Takeaways from Two Book Direct Conferences I attended

All right, welcome everybody. We are in season seven, episode 22, and this is the final episode of the Boosted podcast for series seven. We've had really big season. This is the longest season that I've gone on for. Normally I do five, six, seven episodes in the season. We've gone for 22. And I thought the best way to finish this season before we kickstart season eight that's coming up very shortly, is to do a little takeaway. In season six, I did a takeaway of the full season, but in this I want to do a takeaway on two specific conferences that I've recently attended. One was in Athens, which is called the Book Direct Symposium, and the other one was in London, where it's the More Bookings Direct event. The reason why I want to talk about these is because it was very clearly around one topic which was Book Direct. I'm going to go and talk about the Book Direct symposium first, which is organized by Steve Kapandi. And I'm going to move on to More Bookings Direct, which is organized by a guy called Damien Sheridan. So the Book Direct Symposium, the way that this has always worked, the symposium, it wasn't their first year. The symposium has been around for quite a few years. It has been born and created from a gentleman that was in tours and activities sector. Cycle C is his network and over the last couple of years he's noticed that the pains and problems of business owners in cycle tours is the same as what's happening in hospitality. So this year he organized the event in Athens. It's based over a couple of days. It was on the 18th of February, 21st of February. And what he wanted to do was he wanted to combine the tours and activities worlds with the hospitality. He reached out to me, I was recommended to him by somebody that he knew because I talk about direct bookings. This is what this whole podcast is, what Boostly is always about. It's about increasing, helping you increase your direct bookings. You don't have to rely on the OTAs to get heads beds. And we had a chat, we organized for me to come down to Athens on the 19th and it was really an eye opener. Now obviously I've heard of companies like Viator, which are owned by TripAdvisor, but I didn't really understand just the extent of how much commission they take and how much they push the boundaries with their tour operators. It's really hard for them to try and even start start to get their own direct booking. So it was really good for me to go down. I spoke about in detail, my talk, my 45 minute talk was about the booking process. If you want to know about the booking process, there is a full season on the Boostly podcast around the five steps to the booking process. If you want to find out more about that season of the podcast, go to boostly.co.uk podcast. It's season two. I go through everything from the plan, the research, the deciding factor, the booking and even buyer's remorse. So go and check that out if you're interested in finding out about it's five short little episodes, no more than 10 minutes each. We spoke about that on detail in my talk at the event. We also did a Q and A session. We also did a chat about social media and it was really good to be able to speak to people that had never heard me before, people that were really disillusioned with these third parties, with these resellers, and to be able to sort of share and give them some really effective tactics and tips that a lot of them could do during the event and straight after was amazing. And I'm looking forward to hopefully going back again and speaking at another symposium next year or wherever it is in the future years and chatting to the same people and finding out what they've done since our talk. Now, my key takeaway from that was that there are so many other industries out there. Not just hospitality, not just shops, there accommodation, not just hotels and guest houses and rentals and service accommodation and glam site owners that struggle when it comes to resellers or online travel agents as we call them. The tourist industry is going for exactly the same. But what I like about what Steve is doing and what the book Derek's imposing is becoming is that it's he's trying to build a network, trying to get a network of tourism activities over here. Should I get a network of hospitality owners over here and then reach out to other industries and get them all in a room and we can all share tactics and advice and how we're going to just educate business owners on how they can actually use social media to their advantage, how they can create a website that will not put off people, that can entice them to stick around and make a booking via their website instead of having a poor user experience and then going back to the resellers that have got the money to invest in a seamless user experience. And that's really the key takeaway from me. It's fantastic to get to meet Steve and get to know him better and all of the people that attended and it was a great time outside of the conference. Laura came with me with the three boys with Alfie, Charlie, Frankie and we had a great couple of days checking out Athens. We got to go see the Aquapolis. We hired a lady who did really cool little idea. She did a little treasure hunt around Athens for the kids and she took us around and did a tour and she spoke about the history and she was able to get that across while keeping it interesting for the boys. So we went to some local foods, we had lunch, it was fantastic. And then we did the aquaponics. So yeah, we loved Athens. We were really happy we were able to go and be able to bring the family with me was was fantastic. We got back after a late flight on the 21st, had the weekend to recover. Then on Monday the 24th I jumped on a plane in Alicante headed into London and I went straight down to the Embankment area for the more bookings direct conference. So this again, the reason why I agreed to come and speak at this event is because it was around the whole thing was around direct bookings. So it's really important to me to be at events like this. And this is the first year event and normally when you go to events or conferences or expos, what I really liked about this was that it was just one room, eight to 14 speakers that were top quality speakers all around different industries. So we had somebody talking about branding, we had somebody talking about technology, we had somebody talking about websites, we had somebody talking about social media, we had somebody talking about corporate bookings, Google business, about the luxury market. There was people from all segments of the hospitality world and they were talking about specific subjects. Organized by a guy called Damon Sheridan. First year, eventually all in one room, you didn't have to move around or anything. And it was just packed full of so many good bits of advice, so many speakers here. And for me personally to be in that room was intimidating. I'm a couple of years into my journey doing this and I do a lot of videos, I do a lot of podcasts and I'm starting to speak a little bit more, which is great. But to be in a room with the peers of the industry that have been doing this for a long time, people that I look up to, people whose blogs and social media I read and I consume and I learn from was nerve wracking, to be honest. But I spoke about email marketing, I spoke about GDPR and why it shouldn't scare hospitality owners off from engaging in email marketing. Shared some actionable tips and Advice. I even gave them one of our email templates from the Boost Lee Academy that is designed to get more direct bookings, which has been designed by an expert copywriter in the industry and so packed them off with something that they could use right there, right then. And yet the talk went well. I'm glad I went first to get out of the way because I can sit at the back, have a coffee and then listen to the other speakers. So we had Chris Mullen from iprac, we had Zevu there. We had Amar from Zivu, which is obviously the PMS provider Service, accommodation rentals, bed and breakfast. Really good one to check out. Alan Egan Vacation Suit. Alan's been around for a long time. I've worked with Alan closely and it was great to hear him talking about mobile. First web design. Louise from Rental Tonic. First time I met Louise and first time listening to her talk and it was fantastic. Talk about branding. For those who attended the event. You will know exactly what I mean when you have walked away there with so many actual advice that you can do on your website right now. And I know that I have been doing for the granary, for the family business and also for Boostly as well. So I'm hoping to be able to work with Louise a lot more in the future. We had Debbie Laby from have youe Got Network? I say have youe Got Network? But it's. It's Hubster. It's Holidays for Our heroes. It's everything. I've known Debbie for a while and this was the first time that she actually spoken at an event and she did really well. Real nice little mention of the book. Derek Mapp and other hospitality community members as well. So it was awesome to see see her do that. We had Mariah. I keep mispronouncing your name, I'm so sorry but Mariah of Smiling House, luxury accommodation and the travel industry and building partnerships around the industry. So really good one that one. I had a real good chance to chat to Mariah the night before the actual event and yeah, learned a lot. So many great stories and definitely somebody you should be paying attention to. Phil Tester, Laurels Tech Phil again, being part of the boost of the academy, being part of my world for a while now. First time he was speaking at a hospitality event and he did Google Business Listing. Out of all the people's talk, his was the one that I saw people making the most notes at. People were learning things about Google Business Listing that they have never heard before. Phil and I have worked together and we Did a course together and he did that talk to the course members and I know that went down really well. I did the same talk. So again I was looking at everybody making no sense. Yeah, that was a really good one. If you're a boostly Academy member, actually boost the academy members, you can go into Devault right now. You know where I'm talking about when you'll be able to see that video. You can learn and put things into practice. Straight away we have Yvonne Hallin, bed and breakfast coach. Did an amazing little chat about social media and the structure and the systems that she put into practice in her B and B in champagne all these years ago and now she's teaching it herself. Really good one that one. Steve Kapandi again. So Steve went from organizing event, came to talking at an event and he spoke about price parity. I actually had to miss that one because I had to get to the airport. But I saw him do that talk in Athens and it is a really good one. And again price parity is a big pain point for a lot of people and he spoke about it and how to make it work for you. So then we had some people doing panels. So James Mitchell of the Dalton Group, this is one that I really recommend you checking out. I know and I hope that Damian takes the video and he puts it out for everybody to consume. Because James chat was all about how to get corporate bookings, sneaky little ways that he's been doing for his corporate service accommodation business and how to get direct bookings from the corporate world and little tactics and tips that not many people know about. That was a really good one. Again loads of people taking hints and tips so I'm looking forward to seeing what people's outcome of that. But he also shared as well in a panel with Carlos of the ehha, he shared about how he has built his business and it's all around working, just 30 minutes on it. He's got automations and things in place which is fantastic. Really real low spend, really good way of running a business. He's got 35 units in and around Cambridge. So again James is definitely somebody that you should be all be checking out. We had Richard Vaughan from Rentivo. I met Richard for the first time, fascinating guy. He's like one of the OGs from this industry and it was nice to chat. Really interesting guy. Hopefully we can chat a lot more in the future. But again he was part of a panel with James and Carlos which was really interesting to watch. Alongside Amar as well, we've got Emma Mills, Emma. Emma is somebody that I've been following for a while. Emma has been on my sort of radar social media wise and we've got a lot of mutual friends and I was able to meet Emma and have a chat and thankfully she's going to be coming on the podcast. I'm really excited for this because then you're going to be able to find out a lot more about Emma's company, what she does about the outsource, about the VA's. And yeah, she's going to be coming on a podcast episode in season eight. So I'll leave it for that to unleash Emma on you more then but definitely one to look out for. And then we've got Robert, co host, had a chat with Robert. I missed his panel. Really interesting guy. We're going to be speaking more about Robert and hopefully getting on the podcast in the future as well. We've got Tara Scott from Clickbooks Day again part of the panel. Hopefully I get to get Katara on the podcast. We've got Henry from your welcome tablet. I've chatted with Henry. We've been trying to get him on the podcast for a while. We've had to delay, delay, delay but we've got a date booked in. So again you're welcome tablet. You can go check that out again. Some really good guys and overall fantastic event. Big, big takeaways was brands. Make sure that you've got your brand and make sure you've got your message. Your tagline has to be spot on. You've got to entice people in. You've got to obviously make sure that the website that this brand is all on is built for mobile first, that so many people don't do reverse engineering that a little bit more. When somebody's on Google, your Google Business listing, that Google Maps, that Google pack, that they call it, that Google Maps section, that Google Business listing is all important. So you've got to be making sure you've got the right things in place to make sure that you're taking advantage of a hundred thousands, thousands of people that are looking in your general area partnerships, brand. And those are the sort of the key things that I'm taking away. So many things that we're not doing, so many things that we can be doing. And I would just say that the key thing that I'm taking away from all of this is that at the moment, I think as business owners, as hospitality owners, I think we're all stuck in the reactive Mode. So Season 8 of the Boostly Academy, Sorry. The Boostly Podcast is going to be about getting everybody to be more proactive. I'm going to be passing you on more proactive ways that you can increase your direct bookings. I want to banish the reactiveness. I want to get away from people just waiting for the phone to ping or, or the email to spark up to say that you've got a booking coming in. I want to be able to show you, give you little tactics and advice and things that you could be doing with the experts that we bring in to show you how you can be more proactive, things that you can be doing to actually go out there. Actionable tips, action advice to get those direct bookings. So this has been the Boosted Podcast. This is like I say, season seven, the final episode, episode 22. No guests today. It was just me. What I really would love for you to do for those that have watched and tuned in and consumed and download, please do go and rate, review and subscribe to the Boosted Podcast. It means a lot. We have currently surpassed 15,000 downloads, which is phenomenal. We've got 50 reviews just in Apple alone and we've broken the top 10 Apple charts in the UK for the management category, which is crazy. I'm in the top 10 with some of the podcasts that I listen to. So Masters of scale with Reid Hoffman. One of my favorite podcasts, Boost Lee Podcast, is in the top 10, which is a little bit crazy. But I just wanted to say thank you so much, everybody has done so. I also would encourage everybody to come and join me at the Book Direct map. Go to boostle.co.uk bookdirectmap it's the fastest growing paid listing site in the world. It's got loads of amazing features when you join the listing site, Training Zone videos, you get private Facebook group and obviously you get listed on the map as well. Before we leave, I just want to say a massive thank you to the podcast sponsor which is Hostfully. Today is your final day, 27th March. To submit your guidebook, your digital guidebook. To be entered into their contest, go to Hostfully. H O S t t f U-L-L-Y.com contest. You can submit your link, submit your guidebook and you could be winning a couple of really cool prizes on there. We've got a year's worth of a free Power host, which is a premium listing on Hostfully. You can win a Hostfully hoodie. You can win one of the best selling books for Airbnb hosts, which is by Danny from Optimize My B and B. It's fantastic guy Danny. And you can also win a Boostly marketing review as well. So submit your guidebook. There's loads of different prizes to be win. I'm going to be judging some of the final ones alongside Danny, alongside David who's the co founder of Hostfully, alongside Jasper from Pay for your Pad. Some amazing people in there. Today's your final chance. Go and submit it in there. If you've not heard of Hostfully and you want to check it out, you want to get one free guidebook, go to boostly.co.uk forward/hostfully and you'll be able to find out a little bit more. For now, this is the end of Season seven. Just want to say thank you so much for tuning in. I really appreciate it. Please keep telling your friends about it if this is the first time you've listened or watched. If you're watching this on the YouTube channel, any of these podcasts, I encourage you to please go back and check all of the other 21 episodes of season seven. Season six is all about service accommodation, so if you're new to service accommodation, that's the one you definitely want to check out. Season five is how to run the perfect Facebook competition. Season four is some little tactics and tips around about the OTAs. Number three is where I talk about the power of the upsell and give more little tactics and tips. Season two is again, I spoke about it earlier, it's where we discuss the five steps of the guest booking process. And number one, Season number one is where actually I interview other hospitality owners from around the world and we have a little chat about what they're doing to increase their direct bookings. All right, I'll leave it there. Thank you so much for tuning in and I will see you again very shortly for season eight.