Tactics to Scale Your Hospitality Business Successfully

Okay, so welcome to another live broadcast of the behind the Host podcast. And today on the Boosty podcast, we've.

Actually got a special guest who's from.

My part of the world here in Norfolk in the uk. So today we're joined by Sasha Tucker. Sasha is a friend and an amazing host who hosts here locally. He's actually scaled to over 100 properties and has built this amazing business in not very many years in, in under four years, I think it is. We'll find out more. He's here to join us today to tell us his story. Hopefully you can find inspiration from it and you'll be able to learn some tips how you may be able to scale a successful holiday. Let business too. Before we get started, I do just need to give a shout out to, well, Mr. Mark Simpson. Today I've talked to several hosts who have got sort of benefits and who have been inspired by his story in the Book Direct Playbook. So if you haven't already, go and check out, it's on Amazon, the Book Direct Playbook. It's a really useful book which will teach you tips and tools and tactics on how you can get more direct bookings and is under 20 pounds on Amazon, so well worth the investment. So without further ado, let's introduce to you our guest. Let's say hello to Sasha. Sasha, welcome along.

Thank you so much for having me. It's always there. I'm just flattered to be considered podcast worthy.

It's always nice, 100% your podcast worthy. So Sasha's very, very modest, but we've met at the Book Direct. Oh, no, that was at the summit in London, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. There was the, Was it the, the Book Direct summit? I think it was something like that, wasn't it? I think, yeah, exactly, yeah. And we met and then we, we, we've known each other obviously through friends of friends for a while, both from, from the same part of the world at Norfolk in the uk. But that was just awesome to get to know his business and as soon as I heard his story, I was inspired and I thought that'd be good to share with everybody on here as well. So, Sasha, would you like to introduce yourself and your business, how you got started in hospitality?

Yeah, sure. So I'm Sascha, I'm director and owner of Norfolk Holiday Properties. So we're a accommodation agency based in the fine city of Norwich and we covered all of Norfolk. I'm one of these people that kind of fell into this industry. So it's not something that I saw myself doing. So if I go back a few years ago, I was employed as a photographer and a videographer and I lived down in Portsmouth, living and working down there. I was there about three years and I decided that I wanted to move back to Norwich. I'm from Norwich, all my friends are here. Most of my family is in Norfolk. I decided it was just. It's a nice place to be, no offense to also. It's also a nice place. But yeah, I wanted to move back. So it was at that point that I hadn't had anything to do with kind of short stay properties, hadn't really had anything to do with Airbnb for a start. And that's the main thing that we used in the early days, which I'll come on to. But I started thinking, what can I do? I need to move back and I need to have an income when I go. So I was lucky at that point because my parents had two holiday lets which they managed very much as a lifestyle business. So it was, you know, good income for them, something that they did together. And fortunately for me, they had no real interest in continuing with them on the management side of it. So that's where I came in. I said, okay, I can manage those and it gives me something to do when I come back. So I moved back myself from an Airbnb because they weren't even on there at that point. That's going back to four years or so now. And then that allowed me to work out the industry, how to manage a property. And then I was able to offer that as a product to our owners, which is what we do now. And that's kind of a short summary of how I got here.

Amazing. So I know we said at the start, so how many you mentioned now. So that was how long ago?

Four years did you say? A little over four years now.

Amazing. And so in that time you've scaled what does the business look like now? And you know, sort of how do you operate now as opposed to. That was a side hustle back then for your parents. What does the business look like now? And.

And yeah, I'm lucky enough now that I have a team with me. We've got and I've shiny new office which we moved into at the beginning of this year on first street in Norwich. So that was a dream come true. How it compares now, I mean, when. Go back to when like first starts, obviously just working homes, only me just work out the laptop in my spare room. The next step we took was I managed to get To I think about 20 properties. Just. Just me. Ish. Maybe it was between 20 and 30 before we made our first hire. So that at that point we then moved into the office, into the stairway at my dad's house and hired an absolute legend called Joe, who's still with us now. And he was, you know, re interviewed and he came and saw us in this tiny little room. It's like the size of the room I'm sitting in that was absolutely tiny for one desk. We would sit opposite each other, facing, you know, facing each other. And I couldn't believe when he said, yeah, okay, I'll take the job. Because I thought, well, who the hell is going to agree to sit opposite me for eight hours a day in this tiny room? But, but he did. And I think to the right person it kind of seemed like an exciting proposition at the time to get involved a bit. And that was kind of like the, the first hiring for me. That was the point that we transitioned from just being, I don't know, one man band to a proper business. And that was kind of like a key moment for me. I could talk a little bit about our first property as well because I always kind of like telling that story. So the first one we, we took on, so the first one I took on as a proper kind of customer not owned by leave of my parents property. So the third property we had, I got lucky at that point as well. I say, I say luck a lot. I got lucky then because it happened to be a nice property that came to me. So it was a friend of a friend. And at that point I would have said yes to anything. That's kind of, that's what I'm. That's what I'm getting at. So I was fortunate that it was actually a decent property. So it was based in Norwich, it had parking, garden, all conditions of everything and it did really well. So straight away at that point we had some reviews from guests and I had one happy owner underneath my belt because there is an inertia to get over. It is extremely difficult to make somebody trust you with what is often their single biggest asset. When you have no credentials, you've got no track record and in my case you're young guy, you know, on your own. So that was the hardest part is getting the ball rolling. But I fought the first time, it happens to be one, said yes to it, did well and then we went from there.

And for the, for people who are listening in, what would you say made that a good one? Because there'll be People who are in similar sort of boats to how you was four years ago who are looking to get their first, perhaps they've got a couple of, you know, their own units or perhaps they do rent to rent or something like that. What would you say to the people who are looking to manage and about getting that next property? What sort of things made that a good one and that they should look for?

I think that primarily it has to be a certain standard property. Regardless of what location in and what type of property it is, whether it's an apartment or terrace, it has to be nice. And we always say now because when owners come into auctions, say what kind of things should I be looking at? Sometimes we'll come to us at a stage that they just want to know where they should look to invest. Maybe they don't even own something yet. But they come to us and they ask for advice and we say, well, think about where you want to go and stay. When you go away somewhere, you want something more than where you live at home. So if you think, don't think, play, you know, it's full of, if it's got some character about it, some work that's great, if it hasn't, then make it colorful, put some feature walls in there, you know, all of that kind of stuff so it just can't look like somewhere that they, you know, you don't want to go and rent. I was, I suppose. And then once you've kind of got that base, then start looking at like the things like location. Parking is obviously a massive one, but it's not the end of the world. It just affects what kind of price you can charge for it. So that's where I start. That's cool.

That's cool. And so fast forward now to when you've taken on Joe, which sounds amazing and you know, you're around that 20 sort of properties stage. What changed within the businesses? Did your day to day routine change as opposed to doing, I guess everything at the start as you've taken on more members of stuff. How has your routines changed as you've developed as a company?

Yeah, so I think the first thing that changed is that what Joe and I used to do is that we would alternate and have a weekend off. So every other weekend I then got to have off. I mean kind of, I'm one of these, I don't really switch off and even when I'm not the one that's working or say on call for the evening, it's, you know how it is, you do this Yourself. It's really hard to actually not be at work. So that was the first thing we did. So we kind of had some hours, structured it, and then Joe kind of took over a lot of the. Kind of the guest side of things. And then I dealt with the owners and that's basically still how we structure our business now. We're still a small. We're in a small team. We've got four members of the team now and we still split it between guest experience and owner experience. So there's two very different sides to the business. So we've got a couple of people who say their main job is to answer the inbound calls and guests emails, messages on all the platforms, make sure that they've got the information they need, that booking, they'll answer the questions if they are new during their stay, and then the owners is, you know, that's a massive job in itself to manage, to manage that side of things. So, you know, the owner statements and the payments and even just the things when, when stuff goes wrong, you know, something breaks down the property and we've got to get an appliance engineer out and that's going to be coordinated and fed back to the owners. So that's a massive part of it. That's kind of how we split things up at the moment.

That's cool. And what I love about that is the focus on the two sides, because there'll be many hosts who, you know, have either got their own listings or maybe don't manage for people at the moment, but all of a sudden you've got two clients, haven't you? You've got your guest on one side of the coin and on the other side you've got the client, the. The owner of the property, and you're providing a service at both sides. So having that focus on both is. Is just so important and it really works at the end of the day. For as you're building more, as you're taking on more listings. Has there been any challenges along the way while you've been growing?

Yeah, I was going to say then I. I think that you guess and your owners, they were two very different customers. So we're kind of an unusual industry in that if you're in the property management business, you have two different, completely different sets of customers. They have to be dealt with different ways, they have to be marketed to in very different ways. So that's just an extra challenge that unfortunately we, we have in this industry. And I think that when we kind of move things more through the Management service. I kind of underestimate how much time you need to allocate to dealing with, you know, the owners and making sure that they have everything that they need. So that was something that we learned pretty quickly. The more properties that came on, right. We need to dedicate more time to this. So yeah, that's good. That's. That's one challenge we have had to overcome. The other one, which I was going to mention, this is more on kind of the guest side of things, dealing with those. So back in. When it's. When you're. When it's only one person in the business, it's really easy to have everything you need to know in your head. So I mean, you know, layouts of properties. So I happen to know. I'm pretty sure I know all about properties like almost like my own house at the minute, which I'm surprised because I've kind of kept that knowledge as we've gone, but I would. I know where the boiler is, where the fuse box is and things like that. I just have it in my head when you then bring people in the team and you want someone to be able to manage that kind of stuff, you can't expect them to know that, especially if they come in later on and they've got X amount of properties that they have to suddenly note. Because when a fuse trips and a guest rings up to the powers off, you have to be able to deal with that. So the way that we kind of got around it, this was a challenge basically getting stuff out of my head and putting it down so that it could be accessed by everyone. We use a great bit of tech called SharePoint which I'm sure everyone will have heard of. It's part of the Office 365 suite. So we have a database every property and it goes into very in depth, into kind of the property information. So on that it will say, where is the boiler, where's fuse box, waterstock or gas meter, WI fi. And then it also has things about the layout of property. So that even if, let's say one of the team picks up the phone and they've got an inquiry and someone says, has it got a ground floor bedroom? Because I've got my mother's coming and she's not very mobile, all that information is there. So it's kind of the working and living document that evolves so that if somebody asks a question and the answer isn't on there or you find out, it goes on there for next time. And that's been a game changer. For us.

I love that because at the end of the day, like you say, it grows with you. It's something where even if your staff hadn't stepped foot in that property, they've still got somewhere they can go to to answer that question for a guest and save time ultimately. So that is a massive one. Is there any other tech that you use in your business that's helped you along the way?

The only other key one for us is art is uploading system. Obviously we can't function without that. We're on Supercontrol, which. Yeah, it does the job. They're awesome.

Yeah.

Super Control.

One thing that I love about Super Control is the book and widget is very easy to book with Boostly. As you may know, we sell websites and so we get to see a lot of the different PMSs, you know, how they interact and how they work on a website. And Super Control is very good. Along with. We're partnered. Boostly's partnered with about 15 different PMSs, but super troll is one of the ones we partnered with. And is there any other pieces of tech that you use with it or anything else that you found helped you along your journey at all?

I'd say we're actually fairly light on the tech. I know some people have just loads and loads of it. I'd say we're pretty light. I mean the two things we used, Office 365 and Super Control.

That's cool.

There is one more we use password manager called dashli, which is awesome. I'd recommend checking that out so that you can give logins and share them without actually having to share the password. So again, when you have a team, if you want people to have access to a single login site, you can do that quite safely. So that was important.

What was the name of that one again?

Dashlane.

Dashlane. Dashlane, yeah. Cool. I mean that's amazing. There's two things which I find inspiring about that. One obviously is that you can, you know, you can be relatively lean on tech and still build a big business. And the second thing is that how it just works, you know, it just. Everything seems to just work for that, which is. Which is cool. So having a good PMS and a good effectively, you using like Office as a organizational tool effectively is that.

Yeah, I didn't want us to have to be logging in and out and switching applications too much, so I wanted to keep it as lean as possible. So every tool that came with Office 365, I've had a good look through that now to see which ones we can use. And I think there's still more in there. There is so much. I think there is more tools we can use within it, but yeah, SharePoint can't recommend it enough.

So let's talk about where you're marketing your business at the moment, towards guests. Where do you tend to get your guests come from and how do you market in general?

Yeah, I mean no surprises. The main driver of bookings for us is the OTAs and obviously the big ones, if they're BNB first and foremost, booking.com and VRBO, then they top a good share of it. Then we've kind of, you know, a mix of the others. But like, like everyone who's after direct, we use it as a tool to hopefully win either repeat business or convert them to a direct booking when they first get in touch. So we consider that kind of a lot of our marketing spend because obviously there's, there's service fees involved in those sites. So that's where a lot of our marketing budget is going to. And then the other kind of place that we advertise more traditionally, I suppose to get our website and name out there, we use all of the local tourist websites primarily. That's cool.

That's cool. And is it different for the people listening who, you know, want to increase the number of units they've got? Do you market differently towards owners or is that just towards guests and owners see that and then come to you for their listings?

We've tried both and I think that the latter that you just said, I think you can, you can tick two boxes with.

With.

Yeah, at once there. So when, because owners search for the same thing that a guest would and then if you're marketing for guests and they see an advert for guests, they're going to assume that that company is going to offer management services as well. So I mean we've, we've actually done very little marketing for owners. It's all been quite organic, which is nice. I mean I think we do quite well from our name deposit people that are based in Norfolk and then open up our names, they type in Norfolk on their properties and then we come up so that I think we do quite well out of that. But there is, I mean there is demand, there is a lot of demand for it. So if you can offer a property management service and do it well, you are going to get people talking to each other. So we get a lot of owners who are know another owner and it's kind of grown that way. But yeah, we don't. We have a pretty healthy pipeline of leads kind of coming in, so we haven't really had to go out there and, you know, source more.

And compared to the early days of, you know, when you mentioned. I think one of the lines in this podcast was, you know, I'd have taken any property. And that so happens. The property you think was good.

Do you get many properties that come.

To you now, which. Which you either turn down or. How does that look like these days? Is it a case of. Do you have sort of a. A vetting sort of process?

Yeah, I mean, occasionally we do. Which is always heartbreaking is you want to. We'd like to take it on and we'd like to be able to help out the owner, but sometimes you just have to advise them that it's not suitable. We would. We'll never take on a property now that we're. If we're not confident that it will generate the returns that them and us would be happy with, just like advising to go down that route. It'd be easy to take on anything, especially when. If you do. If you are keen to grow the business, get the numbers up, it's. It's a hard thing. It would be easy just to say, yes, yeah, we'll do it. And we are about growing in the right way. So now we don't. Pretty early on, we would. I kind of put it in my head that, right, we have to have a certain standard here because it's not worth it. If you take on a property which is substandard, you're going to damage your brand, you're going to have. Give yourself a whole headache of bad reviews. It will hurt you. So, yeah, we do have a certain set standards and we do occasionally have to turn properties down for the. For the right reasons.

Exactly. And that's the, like you say, your focus, you're serving both sides. So you want it to be right for the guest side as well as the. The client side, don't you? And that is kind of managing that, which is cool. I'm glad you mentioned the name, because it's something which I wanted to come on to is Norfolk Holiday Properties. Did you know back then that was going to be a really good domain to have? Or was that something which has happened, you know, sort of with a bit of luck, how. Talk us through how the name came around.

Yeah, yeah, a bit of luck. Yeah.

We.

If you were to try and if we had done this a few years later, you really struggled to get our domain name. So I'm Very, very proud of it. Because it is. That's what it says on the tip. The reason that we have it is because my dad bought it. I mean, the company didn't exist, but when he. This is kind of like 10 years ago, probably 10, between 10 and 15 years ago, that domain was bought and there was no. The company didn't exist. But my dad bought the. Bought this domain after kind of starting the first. Their first holiday home. And back then it was. There's no kind of Airbnb or anything. The sites was owners. Owners direct, I think. Is that one of the. I might have got that wrong. There's like an old site and that was like. That was just how people did it.

Yeah. I mean, that used to be a case of that they'd find you and ring you up, wouldn't they? And book that that way and then Airbnb.

Yeah, it's very much that kind of stuff. Yeah, they'd send checks in the posts and things. Bank transfers. Yeah.

It's funny because things are going slightly back more that way now. Usually people have got the tech to be able to have direct bookings as you have through your website. And for anybody who's listening to the podcast instead of watching on the YouTube, such as actually sitting in front of it, it says norfolk Holiday Properties with new logo. Is that new rebrand?

Yeah, little rebrands. When we moved into our office on Bur street at the beginning of this year and at the same time, a week before we had it decorated and branded and the signage go up, we had a little rebrand. So before that, the logo. The logo hasn't changed massively, but it was something that I made myself just on Photoshop and it. It done as well, but it needed a little bit of refining. So, yeah, and little rebrands. And yeah, sitting in front of our banner now upstairs to now in our office in the meeting room.

Love it. And is there anything which your perception of hospitality or, you know, sort of Airbnb or of serving has changed since the early days. Is there anything which you thought your views have changed on hospitality or anything like that since the early days?

Yeah, my perception of it, yeah, definitely. I don't think that the term passive income should ever be used in the same sentence or paragraph as short term letting or probably even property in general? Because it's anything but. I mean, it's this industry. It's brutal. You've got to be hard as nails just to kind of get through the, you know, the, you know, reviews and things. So it's a 247 business, as you'll know. And it's one of the hard things is that you can't really switch off. I find it. I certainly find it hard to. Even now, you know, you have to have somebody on call all the time and even if that's not you, you are still kind of responsible for them. So, yeah, it's not something to be underestimated, but it's not to say it's something you shouldn't do because it's an amazing industry, fantastic opportunities.

And really, that brings us on to, you know, sort of last few questions, really, which is, you know, what has this business allowed you to do? You know, is there. How has life changed, you know, on a personal level, since the early days?

I'm a lot busier.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the main thing that I. That I like about this is the opportunities that it brings and it's about. For me, I mean that in the sense of the people that I meet. So people like yourself, I meet fascinating people that I can chat to for hours and who knows where that will lead in future. And then what's also nice is that I'm getting to do that, have these opportunities whilst also doing something which is helping Norfolk and putting us on the, you know, putting us on the map. So it's nice to be able to have those opportunities as a byproduct of running a business which can contribute to tourism in Norfolk. You know, we get to bring thousands of guests here every year, which is fantastic.

Well, it's one of the things which, you know, you bring pleasure to both the guest side of things, obviously doing a great job for the hosts.

I don't know, like the home. So. Yeah.

And it obviously shows, which is amazing and thank you. And that brings us towards the end, I really feel we've got to know your business and your awesome. You know, so often here in Norfolk, as we come towards the end of these, we like to, you know, do a couple of quick fire sort of questions. But, yeah, just a couple of quick fire questions. The answer can be as short or as long as you like. So what does your morning routine look like?

I'm not a morning person. Not at all. I'm someone that is. I struggle to get up early. I'm not someone who gets up at 5am and goes for a run. As much as I would like to be doing that. I tend to. I work late and then I get up a little bit later. So I'm often not the first person in the office. But then I can stay later. So, you know, I'm putting my hours.

In more of a night owl than.

A. Yeah, I'm trying to shift it, but I am at the moment.

That's cool. What is the best compliment you've ever been given?

Personally or with the business?

Either or.

Either or. I think when you give us praise for getting crossing the 100 property mark and I think just being, like I said earlier, being invited on a podcast like this, that's a massive compliment. So, yeah, thank you.

Hey, there's so many people. I mean, I know people listening to this on the live and also on the podcast afterwards. You know, it is no mean feat to get any hospitality business going and to keep it going and then to scale it and grow it, build a team around it. That all takes time, effort, hard work and, you know, it's obviously paying off, which is why we love to meet people like yourself, Sasha, and have you on the behind the Hose podcast. So, last question then is, who inspires you?

Who inspires me? Sounds a bit cheeky on there. I was going to say my dad.

No, that's good.

He was there and he still is there to kind of support me and particularly during the early days when it was just me, he was, yeah, kind of able to provide me with some support and advice and. Yeah, I hope to kind of be successful in that, you know, like. Like he has been and live a good life.

That's amazing and I'm sure there's a lot of people who are going to be resonating with that. Thank you for sharing, Sasha, and for the people listening, how can they get in touch with you or come and view the homes as well?

Yeah, so we. It's a. Our office is on Birth street in Norwich. We're next to the John Lewis car park entrance. For anyone who is local coming by, give us a wave. Our website, norfolk holidayproperties.co.uk and follow us on Instagram. So username Norfolk Holiday Properties and my personal one is Sasha Tee T E E. Awesome. Awesome.

And I'm sure you're going to get some followers off the back of this. Please, everyone go and check out Sasha's site and also go and see the lovely places because you've got some amazing places, you know, around Norfolk and around the Broads as well. So come and stay. Come and stay. Exactly. Well, thank you very much, Sasha, and you know, for your time today, we'll. We'll draw this to an end. Is there any closing comments that you want to share with people?

Thank you for having me. If anyone wants to reach out and chat to me, I'm like I said, I like meeting like minded individuals who are working in the industry. So, yeah, send me a message. I would love to meet you. If you're local, pop out for a coffee, otherwise we'll have a chat.

Amazing. Thank you so much, Sasha. And yeah, we'll speak to you again.

Bye for now.