QuickFire Questions with Henry Bennet 🚀

Now this is something that I've not had so far in season eight of the podcast, the Quick Fire Questions. But I wanted to bring it back and I wanted to give it a little bit of a coronavirus, little twist and tweak. So number one, if you could be on lockdown or in isolated with one celebrity, who would it be?

So I'm not massively into celebrity, but I was thinking about this beforehand. I think, I think I'd probably go for Gina Miller. I don't know if everyone knows who she is, but she's someone that is. Has campaigned very well to keep the government in check in the UK or over Brexit. We share a similar political belief and I'm a big fan.

A nice little one. To pick a brains or just to have in your corner.

Yeah, I think picker brains. Maybe my wife's listening.

All right. Okay. So if there is one movie or series that you've had on that to do list, to watch list, Netflix or wherever, but you haven't had the best chance to do so. And obviously you've got, you've got kids, so you may not have had that chance to do so. But what has been on the, on the to watch list on Netflix or Disney or Sky?

So, yeah, so Ozark, I don't know if people have been watching that on Netflix. I'm pretty into Ozark. I've seen the first series. There's now just a third one released. I've got all season two and season three and actually I was pretty excited. I think we've got three, three customers in the place. Ozark people have watched it. They'll know, they'll know what that means.

So yeah, I have seen that. I haven't, I haven't checked it out yet, but Ozark is on the list. What is the one thing that you have missed being since you've been on lockdown? So it could be a trip to a coffee shop. It could be just, you know, walking in general. The one thing that, the one main thing that you have missed the most since being done on lockdown.

Freedom, I think, I think for me, I love getting out with the kids, going on bike rides and stuff. And I think that, you know, like, like, I think like going on a long bike ride with the kids, we're missing massively. Obviously in theory you can go for an hour's, an hour's exercise, but it's pretty challenging trying to explain to your kids, 5 year old that look, if you see a person, you've got to be, you know, Two meters apart because it's the reverse of what you're brought up to do. If you see someone, you're not meant to cross the road, right. So you're almost like having to teach them a social, social change. I think that's horrendous. Right.

It's like doing exercise but without being judged for doing it. You know, I've never seen so many people just, just like second like judging people while they are exercising. It's insane. But yeah, I totally get that being able to leave and you know, kids are just so sociable as it is. My 4 year old asks everybody what the name is, who you know, how are they and st. So it's like one of them. It's a bit of a mad time. What has been your best purchase under 100 pound in the past six months?

It's actually been the last two weeks. So this is obviously quite amusing and personal for this time. So it's definitely toilet roll. So I can tell you, in my house, my kids were not happy about reverting to kitchen roll in the toilet. So when I found some kitchen roll, let me tell you, it was nowhere near £100 but I probably would have paid £100 at that point. I like that, I like that.

Okay, so do you have a favorite podcast or a YouTube channel that you go to?

Got a couple, but my tastes are either high or low. So probably my favorite podcast, probably the Guardian Politics podcast or it's a number which I won't go into of 80s football podcast. So either I'm up or down depending on where we sit.

Football, it's a mad one. I'm a big Liverpool fan but I haven't really thought about football probably in the last couple of weeks.

Today actually it was my son's fifth birthday on Sunday and the present didn't turn up. But his first QPR kit turned up today, which he's pretty excited about.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to when all of this is over and you've got a little release like sport be a big release and just to be able to get a bit of normality, get football back however or whatever football looks like when this all does come back and okay, final one and it's a question that I ask everybody, every guest. You could give one bit of advice to a hospitality owner watching this right now, especially when it comes to boosting their direct backings. What would be that one bit?

The biggest advice is any business that does not own their own customers ultimately is in a perilous position and we've seen this as what has happened in this particular horrendous incident. The biggest advice I can give you is you have to understand if you all the OTAs are acquisition channels. That's all they are, right? You get a booking but that booking is an acquisition and it's up to you what you do after that acquisition. Good businesses turn that acquisition into multiple purchases. Bad businesses just let that go and just continue to rely on that one time OTA acquisition channel. The biggest thing is look at your business and just think how can I turn this OTA booking into either a future direct booking or an advocate. There are two things you should look to do and actually those two things should be more important than the review thinking about review on the OTA site because once you've got 500 five star reviews at that point you really start thinking past that people are going to book after you see volume of good reviews and start thinking about how do you turn that into a future direct booking.

Any hospitality host, owner, property manager has seen from the last two weeks, three weeks is you cannot build your house on someone else's land. Airbnb have proved it, booking.com have proved it of how they've treated hosts. So you've got to, got to, got to. If your one mission will be for the rest of 2020 is figure out how you are going to get an increase in your direct bookings. We have hosts watching this who have 100% direct bookings. They are lucky they don't have to rely on OTAs. But we have people who watch and listen to this that rely heavily 90% plus on third parties to bring in their bookings. So if you do one thing, start building your email list, start building your direct bookings, get a better website and you know this, if this happens again, whatever this is then yeah hopefully you'll be protected because you'll have that guest, you'll have that direct booking. Henry, really, really appreciate it coming onto this you're welcome.com or just Google your welcome tablet please please please do go check it out. It is a fantastic service, it is a fantastic idea and I know there are a lot of people in the boostly world use your welcome. I know for a lot of people in the hospitality community that use them and the other channels that and the I mean I know they use them and is one of those things that you can just simply do to increase your guest experience that will have massive dividends in the future as in direct bookings or extra revenue. So do do check them out and thank you everybody for tuning in. Please do me one massive favor before you go. Tell a friend so to share this video, whether it's live or on the replay. Share it with friends, send it in an email, share it on your social media, share it in Facebook groups, LinkedIn, wherever you are, just tell one person about it. Tell them about we're doing live videos every night in 8April to help the hospitality industry bounce back from the coronavirus. And if you are listening to this on the podcast, I need you to do me one favor. Go to where you listen to your podcasts and subscribe and then leave a review. So rate and review it, because when you do, I can always see that the viewing figures go up and up and we go up and up in the chat. We are filtering around the top 30 in the UK in the management podcast, random category to be in, but whenever we get reviews we go higher up that list. So please, please do that for me. And we'll be back tomorrow, 2nd of April, for another live video. Until then, thank you so much for everybody for tuning in and I'll see you on the other side.

Sam.