Stages of the Booking Process: Buyer’s Remorse S2E5

Foreign. Welcome to the Boost Hospitality Podcast. My name is Mark Simpson. I'm the founder of Boost Hospitality, or Boostly for short. This podcast is all about working with small independent hospitality owners, helping them increase their heads on beds, cutting down on commission costs and just getting a better understanding how marketing for their Property works in 2017. Welcome back to the final episode of season two of the Boost Hospitality Podcast. My name is Mark Simpson and I'm the founder of Boostly. Over the course of this season of the Boost Hospitality Podcast, we've been focusing on the five stages that a potential booker will go through before reserving a room or a holiday cottage online. Step number five is Buyer's Remorse. So you've done all the hard work. Your property has stood out on either the listing sites or they've come onto your website and they've decided that yours is the place that they want to book at. They've gone through your booking engine, they've submitted their card details and they've booked with you. A really alarming stat that is coming out is that over 30% of all bookings via an OTA are cancelled. Now, it's an average, it's not every single property, but that's a really high rate. So how can you stop? Buyer's Remorse doesn't matter whether they book on your website or if they book on an online travel agent. And I've got a few things I'm going to cover in this episode which hopefully you'll be able to take on board and implement into your hotel, holiday cottage or guest house. Step number one, 24 hours to 72 hours. After a guest has booked at your property, send them an email or send them a text message. It's as simple as that. Give them the personalized touch. Now, when they do make a booking on any of these websites, doesn't matter if it's yours or someone else's, they will get an automatic this is your confirmation email, but if you can send them one with a personal touch that's come from you, it will go down so well with the guest. Now, what would you send in this email? It could be specific information about your property, it could be how to find you, it could be parking related, it could be just to let them know about other facilities that you have on your property, whether it's a restaurant, tea rooms, massage services, spa treatments, etc. You name it, whatever you have, this is a good time to mention it. Now, a big rejection or a big comment that I get from other hospitality people when I mention this is that they say, well, I haven't got the time to sit down behind a computer and do that. The good news is that it doesn't have to be manual. There's really, really effective and easy to use automated tools out there that work with your booking engine. Right now, if your booking engine doesn't have automated features where 24 hours after a booking is made, an email gets sent out, then you need to looking elsewhere. I at Boostly, I'm in the process of creating a booking engine that will do that. The time of recording is not quite ready, but it is on the way. If you'd like to find out more information, if you just email markoostely.co.uk when the time is right, I will be able to share more information with you. But basically what it means is that when a guest reserves a property, reserves a room at your property, or reserves to stay with you, you need to be getting in contact with that guest. The reason why a guest will cancel, especially after booking via an online travel agent, is that there's no sort of connection to the property yet. Obviously, once they come and stay with you and they love what you do, the guests will obviously be more aware of who you are and what you are all about. But before they come and stay, they just simply don't know. So you need to tell them. So let them know about any special events that are coming, let them know about your Facebook page, your social media pages, get them onto there so they can start interacting with you on that. But a big way to stop a cancellation is just to start interacting with the guests, whether that's by an email or a text message. Again, you don't have to do this manually. There's loads of really cool automated software out there at the moment which will help you with that. Next, a really effective way helping cut down on cancellation costs is send your guest something. Now, I don't mean by sending them a bottle of wine in a post or an expensive present. It could be something as simple as money off vouchers to a local restaurant, a local bar, or it could be a local facility. So what you need to do is you need to go out and network and sort of build relationships in that local community. You could work with a hospitality association that is local to you, or simply go out to these properties and go and speak to them and just say, I've got guests, I want to recommend them to go to somewhere. I'd love them to be. You. What can you sort of offer one of our guests to come and eat at your restaurant? For example, whether that is, you know, five pound off, 10% off, you know, free admission for a local water park, et cetera. But you need to go out and you need to work with a local business and then you need to send those vouchers to your guest via email or a text message. Doing something like that, standing out from the crowd, doing something that a Hilton or a Marriott or a Travelodge or a Premier Inn wouldn't do. This is why people come and stay with local independent bed and breakfasts, hotels or holiday cottages, because we do something a little different from the rest. And if you can do this at the booking stage, then it'll just really help with your cancellation rate. Of course, there always will be an illness, there will always be a time when they couldn't get off work, there will always be an excuse and a cancellation. You're not going to go from 30% cancellation rate to 0% cancellation rate. But if you can knock that from 30 to 25 to 20 to 15, you'll get a better calendar, you'll have a better profits and you'll just have a lot calmer booking process. Hopefully this tip out of all of them, you'll be able to put some direct and instant practices in place for your property. If you need any help or if you've got any questions, I'd love to hear from you. My email address, as always, is markboostly.co.uk or you can come and find me on Twitter, which is Ostleyuk and Boostly is B O O S T L Y UK on the end for Twitter.

Thank you for listening to Boost Hospitality Podcast. I've created a free ebook to go alongside this podcast series. To claim your copy, all you need to do is go to boostle.co.uk podcast2 and that's the number two. And as always, Boostly is spelled B O O S T L Y. My name has been Mark Simpson. Thank you so much for listening. I'd love to hear your feedback. Tweet me UK Sam.