk and if we're looking for a website, it wasn't really clear on where they needed to go. So we were losing because we were confusing so many people. So now what we have done is behind the scenes, we've created boostlywebsite.com, we've created boostlyacademy.com, we've created booster.co.uk, we've created, creating, boosted content creator. And every single website's got its own identity. So when you land on it, you know exactly what you're on. And again, for yourself, for Fountains Guest House, when they, you know, if they go to fountains guesthouse.co.uk for example, fountains guesthouse.harrogate.co.uk for example, when they click on that, they want to see everything for here, which if you've doing that, which is fantastic, you don't then need to put this on the main Harrogate stage. Not that is you. So you don't need to then put this on the Harrogate stage. You can keep this here if you, if you, if you. If you see what I mean.

Okay.

And that's the same for the Chambers apartment. That's the same for Fatwin's apartment. That's the same for the Belmont. The, the cool way of how you have done this and the cool way with how you've set it up under badge 24 would be if somebody checks the availability now for Fountains and just give me a yes or no on this. If Fountains is fully booked, would it then say, listen, Fountains is full, but check out the Belmont. Is that how it's set up? Yeah.

If they do it from that, from that homepage, then it will come up with the various properties that are available for that for that time. So at the moment, any searches for. Any searches for those dates bank Chambers won't show up.

Okay. Okay. All right. That's okay. But they do have the option then, because my. And this is always tricky when you've got, when you're building a brand and a portfolio and you build in more than one place. Yeah. Is that they go and run a search and if it's not available, they'll go, oh, well. And then they'll click out. But if there's any way, shape or form. And again this, this is where, this is where the more you get into email marketing and the more you get into things like mailchimp and. And again in the boostly academy, make sure that you're around on the 11th to the 15th of January, because we've got a mailchimp expert expert coming in and they're going to Run a five day training showing you some tactics like this where somebody lands on basically what will click on a link and come to here and say they don't book. There may be a way to then with mailchimp that sends an automated email to say you didn't make the booking. Would you like to check on dates or can we have a call now? One thing that I will want to just very quickly pivot to because I know we haven't got that much time left is WhatsApp now Messenger and messages and text messaging I think has been those of you that have used it well in 2020. This is the main driver for direct bookings in 2020 is text messaging. And now can you just tell us and tell everybody because you're telling me off air how important is WhatsApp business to being for Harrogate stays this year.

So WhatsApp business, the way we've kind of set it up now is phenomenal and it integrates with bets24 as well. So when I'm in beta24 on my laptop I can just click the WhatsApp logo and then I can forward slash and then you've got loads of short links. You can also share the catalog so they can see the room that they've booked and what the normal rate is. And if they book direct then it's. Then it's a little bit cheaper. So straight away they're like, oh, I've already got a bit of a discount on that, which is really cool. And then we just kind of warm if I've got time. We have got a fully automated system but sometimes if it's someone's birthday or things like that, then I've got again saved messages where I can arrange to have if you want flowers in the room or if you want chocolates or whatever, if it's a special occasion, bucks fizz for breakfast, things like that, then I can have that all. And it just, especially with the use of emojis as well and seeing the guest's profile picture and things like that, you already build that rapport which is really good.

And it's instant. And like you say, you know exactly when they've seen the message. Yeah, exactly that they've seen it. And it is such a really good way to get an instant message to them where when you send an email, you never know if I've opened it or not. But with WhatsApp and again you can quickly call them, if you need to call them, do a video call, it's there. So those of you that aren't using WhatsApp. Those of you that. And again, you've got the, the chat bot, you've got the icon on your website. So they instantly know that they can click that and they can chat to you as long as you're online, you know which is, which is. Which is really effective. And again, you just got to put yourself sometimes in the guest shoes. If they come onto a website, if they've got a question, people now don't have the patience. Maybe five, seven years ago, maybe even four, three years ago, they would send an email and they would wait for a reply. People want to know now. They want everything now. They don't wait. People don't wait anymore. It's crazy. They want an instant ish response now. That doesn't mean you have to be on all the time. And there will be more automation chatbots brought into WhatsApp. You can pretty much guarantee that and all the other things that are out there that will make life a little bit easier, but it's definitely an option to do. So we're going to talk about.

It's also, Mark, it's also good for cancellations as well. So if you get a notification of a cancellation, we get an automated email that goes out saying, hey, we've just received a notification that you cancelled. Is there anything we did wrong? And then they sometimes reply to that. But also if I see it and I'm on my phone, then I can just quickly. And again, it's just a short link, I just say cancel and then it comes up with an automated. Well, not an automated, but a templated response and it's got an emoji and stuff like that. So they hopefully, sometimes, I don't know if you guilt them into like, oh, why have you cancelled? And sometimes they might have cancelled, but then through the ota and then they can rebook direct with you. So that's a really good sort of clincher as well.

The beauty of WhatsApp as well is that you can send voice notes. And I will definitely talk about the power of voice notes in a podcast episode. Like, Ralph has just asked for an episode on the podcast about WhatsApp. And 100% I can do this. And with a voice note, if someone does cancel, you get a notification for it. It's a simple WhatsApp voice notes saying, hey, Mark, I've just seen your cancellation, just please let me know why. You know, is there anything that we can do to make it better? And if they come back saying, oh, no, no, it's just X, Y and Z restrictions, whatever. I'm really sorry, we can't come. We'd love to come in the future. Then you can do one or two things. Just say, yeah, 100%. Well, sign up to our email list, keep in touch or would you like to purchase a gift voucher? And I know that you've got a gift voucher set up, just say, here's the link to our gift voucher. You can book in a day. We're actually, you actually get 20% more or whatever like the markup would be. And you can say, listen, you can book 100 pound gift vouch now or 200 pound gift vouch now. You'll actually get 250 pounds worth of actual booking credit. But then you've got it, you booked in and then you can use it at any time. So just ask, this is the main thing, just ask. And again, a voice note would be awesome. And even if they say listen, no, we can't, we can't, we can't just say, and again, if it's something like a business, find out why they booked. If it was business, you can come back and say, listen, I totally understand. Just, you know, just as a, as a bit of interest, you said it was a business booking. Who do you work for? Who's in the area? Do you know anybody else that's come into the area? Do you have a pa? Does there somebody that books them for you? And if they come back saying yeah, 100%, just say, keep passing me that number, I'd love to get in contact and just pass our details on. And again, you can do that all instantly via WhatsApp. It's not scummy, it's not sleazy, it's having a conversation via WhatsApp and it's an instant text message. If they ignore you, they ghost you. So well move on to the next one, that's absolutely fine. But if they actually have a conversation with you, fantastic. And anything that you can do to build up a bit of good karma, it will come back in spades in the future. And I think that's another sort of big takeaway that everybody should, should have from 2020 is that those people back in those hosts back in March and April who actually thought about the guest and sort of did all the right things and said all the right things and did all the right things, exc. Etc refunds or whatever like built up that good karma in July and August. It came back absolutely in, in their dozens because of that. And I guess these are sort of Things that you can all sort of keep, keep into account. Yeah. All right, buddy, let's end with pricing. I feel like this could chat take about 10, 15, maybe even 20 minutes if you have got a phone call with me after this. And Neely, I know you're watching now we know we've got a phone call. It's going to start 20 minutes ago. I do apologize. I'll make it up to you. But we were going to talk about pricing and then we're going to finish. So pricing, Mark, just give us a bit of the context around it, please.

Okay, so with the pricing, I've got an idea of the pricing of what I'm happy to sell the rooms for and the minimum that I'm prepared to sell them for. And I don't mind paying the 15 or 18% commission with booking.com because I feel that is, they do a good job. They got incredible marketing. And we do stand out on booking.com with our 9.8 out of 10 with over 500 reviews. So I need to leverage that. But what I get a little bit annoyed about is we're on the preferred Partner program, which is the 18% commission to show higher up in the search rankings. We are also on two of the rooms out of eight on the Genius program, which I feel is the kind of the hook to get Genius members onto the listing and doesn't really affect non Genius members. So that's a 10% discount, which on its own is fine. And then we're running mobile rates. I came off mobile rates about a month or so ago, then looked at the analytics and we were getting the vast majority of our bookings on this mobile rate. And I think it is really, really effective from Booking.com's perspective of getting the bookings in. And I feel it's harder to then get those people to then convert back to direct. And they obviously look at the price on the on booking.com and then look at our price on our website. And it's not always cheaper. If They've got the 10% as a Genius member and the 10% discount on mobile rates, and then that's obviously not the way to do it because then I'm getting the potential direct booking. But then they go to booking.com because they are actually getting a better rate. But I don't want to be offering effectively 20% off the total like the normal price by booking direct because then you lose all. You're effectively giving away 20% on all your bookings.

So this is. I want to throw up to everybody that's. Sorry to interrupt everybody that's watching. So we've got 25 people live. Number one, are you with booking.com? number two, do you have the genius program? And number three, do you have the preferred partner program as well, just like Mark, or do you do something as a little. As a little workaround? So obviously you then when you join the genius program, we talk. We did talk about this offer. This is why I know what to say. So we. We're basically you. By doing the genius program about doing the preferred partner, it's really hard for pricing software tools to pick this up. So I guess when it comes to pricing and knowing what to price beds, 24 is looking at it and going, well, this is your rate, but not taking into account the saving that the genius booking makes. It's not taking into account the extra percentage that you've got to then pay to have that preferred spot. Now, would you be up for then, and this is something that we did to chat about before we came on, would you be up for removing yourself from the genius program next year?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The way, the way I saw, the way I saw it was it was only. It's only two rooms out of the eight. And so, and I've looked at the genius analytics. Only a third of. Only a third of the time are they actually, are they genius members booking a genius room. So the other third is non genius and then the other third is genius, but booking a non genius room. So in terms of the hit that we're getting, there is a hit, but I didn't feel it was that that bad because it's only two rooms out of the eight.

Yeah, well, the thinking behind it is this, is that again, the price that we portray, even if it is just the two rooms, the price that we portray, it sets the precedent to anybody who is savvy enough to shop around and you know, the consumer nowadays, the guest nowadays is savvy. They do click around the stats. And the studies that have been done by these big organizations like Skift, Showbiz is that people will. Will click, will click around and look for prices. Particularly when I'm going to sneeze any second now. Oh, shaking it. Don't worry. Backing it. So what this means is that again, any pricing expert will jump in and sort of give their opinion on this. But for my. The way that I look at it is that if we are portraying a price, even if they don't say book, for example, but if we're say, portraying a price, that's 10, 15, 20% below. Then what we're, what will happen is they will go onto your website, they'll see the price is this and then what they'll do is they'll bounce and then they'll go away. But as soon as they go back into the booking.com ecosystem booking.com hit them with well here's fountains but come and check out here or come and check out da da da da da da da da.

Yeah sure.

And again if we're training people to always look for the lower rate then again this is when you start to get those one nighters or the guests that you don't really, really want to achieve. So with my thinking is, would be this number one come out with the genius program, have the confidence to go no, we don't need that. So leave that. You can stay on the premium because it gives you the higher visibility in a big market like Harrogate, very touristy businesses and all of the things. But then trust your post booking process to try and convert as many OTA bookings into a direct one so that yeah, you may be looking at it on the principle of an 18, 20% for example but trust your WhatsApp game, trust your email automations to then be able to go right Mr. Guest, you've booked on booking.com and again I think it's clear, it's really important to, to, to state this is that not everybody goes for price. Not everybody goes for price. People will more likely go for incentives than price and this is why if you book with the Hilton, you book with Marriott, you book with Premier in just as an example if you go on their website they list the benefits of booking direct free WI fi which could be, you know again everybody craves WI fi nowadays and if you rock up and it says right, you only get WI fi if you book direct. Again it's like it's not the price element now, it's the incentives. You know what I mean? Yeah, things, things like that. And again it's what we're saying isn't something that you set in stone. Test and trial. So trial it for 90 days, see if it has a benefit. If, if coming off genius and in 90 days it hasn't made any difference whatsoever then you can always go back on. It's not like they're going to say you're right, yeah we don't want you, you know what I mean? But it's good to, it's good to test and to twist and especially seeing that pricing is something that is top of mind at the moment. I would also as well, I would be one of the first to do this, especially for Fountains. I would be looking to get Airbnb listed for every single room on there. They have made this shift to 15%. They've done this by scrapping the service charge. They've done this because they want to take on booking.com over the course of the last 10 days, whilst this IPO has been in motion, they've had to do a little roadshow going around and, you know, the CEO has basically said their play is booking.com they've been talking about it in the press so much. They are. They are. They want to take on Booking.com's share. Now. They've already done that in the homes market. But next is the guest house. It's the hotels. And the reason why they've gone to this 15% model where they get rolled out more and more and more is because they then need to link up to the channel managers easier. They then need to link up to the pmss and all those things, so they can't link up to an OTA with a service charge because it froze the whole system out. Though what this means for guest houses is that if you can be the first to move on this. And again, because Airbnb has been in the news so much in the wider world, it's not just us hospitality people, but everybody hears about it because it's one of the largest ever launches on the stocks and all those sort of things, people will. More and more will go to it. And because they've got more money now, more funding, they're going to spend big. And they will be competing on the first page of google for booking.com and Expedia, who spend the top 10 in the whole world, and that includes the big companies Booking.com have always spent really, really big. Airbnb will start to do better. And again, when we talk about direct bookings, when we talk about, you know, the book direct and everything, it's not a case of going cold turkey on these and coming off booking.com and Airbnb, because that's just. That's just. That's just wrong. You've got to make them work for you and not the other way around. So if, for example, if you run a search in Harrogate and if Airbnb comes up 7 out of the 10 times on organic search, you've got to be on Airbnb. And I know you list the full house, but now let's have the full house. But Also as well list the individual rooms on there as well. And again with Airbnb you get a lot more flexibility with your description, with your title than you would do on say, on say booking.com because it is popular. People are using it more and more and more and more and more. They acquired hotels tonight because they knew that they are going to make a play into this world. So if you can move first and get listed on there, that could be, you know the difference between getting from where we are now to 35, 50%, getting towards that 75%. And again once you're, once you're listed on there, once you've got your systems and structure all in place, trust in your conversion from going from an OTA to a direct booking to be able to, you know, again make sure you hold back some incentives as in later, check in, etc. Whatever you decide that will be again because more people will be using it. But that those would be the main things that I always like to try and leave at least one to three actionable takeaways. The first one a quick job. Get that video that's on of the virtual tour on YouTube. Simple job, just upload it, make sure all the right things are in the right place. Go on into the boostly academy and watch the YouTube video to show you how to do it. It's, it's really simple to follow. Number two would be email more Try that email at the start of January, the one we talked about. So go and close off the dates on your channel manager on your PMS for those dates that you know that you could sell two or three or four times over. Close them off, make a note of them and then email out to your list, see what happens again, that could be a real quick win for some nice bookings to get money in the bank, etc. And then the next one would be which is a bit of a more of a long term play. But look to get listed all the rooms on, on Airbnb and come off genius program. So we've got four there four things.

I'll come off Genius. What so what's your take on mobile rates? Because I feel that does stand out massively and when I looked at the analytics we're getting a massive percentage of our bookings on the mobile rates.

Yeah, I have dabbled with it and it's common sense because what is it the stats is like 88 or 87% of all hospitality bookings begin on one of these. You know what I mean? So it just makes sense and you Know the way that they've created the app. The way that exactly.com have created the app, it. It makes it so it's seamless. You know, it's like Amazon. It's seamless. All you got to do, find it, book it, the details are all saved. It's. You can even log in with your Facebook. It's so easy. So, yeah, and again, the beauty of it is that if you can trust your conversion from an OTA to a direct booking, then, then go for these sort of things. But make sure that whatever incentives you're holding back for a direct booking that you talk about about it like you do on the website really well and all those things. But yeah, but yeah, it's one of. It's one of them. I think that Necessary evil. Yeah. I would just for yourself, for what you need to be doing from a marketing point of view, like proactively is keep emailing. Like email. More like do it monthly. Build the list. I mean, you've got a really good website. I mean it's, it's at the bottom of it, it says join our VIP list for offers and promotions, which I, which I love. You know, I would. On your Facebook page have a pinned post. So on the, on the Facebook page have a. Have a pinned post at the top to say in join our VIP list for office promotions, etc. So it's the first thing that people see and just try and go through the process of taking people off of the slow lane, as in off of Facebook and off of wherever and getting them onto your email list, which is, which is. Where you will. This is, this is exactly what we did at the granary. We got so many bookings from emails and you can track it through mailchimp so easily because you can just see where people click. Don't start to start to start to use it more instead of being. When we do a challenge.

Yeah, totally. That's awesome.

And, and WhatsApp. Just keep using WhatsApp and just. And again, just don't be afraid to like open up a WhatsApp and like look at like the bookings from this year and if there's one guest, like if you know it was a business guest, for example, just drop in a voice, note someone like that and just say, hey, you coming back to the area? How's your 2021 looking? Or just something like that. Because again, by doing that by email and WhatsApp are the same. You're getting people into your land by doing that.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Awesome. Thank you very much.

Because I was going to be on a call 40 minutes.

Sorry.

This is 100 my fault on this one because I was faffing around getting, getting started at the beginning. But I just want to say to everybody watching is that tomorrow night. Tomorrow night, which is the 18th, and this is for everybody watching live and watching back on the replay Tomorrow night at 7pm UK, I'm going to show everybody how in 90 days I can turn your business into a direct booking machine. I'm going to send an email out to everybody tonight with the link, but basically it's boosted.co.uk 90dayzoom. That is your link for the Zoom call. You don't have to register, just make sure that you are online tomorrow at what time did I say it was? 7pm? 7pm So 90 day Zoom. If you are not on the email list, then just not in the WhatsApp channel. Even go to Boost, co.ukforward/daily boost and I will send out all the links in the WhatsApp tomorrow. So it's going to be at 7pm it's not on Facebook. It is just going to be in Zoom Zoom tomorrow. All right, Mark, thank you so much for that. We really appreciate you coming on. I think it went well. I think everybody's saying well done in the comments, which is nice. Again, I'd just love, everybody, please, if you could do me a massive favor and just tap one of these emoji buttons as many times as possible. Share this video. Give Mark a bit of love for doing that. Is there any final remarks, Mark, that you would like to say? Any takeaways or anything you're going to put into practice?

Yeah, all of the above. It's been really refreshing. It's nice for you to actually comment on the website as well. It's quite a lot of hard work went into that. Great templates, but still kind of the back end. And I wasn't 100% confident that it was still doing what it should be doing. But thank you for the feedback and yeah, I'll implement all those, all those things we discussed and then watch out for 2021.

I mean, in all seriousness, when we do a boosting website, we give you that template and everybody, how they take it, they go in all the different ways, shapes or forms. But. But from what I see, and I see it from a guest point of view, I'm looking for the benefits of booking direct, which is in there. You've got all the things in place and again, you've got the WhatsApp button, which is awesome. You've got everything there. You've even got how someone can book on a gift voucher. You've got the FAQs. All of the important stuff is right where it needs to be. So like I say, well done, well done. And again, you've boxed off something that is really challenging that I've learned the lesson the hard way this year but I guess so many other people are building a of bunch brand and a portfolio is that when you've got more than one unit that's at different locations, how do you make it where people can go straight to the place that they need to be and by buying the domain. It's a great, it's a great start. All right, buddy, I'm gonna let you go.

Awesome.

Thank you very much and thank you very much for tuning in. Ralph Mabel's and if you enjoyed this and if you want to see us do, if you want to see me do this again, let me know in the comments. And if you would like to have a go at this and if you would like to be the person on the other end of the camera then boostly.co.uk review Sarah thank you Mabel's thank you Ralph, Liz, Jill, Anna, Mary, Craig everybody. Hadeel everybody that's tuned in, thank you so much. I'm going to leave you with a freestyle wrap all about the Boostly Academy that closes tomorrow night at 10pm and if you want to be on that zoom call tomorrow then make sure make sure you check your emails in your WhatsApp. Take care. Bye bye.

Let's drop that beat and let's do this. You're frustrated a source of consternation. You're struggling to rent accommodation. You be not rubbing hands with glee. You're being screwed over by Airbnb and booking.com they're not nice to the hosts. No by far not the most taking high commission cost cost they be presenting you and taking all that percent should be into your bank account and maybe you don't know how to use social media to grow and get the bookings coming direct. Well don't worry, I'll explain what comes next. Yeah, you're gonna be glad you heard a rap from me. I'm explaining that's an academy. Oh like an orange so juicy. Gotta look at that thing by BR Boost Lee that's the three T's tools, tactics and training to give you the confidence that's a no braining you get Weekly group coaching 500 people that's the most in let me say this going through it you know that he's the Martin Lewis for the hospitality owners. Yeah. Not dumb like Homer Simpson. Not the guy from the past. There's a Volvon training videos that will last you for a long time. Teaching you how to master Facebook, Instagram and what comes after. Marketing by email, the pricing, branding, Google so you don't fail. And here's another thing that you ought to see. If you don't get a return, there's a money back guarantee.

What? Yeah.

You can't top that return on your investment or you get your cash back. Sounds like a deal. Sounds like a steal. And that's the Bruce Lee academy that I reveal. Yeah.