Mark Simpson (Boostly) promotes the Boostly content creator (monthly templates, £5/month with a July free-trial coupon) and reacts to Guesty's Summer 2021 travel trends. He highlights strong US domestic recovery—large booking increases for Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day vs 2020 and 2019—higher consumer spend, and rising nightly rates (reported average $362/night). He interprets this as 'revenge travel' and advises hosts to raise prices, market reconnecting with loved ones, use local partnerships, and remain proactive in marketing.
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Before we start today's episode of the Boostly podcast, I have got some exciting news to share with you. For the month of July, I am giving away one month trial of the Boostly content creator. Now, you may be asking, you may be thinking, well, what is the Boostly content creator host that I have come into contact with in the five years of doing Boostly? And when I say to them, you need to be posting every single day on social media, you need to be emailing, emailing your guest and your list, they always say to me, I haven't got the time. And I can't think of a better month to promote the Boostly content creator than July. Because right now everybody around the world is busy, busy, busy, busy. And they haven't got the time to think about the marketing or the social media or the emails, when in fact the best time to do marketing is when you're at your busiest because that means that you always have a pipeline coming through. So I created the Boostly content creator for busy hosts. Now what do you get? Every single month you get 30 to 40 pieces of fresh social media content that you can use for your social media channels. LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. You also get video templates which are designed to stop the scroll on social media, which is really powerful. Email templates designed by expert copywriters that are working so well. Georgina Bearman messaged up in our Facebook group to say that she used to one of the email templates and got free bookings, direct bookings instantly, which more than covered the cost. You also now get website headline generator tools. You get a money back guarantee and you can cancel anytime. The price is only five pound a month. And right now when you sign up, you go into the boostlycontentcreator.com you add to your basket in the coupon code section, you type in July and you get the first month free. Now that is only available for the month of July. After that it's five pound. If you don't want to continue, you can just cancel at any time. But please make sure that you go and you use the booster content creator. My goal is a month in the month of July is to get 1,000 new hosts to register and sign up. This is how powerful I know this tool is because the email templates in itself are providing a massive return of investment and I would love for you you to come and join. This is for new members only. Just go to boostlycontent creator.com add it to your basket, put in coupon code July and I'll see you on the other side. Right now we've got that out of the way. Let's get on with today's podcast episode. Welcome to episode 299 of the Boostly podcast. And today, what I wanted to walk you through and show to you is some travel trends. You know, I love a travel trend. And today we've got guesties travel trends. And it's really exciting. Now, even if you've seen this or if you've not seen this, let's just delve into it a little bit now before we do this. If you had a first time you tuned into the podcast and I know we get so many new people, 71% of people who watch this on YouTube aren't currently subscribers and are watching the video for the first time, which is fantastic, which is amazing. Hi to the new people. But please do stick around. Join the largest and the most engaged hospitality community in the world, Team Boostly. All you need to do, hit the like button, subscribe, be part of the book, direct movement, and let's dig in. So here we go. Share my screen. So this is a summer trend from guesty. If you don't know guesty, one of my favorite PMS is out there. Some exciting news coming with guesty soon. I can't see anything just yet, but the balls are in motion. The wheels are in motion. Not the balls. Forgive me. The wheels are in motion on something pretty cool that we are chatting about behind the scenes. So anyway, so I love getting their travel trends. It's given some real big insights. Obviously, this is based on the data that they have and obviously this is us, but this is, this is something that I think everybody all over the world can take into. So let's dig into it a little bit. Domestic US summer holiday travel has boomed outperforming pretty Covid numbers. We'll dig into that in a second. So Memorial Day weekend bookings were up 71% compared to 2020 and up 43% compared to 2019. Again, look at the numbers compared to 2019, and then we'll, we'll discuss what that means in a minute. Consumers paid 71% more compared to 2020 and 9% more compared to 2019. July 4th weekend bookings were up 44% compared to 2020. Let's just focus on 2019 because this is the one that's really, really got my attention, which is why I'm sharing with you today. 32 compared to 2019. Consumers paid 24 more compared to 2019. And Labor Day weekend which is later on in the year, is set to be the busiest it's been in three years. Reservation volume is 100 higher compared to last summer and 35 higher than 2019. And prices will continue to rise as summers carry on with current average nightly rate at $362 a night, a 23 increase from 2020 and 33% increase from pre Covid. So it's the pre Covid one that is the one that's really interesting to me. And this shows what we've been talking about, which is the, which is the revenge travel. People have been locked down, cooped up for so long they want to get out and they want to reconnect. And you just got to join the dots. Remember when I talked about the VRBO ads and the Airbnb ads and they were talking about reconnection, family, etc. Meeting up and sort of making up for lost time now instead of just going, yep, yep, listen to it, make note of it. Ask yourself, how can you put that into your market? People are paying more, people are staying longer, people are wanting to get, get out. So what are you doing to combat this? What are you doing for your market and prices wise, is your prices up? Are you still giving your same 2020 prices or same 2019 prices? Put them up. The demand is there for everybody that you underprice with. You are turning down somebody who could pay you 10, 20, 30% more. Always think of that. And again, it's not like you've got an unlimited itinerary. You've only got a certain amount of rooms or a certain amount of properties that you can fill. So put your prices up, be confident. Again, they're not set in stone. You can lower them or raise them as you go. Depends on how far the lead timeout is from the point of booking to the point of arrival. Also as well, what's your marketing message? How are you communicating on social media in your emails? Are you sort of talking about reconnecting with family, talking about visiting, you know, loved ones in, in your area? Because again, don't forget that people locally will see your posts as well. People locally will see your post as well. Remember this. And again, you may have somebody that's got an aunt or an uncle or a cousin, parents or children or cousins or nephews or nieces or best friends or pen pals, etc, that are wanting to come and they need a place to stay. And if you've got that availability, then these are who you need to be putting your message in front of. So still Keep posting in the Facebook groups like we talked about yesterday. Still keep utilizing local connections and local contacts. If you haven't got them, start building up business contacts. Go to the taxi drivers, go to the local bars, the restaurants, the days out, the coffee shops, the people that are friends of yours that you know who run businesses and to ask around to say, do you know anyone? Again, Boostly content creator members, you've got the templates, you know what you need to do. Click copy, paste, send, personalize, off you go. It's as simple as that. So take the data that Guest has given us and yes, that is US centric. The survey is US based, but the demand and the the sentiment is the same all over the world. The demand is huge and even if you can't open right now, the demand is there. So still keep doing the basics that we've been talking about for the last 14, 15 months. Put it into practice. As always, be be proactive, don't be reactive. If you need the tools, the tactics, the training, or even just the confidence in the G up, come and check out what we're doing at Boostly. Tomorrow is the 300th episode of the Boostly podcast, which is a big milestone. I've got something special planned, so make sure you check back tomorrow, but until then, please make sure you hit the thumbs up. Share this with a host Share in a Facebook group share it in LinkedIn tell a host, tell a friend because we have so many people that are discovering Boost Lee from you. So thank you so much for listening and checking out. I'll be back tomorrow. Please be proactive, please be awesome and we'll be back tomorrow. Let's go get some direct bookings. Having a blast Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee cuz it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf Making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely.
