Mark Simpson recommends calling guests already booked around multi-day gaps to fill them with discounted direct bookings. Target gaps of 3+ days, use phone calls instead of texts, and outsource outreach to staff for $600–$1,000/month if needed. Test it for 90 days to reduce platform fees and changeover costs.
When it comes to it, when it really comes to it, as business owners and hospitality owners, we always do the same thing, which is we're always trying to find the new money, the new guest, the new booking. I asked this question in free Facebook groups. So if you had a gap in your calendar, like I've shown here on the example, if you had a three day gap in between bookings, what would you do? What is what, what is the answer? I, um, people came back with lots of interesting remarks depending on the Facebook group we're in. Um, people said go on a holiday, go and stay in the apartment. But I'm talking from a purely marketing sales business perspective here. And we had, I say diff, different answers in, in different groups, but a lot of the times people are going down the route of dynamic pricing, bumping your rates up, all of the things. But in all honesty, when it comes to it, when it really comes to it, as business owners and hospitality owners, we always do the same thing, which is we're always trying to find the new money, the new guest, the new booking. We try and implement these fancy tactics, these fancy trainings, these dynamic pricing software tools. We go put the rate super high with a massive discount and then we try and beat the algorithm when really the most important thing for me business owners to do is focus on those that have already given us the booking, that have already jumped over that hurdle of do I book with this place or not? And the easiest win here really is by contacting the guests that are staying either side. So if I bring up this image again, if I share my screen, I would be looking to contact these guests here that are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, they stay, or this little Tuesday stay here and say, hey, there's a, there's a gap after you check out and before the next guest checks in, would you like to take it? And if you've been doing the, the guest communication properly, if you've spoken to the guest 24 hours after booking, know exactly who that guest is and why they're coming to town, and if they've given any indication that this could be something that is quite flexible, then you should be looking to reach out to them and you should be saying, hey, we've got three days before the next guest comes in. Or again to the other ones are saying, hey, the other guests actually check out three days before prior. Would you like to take those dates? And what you can do is you can look at working out a special rate. The discount can be whatever you want to discount it because what's really important here is that you don't have to then get the cleaning team in again. So let's set the example. You're going to go for a brand new booking, three day booking, then that's a changeover. That's cleaning fees, that's amenities, that's all of the things you've got to revamp and refresh to get in. So instead of that, if you can put a discount on those three days, then the guests will be, you know what, we can stay. And it's a fantastic discount. And the best thing is about it, it'll be a direct booking. And the guests that are on the other side, that are coming to stay, they could come a little bit early because they could have some flexibility in their calendar. People book at different times throughout the year. They, they book at different lead times. Okay. And say, for example, this book in here, they could have booked four months ago, three months ago, two months ago, a month ago. And situations may have changed. They may have been able to get to you earlier or stay for you a few extra days. And if you can identify gaps, and I'm not talking one days, like one day is a one day, but I'm talking anything more than 48 hours, three days, four days, then that would be prime to reaching out. And again, so many of you aren't doing this. And it all comes back to time. I haven't got the time. I haven't got the time. I haven't got the time. It's why I know everybody comes back to me and they say, I haven't got the time to call the guest. Well, if you're so out of time, hire somebody to do this for you. You could easily get somebody that can communicate on the phone, pick up the phone. And I'm not talking about a text here, I'm not talking about an email. I, I'm talking about picking up the phone and calling and speaking to the person. You could easily find somebody that you could pay between 600 to $1,000 a month with, and they'll do 30, 40 hours every, every week. And you could easily get a return of investment on this by having them do tactics and training and tapping into little things like this that will have a massive benefit in your business. So if you will be the type of person who will go, I'm going to take advantage of the Airbnb algorithm and try and do all those things that sound, that's fine, but if you try and change it for just eight weeks, give me eight, give me 90 days, doing this instead and let's see what your results are. As always, if you enjoy these types of videos, please make sure that you subscribe and like and follow this channel. There's much, much more of this coming over the course of the year. We do free videos every single week. We've got free podcasts every single week going out. We've obviously got the books and we've got boostly where you can come and find out more about how we're giving host the tools, the tactics of the training. Our mission is to help 1 million hosts cut down on an over reliance on Airbnb with all through direct bookings. So here we go. If you like more, find out more, click subscribe notification bell and we'll see you in a couple of days for our next video.
Having a blast. Going to get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee because it's so hard on the T is loose leaf making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.
I Tested AI Search SEO for Rental Hosts... Here Is What Happened [Live Training]
