THE BOOK DIRECT VIRTUAL SUMMIT - Thursday 27th June

Sam sa.

Let's show them how we do.

I like to run my words when I speak. I take two from a seven of the week, Monday to Friday. That's the five days. It's the challenge. And you know it's provided free. Yeah, that's where the star is. Day one free. So you know it's gratis. Look, I spit fire while I'm good looking. I'm gonna tell you to get more direct bookings. Not circuitously through a travel agent. One that's come to you. You sit there in amazement like wow, mad respect to the guy with the hashtag bookdirect. Not a gang sign. It's a pound. In the US we call it hash over here. Running through this book directly, it means that you go. Not a book from a library. O bro, you need to understand words. Please heed. Use Facebook to get more leads. Like a dog with the collar, with the multiple leashes. More leads. That's the pun. It's hard to believe it. I punch hard like Bruce Lee. Probably the only rhyme I can think with. Bruce Lee. Like an orange, I squeeze it cause it's so juicy. And Mark Simpson. Not orange, but he could be yellow like the fellow in the Matt Groening show. That's the Simpson thing. Mark my woe rds. That's the words when I fill it out. Here's a little. Pay attention, you louds. Don't over rely on booking.com or Airbnb. Cause that could be gone. Cause the pandemic shut down everything. Airbnb offices, the phone don't ring anymore. But over reliance is not required. Yeah, I see you're not silent and saying, Chris, can you shout to me how to save money in commissioning fees? Well, I can't explain, but I know what doo doo does. Mark Simpson not like Bart with the buzz sore haircut. Let me make this clear. He's not from the Simpsons. Guys, please lend your ears, Romans and countrymans and all the viewers. Get your guest to book direct and you will see your coffers swell and swell and grow. The guests all go. They're like, wow, I'm glad that I watched this show or this podcast and they'll enjoy their holiday. I'm gonna go and book direct right away. Admittedly, I'm not. There'll be a slight lag. But when you do book direct, don't forget the hashtag, bruh.

All right. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, welcome one and all. Let's see who is with me. People are jumping in, tuning in Taylor's over in Houston, A Taylor, Angela Mirror. Good to see so many regulars are back. Renee, Mark who is in Bath Hospital. I hope you're all good. Sandy again, good to see you. Please make sure you get your Spin the Wheel numbers in between 1 and 10. We are back for the bug direct Virtual Summit. Day four. Day four. This is the final day of education and training. Tomorrow is obviously the wrap up party but today I wanted to finish on some fantastic live sessions. Let me just share my screen super quick. This is obviously going to be Spin the wheel when it comes in but before we do that I just wanted to show you the group. This was amazing. This came in yesterday. So Greg over over at Cosmo Lupone but I got a booking during the summit. Let me know if you've had a booking this week. Let me know how many bookings you've had. What have been your wins? Leave a hashtag win and let us know what your wins have been. We love to see that. I also loved seeing this. Where was it in the group? There was a, a selfie submitted. There we go from Natalie. Love this shot laptop in the background with, with all the cool things. So I love to see that. And please go and leave your selfies in the comments. It's been great to see and engage with so many of you all this week, but let's just have a little showcase at what is coming this evening, this morning, this afternoon, wherever you are. So we're going to kick things off in a few minutes with the Fantastic Alex and K9. They're going to walk you through the guest journey, which is great. Then we're going to go straight into Deborah Laby who's going to talk to you about how to truly connect with a guest. Then I know everybody loves a little bit of AI. So we've got Price Labs coming in talking about how AI is disrupting dynamic pricing. So Price Lab fans, if you're a member or a customer of Price Labs, leave a hashtag Price Labs in that chat. And then we are going to finish with the fantastic Jen Bos, who again is going to give us a direct booking masterclass. The title is moving away from Airbnb which again I wanted to finish on four fantastic sessions for you. I'll obviously come in in between and there is a super special guest, a special session coming up amongst these session. So make sure you keep an eye out. If you have to go and come back, you know where we are, we're going to be at the same link. If you have to pop away and Then come back later. That's absolutely fine. We're going to be here for the next two hours. Yesterday we went for three hours, Phil's session. Somebody messaged me afterwards saying that was like four webinars in one webinar. It was jam packed with absolute nuggets as well as everybody's sessions for the whole week has been good and I really hope you have enjoyed it. And with that being said, if you have enjoyed it, I'm just going to put a link in in the chat. Let me see if I can do this. I'm gonna put this link and if you could do me a massive favor and go and leave your feedback on this week for everybody that does send me a message. Once you've done it on Facebook or email, send me a little screenshot and I will enter you into a special little separate draw that we're doing outside of Boostly Bingo and outside of Spin the Wheel. And I'll announce the winner next week on that one. But it would be amazing if you can go and leave your feedback because your feedback will help us improve and evolve this over time. I do plan on doing this at the end of September and if we get enough people wanting to do it, we'll do one at the end of November as well, before the year is out. And I need you to help me to steer it. So all the feedback you've got, good and bad, go and leave that feedback over on our trustpilot page. I'd be much appreciative. That's the only thing that I ask from this week. There's no boostly upsell, there's no boostly pitch, none of that. This is all for free and we've been doing this for you. Obviously all of our speakers have got service and offerings that you can go and check them out. And obviously the sponsors Futures Day Aperto social media hotelier Craig Webb with his SEO and price labs have sponsored this week and I would encourage everybody to go and check them out, please, because they've really helped put this session ahead this week. So do go ahead and check out all I ask, go and leave a feedback over on the Trust Pilot. Good or bad, I'm here for it. I want to improve and make sure that we get better and better and better. We've had the record amount of people take part this week, so thank you very much. We've had a record amount of signups and I want to continue to get better and better and better at this. So thank you very much. Gideon Taylor, Mirror Lizzie Taylor again, Wendy. Thank you so much. So let's go ahead and do spin the wheel, shall we? Spin the wheel. Time. Let me share my screen. You've got one more minute to get your guesses in. If I hit this and if I hit this and if I hit this.

There we go. Right.

So your number has to be between 1 and 10. Between 1 and 10. Super simple. Between 1 and 10. I'm going to explain this for anybody that's tuning in for the first time. If we spin it and if it is your number, it doesn't mean that you automatically win. It just means that you can send me a message on the old Facebook and say, hey, mark, I was lucky number whatever on Thursday. Yesterday, Sabrina won. So congratulations, Sabrina. Let me get my sound effects. One, two, three. And Sabrina wins a hospitable host number three, book. And we've got the same prize again, thank you so much to Jody who I believe is on her way to California right now for an event. So thank you very much for donating. That's okay. You've got 10 more seconds. Girls are snuck in a cheeky nine. Diane's gone six. Fiona's gone five. Ali has gone in with three. Tom's a four. Do we have any ones? I don't see any ones. So if you haven't put them. 1. We got a 2. Make sure you go ahead and do that. All right, let's go and spin this wheel, shall we? Three, two, one.

Foreign.

Number 8. Number 8. Number 8. So I can see we've got at least one number eight. So if you are the lucky winner, send me a message. You can't win twice in a week. That's one of the stipulations. You can't win twice in a week. Julie, you won on Monday. We can't have you winning again. So if you did get number eight, please, please, please pop in me a message. Remember, just because you got number eight doesn't mean that you were automatically a winner. We'll put your names into a hat and then I will pick somebody out later on once I've got the kids to bed. Okay, let me look at my notes today. We've got the speakers. We've done that. One final ask if you can please show our speakers a little bit of love. Hit that love heart emoji button as many, many times as you can. That'd be fantastic. These sessions today, there is definitely a theme that is cropping up. I put this in the post in the group earlier. There is a theme with our sessions today. These, these, these speakers and this theme is so important to boosting your direct bookings and I would love for you to watch and see how you can implement this into your business. Specifically if you are looking to break away from the over reliance on these OTAs. So with that being said, please tune in, please make sure you engage, jump in the comments, ask our experts questions because they are here with us. And I will be back in about 20:30 minutes time after Alex and Kayon's session. So can we all please hit that love heart emoji but on one more time, let's go ahead and do this. If there's anybody that you know that is not in this session that needs to be here, now is the time. Let's get started with our first session of the evening.

Hi everyone, my name is Alex Huzner and I'm super excited to be here with you today with the Boostly audience. Thank you Mark so much for having us and I'm excited to share some helpful tips related to the guest journey and why this is so important not only to building your brand and your book direct strategy, but also in streamlining your operations and helping you build a business business that is successful and that doesn't make you want to pull your hair out. And today we're going to look at a couple of the top host problems with some tips on how you can solve them. And for a little background before we get started, I've. I've been in the vacation rental industry for the last 15 years. I served as chief marketing officer for Condo World and Costco. And I am the co host of Alex Nanny, the Real Women of Vacation Rental podcast. Earlier this year I made the decision to leave the corporate world and start my new business, a marketing consulting agency directly Alex specifically for property managers. And in this new venture, I've had the opportunity to work with hosts and companies of all si, all sizes and different stages of their business. And one challenge that I've noticed they all experience relates to the guest journey and the complexities that come with that. So seeing these challenges and believing that there must be a better way to create meaningful interactions with guests, I created Happy Guests with my business partner, Kanan Whited.

Hey guys, I am Kanan Whited at Kanan Airbnb on Instagram and Alex and I founded Happy Guests, which is an amazing platform that's changing hosts lives and guest journeys for the better. My background is in creating technologies that empower major lifestyle and hospitality brands. Brands like Virgin, Virgin Airlines, Virgin Cruises, Airbnb, Airbnb Friendly buildings as well as various other large private short term rental companies. My purpose of truly improving host lives has been written about in Skiff Tech, Times, Miami Herald, Short Term Rentals, and even Conde Nast Traveler and Architectural Digest. So Alex and I created Happy Guests to bring all those benefits to you because we believe that every host, regardless of size, deserves to work less and that when guests are happy guests, you will be a happy host.

So we do have a special offer today before we get it into the content for listeners of Boostly and the participants here today, you can go to happyguestreferrals.com Boostly. This is a invitation only platform, but we are extending invitations for the Boostly audience. So be sure to check that out after you go through the presentation here today with us. Okay, so now we're going to get into the top host problems. And problem number one, confused guests. Nobody wants confused guests. And you know, one of the hardest parts of getting into a vacation rental is actually getting in. We see this time and time again that there are issues with how the guests are able to get the lock codes. They get there, they, they don't work. They just have an absolutely terrible start to the vacation. And you know, getting this right from the very beginning is so important in the stay.

Some of the consequences that you can face from confused guests, they're real majorly like you're viewed as non professional. When guests see this mix and match piecemeal information coming to them through all this different stuff, you're viewed as non professional. And that's not really great. When you're viewed as non professional, guests don't respect you and they don't respect your home. When that happens, they won't book direct and you know, your home is more prone to damage. So these are things that we definitely want to make sure get fixed.

Problem number two, annoyed hosts. Overworked hosts are annoyed hosts and annoyed hosts are not good hosts. So the consequences of this, when you're getting repetitive questions, that is not enabling you to be able to focus on working on the business versus in the business, this leads to, you know, just frustration from your side, from the guest. It's, it's not creating a good experience experience, it's easy to respond back to something quickly. When you're frustrated and you're being pulled in a bunch of different directions on things. And really what that leads to is poor reviews and burnout. I mean, this is a tough business. And when you're doing a million things and having to repetitively answer things, it can be very Frustrating. The solution to fixing these two major problems lies in the guest journey. And the guest journey is literally everything that happens from the moment that they find your property on your website, on Airbnb, on any of the OTAs, to when they've checked out and they're home and now they're telling their friends and family about the stay that they had with you. And really understanding how you map out that Guest journey is critically important. And one of the areas that we see that most hosts and property management companies just really don't have dialed in. They focus on the marketing, they focus on getting the booking. But then this next step is where things can really unravel. And to build a book direct brand, you've got to have the repeat business. And if you don't have the repeat business because you have guests that are frustrated and they can't remember who they booked with because they're being communicated with through multiple different platforms, the guest journey is failing you.

Yeah. So it's, it's super easy to fix your guest journey. You can absolutely do this. It's a, it's just a simple practice. All you have to do is chart a bunch of stuff out.

If you've never actually started from A to Z and been through from the eyes of one of your guests, we highly recommend that go through, book a reservation, see exactly what they see, and you'll, you'll definitely find some, some things you could probably improve because it happens to, to all of us. So in the pre arrival stage, this is important. This is when a lot of those questions are going to arise. Chart out what the messages are, what the workflows and the aut for the rental agreements are, the deposits and all third party communications and texts. And the more that you can streamline this into one platform or one form of messaging, the better off you're going to be.

Yeah, go through, go through your house and check out all the information that you have there. If you have one of those binders, go through that binder and look at everything that's in there. Look at the signaging that you might have inside of your house or different messages. Do you have house rules taped to the fridge?

That counts?

Do you have information on how to use like your hot tub or a coffee maker that's part of the guest journey. Chart all of these things out. Maybe you even have signs in your home about booking direct. Pull those all out.

So post trip, the guest has left. Now the messages that are sent to get reviews, whether that's through the platform, whether that's emails, third party apps. There are so many things that are being communicated to the guest if they booked on Airbnb or another platform that you may not be aware of, or even if you use an activity provider or anything else that they encounter during their stay. Beyond just what the communications are that you're sending, there could be other communications going out there too. That's been an eye opening thing for me as I've looked behind the hood of some of these large enterprise companies that they didn't even know all these other emails that were going on around it and they're not able to generate a lot of reviews because there's all these other requests for reviews coming in. So really making sure you understand what different services your guests are using and how the whole ecosystem is communicating with them. And once you have those first three steps, pre arrival in home and the post trip, now you have the full, a full look at everything the guest is seeing and experiencing with your property and your brand. So now let's get creative, let's fix this and let's figure out where there are gaps in either information that you know. Okay, well, I'm getting questions all the time on this one thing. Maybe there needs to be a different communication and you know, looking at the timing of when these messages happen, going back, adding something different or putting it up higher in the communication. If guests are always asking about parking and that's the last thing in the confirmation email or your pre arrival instructions, maybe that should be moved up a little bit higher, you know. So really looking at the questions that you have and doing some analysis on that and your reviews will really tell you where you need to optimize. We suggest either using note cards, you can use a big whiteboard, you can do this on different tools online, but you do want to make sure that you have it all mapped out so that you save it. And then this is something that you go back to and you check on it, because you have to go back. You have to make sure things are working the way that you once set them up. We all know technology breaks and it's just super important to make sure you're consistently looking at the process, reiterating it and making it better for your guests.

Yeah, once you get those note cards together and once you figured out where things go, call somebody who you know might be having a challenged time experiencing how to get into an airbnb. Think about somebody maybe like your own mother who you know, you might roll your eyes at when they're trying to get into an Airbnb and thinking, oh, I can't figure out how it works, give them the instructions, see where they're having trouble and, and fix it. You know, you. One of the things I always like to think about is I never want a guest to ask me a question about how to get in. If, if, if, if they have a question about how to get in, then I didn't explain it properly and of course a lot of people won't read and, and that's okay. But you can do what you, what you can, you can repeat things in smart ways. Just test things out and make sure it works.

Yeah, absolutely. And then once you have mapped out all the different parts, go back and now implement some changes. So I think when you can visually see something and then also using the testing process that Kanan mentioned, now you'll be able to go back and say, okay, it actually would have made sense if I texted them or I emailed them, whichever way you're doing it, their pre arrival instructions the day before check in versus seven days before check in, when now they've got to go back and find the email. So really understanding, you know, the, the psychology and the tim of making sure that you're providing that information, but it's also, it's, you're ahead of the guest, but you're ahead of them in a way that once they have that information they're, they're not going to need to contact you anymore.

This is a great exercise to do and it's really meaningful for your guests and you can do these things. You can also use a guest journey tool like Happy Guest, which will help enhance that experience even more. It'll help unify your touch points, streamline things and just make things a little more simple for your guests.

So what this looks like on the other side now you've mapped out the journey, you've seen where some of the issues could be and you've made some different changes to how the guests are communicated with. Hopefully you're not using multiple platforms anymore, no different apps to download, no emails, text, courier pigeons. You've got everything now going in the same line of communication. And what that leads to is less questions from the guests. You're going to have the answers more readily, readily available for you or for somebody on your team or a VA to be able to respond. You'll have more time to be a great and a nice host and to focus more on the business versus in the business. Your review scores will go up and you'll be happy.

And that's the, that's the most important thing. You know, we are in the hospitality business and in order for you to make sure your guests are happy, you have to be happy. And a lot of the troubles that you face and the troubles that we talked about are all easy fixes. You can do it. Just go through the exercise and I think you'll, you'll really like it.

Thank you so much for joining us here today. We hope that you took away some different insights on how you can go back and look at your customer journey and hopefully make some changes that will improve the business. We'd love to share more about Happy Guest and how Happy Guest is streamlining the guest journey and creating happier guests, happier hosts. We do have limited allocations available that we are giving out to the Boostly audience here today. You can go to happyguestreferrals.com boostly and.

We'Ll be in touch.

We are so grateful to have had this time with you and thank you to Mark and the whole Boostly crew for inviting us. We hope that you found some different things you can take back to your own hosting business and some tips for how you can streamline your communication with the guests, create happier guests and be a happier host. And in the meantime, if you'd like to reach out to Kanan and I, you can go to our Instagram handles, Alex o', Husner, Kanan, Airbnb. You can listen to Alex Nanny of Vacation Rental podcast. And finally, of course, you can go to the the link that we have for Boost lead participants here today. Thanks everybody.

Thank you very much, Alex and Kanan for that lovely little how to keep your guests happy. Go and check out that link. They're currently taking on board a very short wait list and you've got to sign in a little form, which is cool. Go ahead and do so. If Alex Okanan's with me right now, just please drop that link in the chat one more time and can we all go and show them a little bit bit of love? Again, this is a big part and I think there's a big theme that you're going to get from today is about building that trust. How can we build that trust? And a big way is to have happy guests. And then when you've got happy guests, they will refer you and the best new customers to get at a back of happy referrals. 93% of all purchases online are on the back of a referral, whether it'll be a, a family friend, a friend of a friend, social media influences, etc, so, so, so important And I'm very excited to showcase Alex and Kanan and this new startup that they have. And again, this whole week is about me showcasing new amazing people to you. So you can go and download and see them all, follow them all and even sign up to things and all that good stuff. All right, kicking on nicely again. Please go show some love. Let me see if I've got this working. Hopefully you heard it. Okay, now we're going to move swiftly on. So this person up speaking next isn't a newbie to the industry. Has been around for a while. Ever since I've started in this industry. I have known of Deb Lobby and I asked Deb if she could put together something for me, for you, and she's come up with an absolute masterclass here. So again, can we please show Debate Deb some love in the chat? If you're watching with me live, do hashtag live. If you're watching on the replay, hashtag replay and make sure you're ticking off that boostly bingo card as we go. All right, without further ado, introducing to you, Deb Lobby.

Hi everyone and thank you very much for coming along to my session today. My name is Deborah Larbey and I'm going to show you how to truly connect with your guests and get better reviews. My start, my career started in 2006, 18 years ago. And at the time we were all essentially self taught. Back in Those days, the OTAs just gave you the guest details and you had to run with it. And given that I had no prior experience when I started, I had to pretty much start from scratch with my paperwork and my systems. I was working in isolation in Sydney, Australia. I've been attending conferences for over seven years now and I was always that manager. Frantically sitting in the front row. Sorry, frantically taking notes, sitting in the front row. Anyway, one of the things that I learned from a conference, a nugget that I took away from a conference, I believe made a big difference to my business. So I'm actually going to share with you today the aspects of my guest communications that that I put into work, put into process seven years ago because it worked. You see, I lost my business to Covid in 2020. I was working remotely from Europe, my properties were in Sydney, Australia. Closed the borders for two years, lost. But even four years later, I'm still getting inquiries from previous guests. They keep coming back. Look, they stayed in 2019, they emailed me in February 2024, stayed in 2019, emailed me end of last year and this one, look Elin, she stayed in 2016 and 2019 and she emailed me in March 2023 and look, she signed off. Love, Elyn. I never met Elyn and this one was the record. This is a woman who called me in January this year and she had stayed in one of my properties 10 years ago. I was blown away. So why do they keep coming back? It's simple. It's called connection. Okay, so you're not a Google or an Airbnb or PayPal with the marketing budget to match, but in fact, you've got it much easier and much cheaper. Do you know these logos? Do you feel any connection with them? Do you trust them? Do you know the faces behind these brands? Or do you know the faces of these brands? And what about now? How connected are you now? How familiar are you? Do you trust them? This is the difference between brand marketing and personal marketing. Marketing is about creating an emotional expectation that leads to awareness and loyalty. It's hard to get people to fall in love with an ad or a logo, but they can fall in love with you. In this session, I'm going to walk you through three really simple ways in which you can connect with your guests that will not only see your reviews improve, but you'll see them coming back to you, helping to grow your business through word of mouth and maybe even love you too. But let's start at the beginning. So what is connection? Connecting with someone involves building a rapport where you both feel understood, valued and emotionally aligned. This human connection typically nurtures trust and comfort. It also includes empathy and compassion, and it enhances goodwill towards each other. We're in hospitality, a people focused industry, and you know what? The guest doesn't care how many properties you manage or how many staff you have. The guest cares about their trip and the property they booked. They want to feel secure in their booking, they want to feel sure about the property they booked, and they want to feel cared for in case of any issues. And the cared for feeling from start to finish is called hospitality. So ask yourself, are you a hospitality company? Does your guest feel cared for, valued, Understood? So how do we go about creating this connection? Well, here is the first of three ways. Let's start with the first port of call for your guest, your website and your About Us page. Now, why do you think guests come to this page? Curiosity. According to business.com when a consumer visits your website for the first time, they'll head to the About Us page to determine if they can trust you. They want to know your story and to see if you have the experience, knowledge and expertise to solve their problems. To me, the bottom line here is to show your face. Why? Because since we were babies, our brains have been set up to recognize faces before any other shape. People want to do business with people, especially ones they know, like and trust. So if we want to humanize our business to connect with guests, we need to give it a face. When your business shows a human side, it creates a personal connection that makes it more likable and friendly. People instinctively trust faces because they feel relatable and familiar, and that can foster brand loyalty. What brilliant words for any business. And authenticity is another key word here. Being genuine and true to yourself is what sets your business apart and it makes it powerful. Authenticity inherently attracts people, so just be yourself. It's so easy when you establish a personal connection with your guests, they are more likely to stay with you and to recommend you, recommend you to their friends. And you don't even need to speak the guest language to connect with them. A face transcends any language barriers. So this works even if your guest is a foreign? Sorry, yes. Even if your guest is a foreign. This works even if you have a foreign guest Avatar. Got it right eventually. So it's a great way to differentiate yourself to stand out in a crowded marketplace. So basically, show your face or faces. Why not show a photo of the team, but definitely have one main face and you'll. You'll see why soon. My next point to connect with a guest is in my booking confirmation email. I'm sure you all have automated booking confirmation emails through your pms. You can see back then that I didn't know about tagging or I just didn't understand how to put guest names and things like that. But I'm sure your PMS will do it now. So make sure you use their name at the start and when you sign off. But I'll have more on this later. Now, of course you want these emails to be professional, but make sure you use your voice. Make sure you sound warm and friendly. I'm sure you're warm and friendly. And the link? What's in the link? You ask now if you want to truly cement a connection with this guest. This, I believe, was the one thing that did the job. If you attended any conference six or seven years ago, then you will remember that we were encouraged to use video. Well, you know what? I think it worked. This is the message that my guests got. Hello and thank you for your booking. My name is Deborah and I will be liaising with you up until Your arrival into Sydney. Now, please don't be put off by the PayPal symbol. You do pay by credit card and you do not need a PayPal account. A few days prior to your arrival, you will receive another reminder email about the arrival instructions, just with the contact name and number and the directions again. And that's just so it's hopefully at the top of your email list and saves you rummaging around lower down. I'm always here to answer any question that you have about the property or Sydney. And so please feel free to send me an email and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. So thank you very much once again. You are going to have a great stay. So they met Deborah. They could see me, they could hear me and they could see that I was real. I cared enough to give them all the information that they needed at this point. I shared all the details of the emails they were going to get, they were going to receive, and now they feel secure in their booking. And this is where you could also answer any regular questions that you may be asked. So I was always told in the following email response, I don't have a PayPal account. Okay, granted, this was years ago and now everyone knows you don't need a PayPal account to make payments, but I put it in there just to save them having to ask for having to say that back in an email. Anyway, did you notice that I ended with I'm always here to answer any questions that you have. It means that I care. It means that I'm there for them Again, they feel so secure in this booking. And it's a video, one video that you could share for any number of bookings with any number of properties that you manage. Plus, this video lives on a hidden page on my website that I haven't touched for about four or five years. So every guest that book came back to my website and sat on it for a minute. Well, this video was two, but this video was originally too. But with my knowledge now I would actually do things a little bit different. I would actually recommend you do one minute videos and do a number of them. So depending on the payments and depending on the channel that the booking came through. So for example, if the booking came from Airbnb, you won't be asking them for any payments, it's just the pre arrival emails. But if it was a direct booking, yay. You may need a balance payment 30 days prior, you may need the security deposit, but just remind them that you'll be emailing them. They don't have to put anything in the diary, they don't have to remember any. Keep the videos short and just tell them exactly the emails that they're going to receive and the timing of them, including the one where you're going to share your guidebook with all the local recommendations. Because you're helpful and in terms of the bounce rate and Google loving the fact that someone has come to your website and sat on it for a minute, it's best to have them scroll around a bit on your page and even go to another page on your website that will make you look better to Google. So now is a perfect time to upsell. If you want them to book an airport pickup or pay for an early check in, do it now and share with it with them that it's just one more thing that they can tick off their to do list. So this page has the opportunity for upsells and sending them to perhaps your blog posts or anywhere on your website. So with this website, they know what to expect, they know that their booking is secure and they know that every email that actually comes from my PMS comes from me. Deborah. Deborah is the face of Ruby's Holiday Residences. Now here is where you may have to think outside the box, but as I said before, guests don't care that you have 10 staff, they just want to feel secure in their booking. So if you do have a number of staff, perhaps you can somehow allocate a similar email address for all of them like deborah365rubiesresidences.com and deborah149,rubiesresidences.com so anyone can be on the end of that email, but it still looks like Deborah. Or you could end the video with if you have any questions at all, either myself or someone from my great team will help you as soon as possible this way. Introducing the fact that there will be other names now, but all the automated ones that come from your PMS should sign off with whoever was the face in the video because that is who they have connected with. Now, just a quick word about videos in terms of being comfortable in front of a phone camera, it comes with time. That video was probably one of the first videos I did seven, eight years ago and a video that I just did for my startup just a couple of weeks back, it took 15 goes before I thought actually it might be better to record it in front of the computer and then even then it took another five goes. But with every take you perfect and practice your script. I've never written a Script except for my textplain series introduction. And you can hear it when someone is reading. I'm reading, I need to prompt. I have bad memory. It's coming later. So basically you hit record and stop any number of times. It's quick and it's simple and you could end up with a great video in even 15 minutes. As little as 15 minutes. Moving along, my next tip comes from Mr. Dale Carnegie. He wrote this world famous book, how to Win Friends and Influence people back in 1936 and it's still one of the best selling self help books with millions of copies sold worldwide. Now I have a terrible memory, but sometimes there are things that I see or I read that's like blue in my mind. And one of these things that I read and stuck to my mind to this day I still use and I think this helped as well. Dale Carnegie emphasizes the power of using people's names as a way to make them feel valued and respected. The key is to make people feel recognized and valued through the thoughtful use of their names. And it's as simple as including the person's name in emails or any written communications to make it more personable. And I do not mean just the Dear John at the beginning of an email, but I'll come back to this in a minute. He says that using people's names is a powerful social skill that contributes to effective communication, relationship building and positive interpersonal interactions, no matter whether it's written or face to face. He also says that it creates an environment where an individual feels valued, heard and respected and ultimately leads to a more successful and harmonious connection. And look at the great things that we achieve just by using someone's name. Establishing personal connection, capturing their attention, fostering familiarity and friendliness, showing respect, making individuals feel acknowledged and positive reinforcement. Now think about how that guest is going to look after your property now that they know you. I definitely benefited from that. He also said it facilitates relationship building. It helps establish warm interactions. Perfect. Dale calls this the power of genuine interest. And it is so easy to do. So how do we do it? To this day I still do it in my email sign offs. Mind you, not every single email sign off of course, but to guess colleagues, any work emails for sure and sometimes even to something like the bank or the government. If you want to come across as a nice person, do this of course with all your automated emails from your pms. This last part is impossible. But with any other email, with any correspondence to guests pre, during and post stay, you should start the email with a friendly comment. I hope you're well. Great to hear from you and then sign off your email depending on the day of the week with something like this or similar. Again use the name and then the rest. So thanks Maddie, have a great week, have a great weekend, stay dry, stay cool, have a great Easter and so on. So this reinforces the connection while the automated emails from your PMS are doing their job. Now even if you don't answer emails from the guest, this is a great tool to teach your team to use if they are on the front line communicating with your guests. Make sure you share this with them and make this a company wide policy. So between using video and answering any emails from guests quickly using their name and signing off like you care and are being personable, you're already winning. And here's a little bonus thanks to Touchstay, you may now be signing off your emails properly. But how many are you sending? A Touchstay study found that 2/3 of hosts send between 0 and 2 emails. This is how effective communication can affect your reviews. Seven in 10 guests said that communication related aspects of their stay was the most likely influence to them leaving a positive review. And you only need to send between three and five emails to hit the sweet spot. Easy. And just quickly, what's the preferred method to communicate? The yellow columns are for emails pre and post state and the green column is for text and WhatsApp during. So now we move on to number three check in. I wonder if people are still doing face to face meet and greets. I'm not judging. My business was all about meet and greets. I understand it may be difficult for you to organize meet and greets and I know some of you may be thinking but all the data says everyone wants contactless check in at one property I managed that slept up to 11 people. The review was set up in such a way that when I asked if they liked being met by someone at check in, there was no default answer. They had to pick an answer from a drop down menu and 100% of the replies that I got said they like to be met at check in. Granted this was pre Covid but that is what my data told me. I personally love being met by someone at check in. It's the best way for a guest to connect to the city or the place they have just arrived. They connect with a local. I also started a yet to be released podcast where I interview guests and what have I discovered so far? Well granted the number of interviews is still a bit small, but of the women I interviewed aged in their 50s who were solo travellers, they prefer a meet and greet and they hate lockboxes. Yet a 29 year old woman traveling with her partner didn't mind lockboxes. When I discussed this finding with fellow male industry colleagues, they all answered nah, I prefer a lockbox. But one then said after some thought that if he was traveling with his family he might prefer face to face meet and greet. So where am I going with this? It is to know and understand your guest avatar and give them what they want. We need to be doing the right things by your guest. Know your guest avatar. If you have solo women travelers in their 50s, meet them at check in and if you don't know, ask your guests at booking time what they would prefer or can or consider surveying them at the review time to figure it out yourself. Like I did consider the cost of a check in a marketing expense because of course you remind them to book direct with you next time when you meet them and check in. And remember those inquiries that from my previous guests. They are only a few of many. Keep in mind that I lost my business in 2020, but I personally stopped doing meet and greets in about 2012. I work remotely from Europe but they still came back to me even though they never met me. I did have the meet and greeters who were of course introduced in the pre arrival emails. So let's get back to video. If you can't be there physically, there's no reason why you can't be there on their phone. Remember the link in the booking confirmation email? So what about telling the guests in their arrival instruction email that there is a QR code that they need to scan on arrival and put it in a prominent place in the property? You could send it to them on the day of arrival but you won't know when they've arrived. You could miss the mark. They might be in immigration in a queue. They could be in a taxi. No, there's nothing better than saying hi shortly after they've entered the property. So leave it in the property. Perhaps in a QR code and maybe a QR code next to the QR code for the wi fi because that's, you know, the first place they go to. Anyway, here is an example I whipped up. Hello and welcome to Rubies of Parody. Hope you had a great journey here. I just want to take take one minute of your time to explain a few things about the property to save you time later. Blah blah blah. This is where you explain various things. You know, extra beach towels where the hot water might be and then you might want to finish with if you have any questions about anything in the apartment, please look up the guidebook. We've made it very detailed for you and if you have any issues at all, please feel free to get in touch and we'll look after it as soon as possible. But that's it from me. Have a great stay. Again, keep it to about a minute and ideally if you have time and can do this, make a video for each property at the property. State the important things about the property and tell them one minute of their time now to save them time later. It's the next best thing to a face to face meet and greet. Or you could just make one generic one saying welcome. Read the guidebook for all the instructions and for all our recommendations and get in touch if there are any problems or if they have any questions. One video, any number of properties. Connection with the guest again and put it on a website. Put it on a page on your website too, a hidden page with another link for more upsells or for your guidebook so they can click on I've been trying to figure out some whiz bang tech solution for this and just as a wild idea, what if you could use motion sensor that you know detected movement like they've walked in the door that it turns your TV on with your welcome video on it. It'll probably scare the Jesus out of your guests, but you could have some fun with it. It would definitely be a memorable welcome anyway. Lastly, I have another tip for you to wrap up. The whole purpose of establishing this connection with the guest was to improve your review. So we've come to review time. We've learned about emails and using guest names. So with the automated review email, keep it short, use their name, tell them how long it's going to take for them to complete it, tell them how much you appreciate this and tell them to book direct next time. Thank them again and safe travels. Now this is only part of it When I first started with my PMS back pre2016, I thought long and hard about when is the best time to send this review email and before I tell you when I sent it I will tell you that I had a hundred percent or nearly 100% response rate. Two years ago I shared the timing of this review email with an owner of a property management company. He thought it was an interesting idea and he was going to a B test it. Then I forgot all about it. Last year they shared a statistic which validated what I had Suggested to them sending it at the time I suggested saw their response rate for Reviews increase by 113%. So when is the best time? The day before checkout. While they are still living in the property, experiencing the property. Who isn't on the Internet these days all the time? Basically they're checking in for flights, they're checking driving instructions, they're surfing around on Instagram, on TikTok. One minute of their time once they leave your property, your property doesn't exist anymore. They're back to their real life party is over. A holiday was but a dream. To crack that real life for one minute of their time for an experience that is over is difficult and it usually feels like a chore. You know what it feels like when you get asked for a review after the fact Delete. So while they are still in your property, you let them know that you only want one minute of their time as per the previous slide. You're sorry their experience is coming to an end. Thank them for their time, very much appreciated. And wish them a safe trip home. If you do what I have suggested so far, then they know you, they like you, they had a great stay. Well, we hope they did. They probably don't want to leave and go back to reality and boom, there's your review while they are still in the experience. And if you don't believe me, a B test it. Let's take a look at the future. Well, actually the future is here already. Very soon. AI could do all of these videos for you. The booking, confirmation, email and the channel check in video mentioning the guest name in the video. Now, it happened to me once a couple of years ago where I received an email in a video and when I played it they unexpectedly said, hi Deborah. I did a double take. I felt like the TV was talking to me, but it actually felt like they had reached out and grabbed me. That's how strong that connection was. And here's an example I tested. Let's stop this before it gets carried away. Here is an example I tested, but I don't think it's good enough yet. It needs a polish in my opinion. It's still a bit robotic, but I don't think you'd be able to see her mouth. Actually, it's very, very bad. WI fi here. Anyway, I'll leave it, but she says my name. So to wrap up, the easiest thing to do to improve your connection with the guests and improve your reviews, show your face and give your business a name. Take videos and use videos for the booking confirmation Email and at check in if you don't do the meet and greets and sign off emails in a friendly, caring way using the guest's name. And let's see if we can get better reviews and more return guests. And once you have so many guests loving you and you can't accommodate them all, you have to join have you got my guest referral and booking website? It's simple and it's automated. You can use it right now wherever you are if you already have a referral network or you can just sign up and use it as a listing site, upload your properties. It's quick and easy and I can get your destination live easily within an hour. So this is what happens when you're a creative, you love this industry and you don't watch tv. My name is Deborah Larbey and if you would like to discuss anything tech mystery guests, the guest experience your sustainability journey or you have a startup idea or you want to brainstorm, scan the QR code or just drop me an email in the QR code. Hope you enjoyed that. Please do keep me posted on how you're going and I can't wait to see you all on. Have you got. Have you got dot com? Thanks again.

Another building theme here is trust, how to properly connect and a little bit of AI as well, which is really cool. Which brings me on very nicely to what we're going to go on to next, which is Price Labs, which is one of our sponsors of this week, the people that are making this happen. Again, I've mentioned this every single day. These things aren't free to put on. I reach out to some of my biz besties out there and Price Labs came up and they said, yeah, we'd love to be a part of this and they're going to show you how to use AI with data with Price Labs to how you can truly get the most from your bookings. I spoke about how this week when we're talking about upsells is that the price of the booking needs to be one of the most lowest revenue generators in your business. But, but still you want to make sure that A you are getting the booking, b you're getting the most for the booking and C, there needs to be something where it's not always just you doing it. And this is what I love about Price Labs and they're tapping into AI massively. But before we move on to the Price Lab session, can we please all show Deb some love in the chat and again, do go and check out have you got go and check out Deb on on A on LinkedIn. It's amazing to be able to showcase a to this massive audience that we have throughout the week. So we're going to go into Price Labs next. We're going to come back, get ready for the finale, which is going to be another amazing session. Go get yourself a drink. We'll do a little bit of a break right now. Go straight into Price Labs after that. I'm all going on. All right, we'll see you on the other side.

To the Batmobile.

Let's go.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining in. My name is Mridul Vansal. I work as a product marketing manager at Price Labs. Thanks to Mark for inviting us today. I am personally very excited to be here, partly because I look into our host segment at Price Labs. Of course, we cater to people with one to thousands of properties, but my role is mainly with host and property managers with one to 10 properties. And I know there's quite a few of you watching this right now. I regularly interact with hosts like you to know about their challenges with hosting, pricing and property management in general. Book Direct is all about getting direct bookings and eliminating the booking platforms. Right. However, we have to make sure that we are still pricing our properties competitively. We are still aware of how the market is performing. So today what I'm going to do is, is I'm going to show you a couple of slides, not too long as well. Just to tell you the power of data and AI. It's not going to be technical, super actionable. Just to tell you how we process data and generate daily price recommendations. Okay. Then we'll jump into the product where I'll show you how nowadays we leverage AI to turn market data heavy charts into simple sentences. So it's really a way for you to understand what's really happening in the market and take control of your pricing strategy. Then I'll show you some cool things that we are doing. So when you're creating a strategy, you have to look at your competitors. Now I'll show you how you can pick some of your competitors that you want to follow. You can look at their price per night, their cleaning fee, their length of stays, their service model, and a lot of of things. At the end, we'll look at markups. So usually we are all on all the booking platforms and our websites. Right. So you want the price on your website and on your booking platforms to change with demand. Right. What you can do is you can add a markup to be slightly More expensive on these platforms so that you give preference to people who book directly with you. Before I jump in, Price Labs has a 30 day free trial where you can sign up for free. Explore all the capabilities of the tool that we'll be discussing it today without paying anything. All right, let's get into it. So about Price Labs. Price Labs is a revenue management software for host and property managers. We started operations in 2014. More than 350,000 properties use price Labs for their daily price recommendations. We have an amazing team present in almost 10 countries. We provide dynamic pricing and market data tools for short term rentals, vacation rentals, midterm rentals, service apartments, villas, small hotels, holiday parks, RV parks, these properties. So as I said, today we going to be discussing about market and competitor and how you can use the power of AI and data. So dynamic pricing, all of us have heard this term many times now. How does it actually work? Right, so let's look into it. So the step one of any dynamic pricing tool starts by collecting publicly available data. Okay, so now this data is about prices and availability on Airbnb, Verbo and booking.com and Price Labs or any dynamic pricing tool collects this data through AI. Now once all of this data is collected, AI then tries to find trends in your market using this data. Right, so AI tries to find trends like seasonality, difference between weekends and weekdays, length of stay, price per room, etc. Around your local market and around your property. Okay, so we've got the market data. Now we are trying to find trends in that data. Once this is done, the next step comes. So the next step is taking into account your history and your reservation. Right, so it's not just about market but your property's performance as well. So when you connect your Airbnb or your PMS to Price Lamp, we look at your past performance and your future booking data. So we in a way already know how your property is performing, how many reservations or bookings you have for upcoming dates, what has been your performance in the past. Now we have the market data. Now we have your property's performance. We club both of these and then move to the fourth step which comes as customized price for every date. Okay, so the dynamic pricing tool combines the market trends, your property performance and generate customized price for each night of your calendar. Okay, now once the price is generated, it actually automatically updates this to OTAs and your websites. Okay, so the price is sent to a PMS or a channel manager or directly to OTAs and then it goes to your website and other platforms. Okay, so you saw how easy and automated it is where the AI actually takes care of everything. The AI looks at market data, finds trends, look at your property's performance clubs, both of these, and then give you a customized price dynamically on what you should be charging for your property. Now, here's the best part about Price Labs. Price Labs is not a black box. It's not. You have added your property and now we are just recommending you prices. With Price Labs, we give you control because we know you might have some preferences as well. So with Price Labs, there are tons of personalization and customization options that you can use. Okay, you can set up a minimum price, you can set up a base price, you can set up a max price of how you want to charge and what you want to charge for your listing. You can do this based on your preference and your knowledge of the local market. You can choose how aggressive you want to go with customizations, how aggressive you want to go with discounts, with premiums, and do and set up these customizations. Because everyone might have different strategy. I might want more occupancy, be it lower revenue, but someone might want low occupancy, but they need the highest price possible. So depending on your preferences, you can choose to edit these customization. Be aware, even if you don't touch anything, even if you don't put these customization, we know and we take care of everything based on your property's performance and your local market. Right? So even if you just set it and forget, Priceless will take care of it for you. But if you want to jump in, provide some input, some customization, some addition, you can do that. And it will affect your daily price that is sent to your platform. So I hope it gives you some idea of how actually a dynamic pricing tool uses AI and market data to customize a daily price for you. Now let's move into the product where I'll show you this in action. Plus, we will also be looking at some very cool use cases of AI which I had mentioned in the beginning. So this is the Price Labs dashboard. This is where once you connect your pms, your property management system, or your booking channels or your website, your listings and properties will start showing at a single place. Now, let's just pick any one of these properties. Say I pick this property, I click on review prices and it will open the pricing calendar. Okay, so now here you can see that there's a dynamic pricing for each night of my calendar in the future. So for each night, there's a price which has been calculated dynamically on how we just saw. So in just how in the presentation, we saw that the algorithm considers market data, property performance customizations, if any. And by clubbing all of those things together, it is giving me a dynamic dynamic price for each night of my calendar. If I hover over any pricing, you can also see the factors that have been applied. Okay, so here you can see there's a seasonality factor, there's a demand factor, there's a minimum threshold, there's a maximum threshold, and so on and so forth. So for each night there are multiple factors that have been applied. And based on these factors, the system, the algorithm is giving me a final price. So this is just in a nutshell, how dynamic pricing works and then how it reflects on your calendar in the future. But what I really wanted to show you today was this cool tab called Neighborhood Data Tab. Neighborhood Data Tab essentially gives you information about your local market, about your neighborhood. So it tells you how your local neighborhood or local market is performing as compared to your listing. So here, this is the future price chart. Chart. Okay, so here the black line you see is your final price for the future. Okay, so all the prices that we saw in the calendar right now, they put after one another will create this graph that you can see here. Now this helps you understand the pricing decisions that have been taken by price labs by the algorithm and how they compete with the market. Okay, so here, as you can see, see, I'm slightly on the middle to higher end of the market, but that's okay because I have a slightly luxurious property. Okay, now here you can see that it has prices for listings from cheapest to the most luxurious ones. Okay, but this is not the best part. The best part comes with a new feature that I was talking about which is called AI Insights. And I was talking to Mark about this as well, and he found it really interesting as well. What AI Insights does is in just one click, it converts this market data heavy chart into very simple sentences with just the key data. Okay, so it might be time consuming. It might be difficult to just look at this data, trying to understand what this means. So AI Insights makes it easier for you. What AI Insights does is it gives you a summary with just the key information, as I mentioned. So here you can see that there's high season. June, July are towards the higher end of the market. There's low season in November, December and January. You can see just the key data like search prices in 17th April, 17th, 20th April, you can see all of the relevant information just here. Right. So instead of going through these charts and figure out what these means, AI Insights makes it very easy for you to know what, what this really actually means. Okay. Similarly, you can do the same thing for the next chart, which is occupancy. Occupancy charts in price labs show you how the market occupancy is as compared to your listings performance for the future. Again, when I click on AI Insights here, it will give me just insightful data about this. Okay, so you can see it is saying it is comparing it with Studio 1, 2 and 3 bedroom category. You can see market type is weakened. Travel market here, market performance is slightly worse for the next four months as compared to last year. So similarly it gives you again all of that key information, key data in very simple sentences. So I hope this was helpful. I hope you got to know what AI can actually do and how it can turn these complex charts into very simple sentences. So moving on to competitors. So as I said, Priceups lets you pick your competitors. You can choose the competitors that you want to compete against. You can choose the competitors that you want to track. You follow and look at their strategies. So let me just pick some competitors here. Priceups lets you choose up to 10 competitors for easy analysis. You can also name any competitor like let's say North Beach Friend and so on. And I'll just click here and it will give me a table of all the information about these competitors that is available in the market. So here as you can see, I can now see a table view of all the competitors that I chose above and key information about them. So I can see they are per night. So let's say for this competitor, I can see their nightly rate. I can also see their length of stay. So as I always say, revenue management is not just about dynamic pricing or pricing. It's also about being smart with your minimum night restrictions, being smart with your length of stay so that you can make the most out of one booking. And it varies a lot depending on day of the week, depending on season, depending on the type of market you are in. So it's very important to know how much your competitors are setting up as their minimum length of stay. So here you can see for each night what is your different competitors length of stay. You can see what is their nightly rate compared to your nightly rate. So here you can see for my listing, I'm charging $250 for this night, one of my competitors at 251. Another is 324, 232 and so on and so forth. So here it helps you understand their nightly rates plus their length of stay. Now, another good part is this data also tells me their Airbnb cleaning fee and Airbnb service fee. Okay? So when your guests are booking, they are not only looking at your prices. Guest cares about cleaning fee, the guests care about service fee. Because eventually the guest needs to look into what's the final amount that they will be paying, right? And that considers all of these factors. So we can see if your competitors are charging any cleaning fee, how much they are charging for cleaning fee. Similarly, you can use this to tailor your strategy. You can see which fee model they are in. So, as you might know, Airbnb has two service models. One is split, one is host only. So here you can see this Airbnb service model these competitors are following. So even if you are getting bookings through Airbnb or directly your website, you know how much they are paying to Airbnb. You know how much of the nightly rate that these competitors are charging is going to Airbnb. Okay? Now also with these competitors, price labs also show you a preview of their listing, right? So you can see some images here which shows the preview of their property. And if you click on any of these list links, it will take you to their Airbnb listing. So you see how easy it is to kind of spy on your competitors, spy on what they are actually doing, what their strategy is. And this is what pricelabs helps you with. So, hi, I hope this was helpful to know how you can be competitive, how you can tailor your pricing strategy, how you can know what is happening in your market and how your competitors are reacting to market conditions. Now, the next part that I wanted to talk about is markups. So now we know Book Direct is all about getting bookings directly to your website, making people book directly through you and avoiding these channels, booking channels in between. So you want the prices, but most of us are actually available on booking channels as well, apart from our website, right? So you want these prices to vary by demand, by dynamic pricing that we spoke both on your website and on booking channels. However, sometimes you may want to add some commission on these booking platforms, right? There are two reasons to do that. One, so that you're slightly expensive, so people who are booking directly with you, they get some sort of incentive and you're cheapest on your website. Second, these booking channels, booking platforms charge you some commissions, right? So if your rate on your website is X, you have to add some dollars to it to compensate for that commission charge. So you can do it very easily through your PMS. You just need to say, add 15% on priceless prices for these channels and it will be automatically done. So in your pms, your PMS will add these commissions based on the channel and on all of these channels, while your prices will be dynamic, they will have some sort of commission based on those channels. Now, when you do that, the question that comes is, are you still in the market? Are you still competitive enough because you've added a commission, you've added a markup on what Price Lab suggested? So Price Lab suggested, let's say price for a night as $250 based on the market price and all of the factors that we discussed. And then when you added a markup of say $20, your price on one particular channel became $270. So now are you still competitive enough on that platform? This is exactly what pricelabs helps you with with. So Price Labs helps you simulate these markups that you are applying. Okay. And you can do that exactly from the feature prices chart. So say I will click here and I will add a markup, fixed markup of say $60. Now, this is the markup that I've added in my PMS for a certain channel. Now, what price apps will show do? It will show me a marked up price. So you can see this new line that has come, the greenish line that has come. It is now showing me my price with the markup. So assuming I have added this markup on Airbnb, now you know how your prices are compared on Airbnb, still with the market. Okay. So I hope this gives you an idea of how you can be competitive, tailor your pricing strategy, really know what is happening in the market, have control of your pricing strategy. I hope this was helpful. Now another thing that I wanted to talk about today is investment. Okay, so many of us might not have a property yet. Many of us might want to open a new property. We might be looking to make another investment through another property. As I said in the beginning, Price Labs provide dynamic pricing and market data to tools. Right? So one of our market data tool is called Revenue Estimator Pro. What Revenue Estimator Pro does is you enter an address, enter any property's address. It gives you an estimate of how much revenue you can make from that property. Okay, let's look at that into action. We'll just create an estimate right now and we'll see how much I can potentially earn from that property. Give here, let's say I will give this. I can select the bedroom category of my listing. I can select the currency that I want this in. And then I can just continue. Now here it also gives me a map view of the location that I have just added. Okay, so even if I want to make any changes I can do that. Otherwise I can click on create estimate. So you see here my estimate is ready. So it's two bedroom category that I selected on the address that I had put. And now I can see. So I can see. I can make an estimated annual revenue based on 372 listing of 21,700 USD per year. It can range from 4,500 to 4700 47,800. I can make a revenue of $1,815 a month. My ADR average daily rate can be $168. Adjusted occupancy is roughly 39%. I can also see the trends in the market based on revenue and ADR that I may expect in the future. Okay, so you see how prices makes it very easy for you to take new investment decisions for you to know how much potential you can earn from any new investment that you are making. So I hope this was helpful. I hope today's session gave you some insights about competitors, about market, about dynamic pricing and investments. If you need any further assistance, please feel free to reach out to us at supportrice Labs Co. As I said in the beginning, we have a 30 day free trial. You can go to Pricelabs Co, sign up for a free trial without paying anything, without adding your credit card. You can explore all the product functionalities that we just now discussed and see if dynamic pricing can really work for you. Thank you.

All right, I would like to know in the comments who are our current Price Labs customers. Just leave a hashtag pricelabs in there if you're with them. If you're thinking of joining and let us know why you're thinking of joining and if you haven't yet, let us know why because you've got a 30 day free trial. I always say that doesn't matter whether you're with Price Labs or one of the other pricing software tools that are out there, it's good to be on a few because if you're going to be really serious about this, about really taking your business from here to here. Revenue and revenue management is a big part of that. And if you cannot afford to work with a professional revenue manager, you need to be able to learn this. And these tools are one of the shock ways to do. I can't even begin to think the amount of revenue that we left on the table when we had our family business and we were doing this back in 2011, 2012 because these tools weren't available. But you do have it now in 2024. So 30 day free trial. Go to Pricelabs Co email support Price Labs co tell them that Boostly sent you and that was a fantastic session. Thank you. AI is becoming more and more prevalent in our day to days. So go to got to got to pay attention to it. All right, time for the finale. The fourth and final session of today is with the fantastic Jen Boyles. Now, Jen has got her own virtual summit, the Direct Booking Success Summit, which is coming up later on this year that you will get more information about in this video. But I asked if she could put together a little session. Jen joined me and T Ball for a little freeway session that we did earlier on this year and I said, jen, I want to have some more. The audience want more. And we've come back with a little bit of video which is about trust, about moving away life after the Airbnb. So without further ado, can I please show Jen some love in the comments? Again, I keep circling this word trust. Keep going back to this word trust. There's a big theme about it, especially with what Phil was talking about yesterday in his master class. He's like 90 minute masterclass. He kept coming back to trust. How can we get a guest to go? Okay, well there's Airbnb, there's verb overs booking.com, but there is this independent business. How do I make that booking? And Jen's going to delve into that. All right, all I'll be back at the end to wrap up Thursday's session and let you know what is going to be happening tomorrow. Don't forget, keep ticking off your boostly bingo. Go and share on Instagram, go and invite as many people as you can to this because is this this? The amount of quality content in this is crazy. And I'll be back in about 20 or 30 minutes to wrap up today's session.

If you want my respect, you'll better book direct. Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.

Welcome to life beyond Airbnb. How to build the trust you need for guests to book direct with me. Jen Boyle. Hi. I grew up in and around the hospitality industry as my father is a retired hotel general manager. It was fabulously glamorous until I had my first job. My first job was in with the maids. Okay, I was restocking the minibars and helping out with the laundry. It was very hard work. So it wasn't until years later when my then husband and I rented out our first apartment that I actually got bitten by the hospitality bug. And when I started with direct Bookings, I didn't realize that everyone else wasn't on the same journey as I. It was at the beginning of the pandemic when I found out that my help was needed. And as a property manager myself, I was able to do just that. So I started helping others in the spring of 2020. Now in 2024, I help property managers, owners and hosts in my Direct Booking Success program. I'm an international speaker. I'm the founder of the Direct Booking Success Summit which is a fully global virtual event and back this October for its fourth year. I am also the host of the weekly Direct Booking Success podcast and an ex Airbnb super host. So inside the Direct Booking Success Program where I help property managers have a more profitable business, I use a method called the direct booking success 4 step profitable bookings framework. This is what I created from my own experience and what I use with my clients today. So we've got four steps. Step one, attract and align. Step two, build your online reputation. Step three, grow your visibility online. And step four, focus on the future. Today, what I'm going to be speaking out about is is part of what I teach inside. Step three, okay. Grow your visibility online. So have you heard this before? No. Like trust. I think I'm going to guess that most of you have heard this. No light trust. This is what all marketing is based on. And it's our job in marketing to move guests along the journey from when they first find us until they book a stay and beyond. Those in the first stage who have just become aware of us will probably need some more time before they book. They'll need to sort of move through those stages. But this could happen quite quickly or quite slowly. Think about how the OTAs like Airbnb have used this and why they have been so successful in their know like. And trust. Let's do a bit of an exercise here. There's you know, four, you know, quite well known international brands. Okay. I'm sure you recognize them on all. Okay, so think about, you know, first, have you ever bought from any of these brands? Okay, so we've got Amazon, Apple, Tesla, Ikea.

You bought from that them.

Now think about why you bought from. Do you like the brand? Do you like what they stand for? Do you like their founder? Okay, so why did you buy from them? Or was it the product? What was it that they, that they had. That you made? You want to buy from them? And then ask them, ask yourself, do you trust them? Do you trust them with your purchase? Okay. Where is the trustability in your experience with them? Do you trust them? Do you trust that if something goes wrong, they'll have their back? Now you might be answering, yeah, okay, yeah, I understand. Got it. Yeah, I, you know, yeah. Or you might be like me. Okay, That's a bit of a mixed bag. So let's take Amazon. Okay. I do really love that founder, you know, Jeff Bezos, and that mass commute consumerism that he stands for. But I do actually trust the platform. Okay. That if something goes wrong with my purchase, that they will help me. Okay. And it's quick and easy. So I do buy from them. Now let's, let's take Tesla. Okay. I really don't like their founder, Elon Musk. Okay. Even though his mother's Canadian. I'm Canadian. I don't know if he's actually says he's Canadian or not, but it doesn't matter. I don't like him. Okay. I don't trust him. Okay. I've seen what he's done in businesses, what he's done with Twitter. I just, I've, you know, I'm sure the cars are fine. They're great. There's a lot of them around. Obviously other people buy them, no problem. But because I don't trust him, I don't trust his company that's under, you know, under his umbrella. I will probably never buy it. Tesla. So think about these brands and work out for yourself, you know? No, like, trust. Now, what does this exercise tell you? Which stage of the know? Like, trust is the most important. Now, in my opinion, trust is the.

Most important.

Because the trust is what can make someone book with you or not take off. It can make or break the experience a potential guest has with your business, with your brand. The definition of trust is an assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something. And as human beings, we have an internal need to feel secure. We must feel like we can trust who we are buying from. In fact, all relationships, personal or professional, they all require trust. So how can you build the trust needed for guests to book with you instead of the online travel agents, the OTAs? Everything rests on the conscious and unconscious feeling of trust that a potential guest has with you and your brand. So let's talk about how you can build that trust needed I've broken it down into three areas. The first is literally show your face. Show your face on your website and on social media. And on social media, make sure that your profile picture is you, not your logo. Show videos and images of you in your local area, at your properties. On your website. Have a compelling About Us page that speaks to your ideal guest. Tell them a bit about you and why you are running this business. Create a connection with potential guests. Have photos at you at the properties. I'm not talking about plastering them all over your website, but do you know on the About Us page, picture of you at one of the properties or in the local area. Speak about what you like best. Talk about your local area. Show that you are the expert. And if you have more than one property or manage dozens for other people, the same rules apply. You need to show yourself as the CEO, as the property manager of that business. You need to create a connection and create that trust that guests need to book. I don't know if you know this, but your About Us page is the second most important page on your entire website. It's actually the second page I go to all the time. I go to a homepage. Then I want to know who's behind the company. And I'm not the only one. In an era of everyone trying to be so hands on with smart locks and automations, don't fall into the trap of hiding behind your company image or your brand. The opposite is what you should be doing. Be human. Show that you value that relationship with your guests. Now, most people won't do this. They're afraid to show themselves. There's, there's like a block there. And this is a problem because people buy from people. And if you want more guests to book direct with you, this is what you need. The guests booking on your website need to know that they are in safe hands. They need to have that connection with you. They need to know who you are. They are coming to stay in a property that you are responsible for. Don't hide behind your brand. Okay, the second one, Prove it. Now think about why so many guests like booking on Airbnb. Their air cover has a lot to do with this. And by having this, they're saying, if you have a problem with the place you've booked, we've got your back and we'll fix it for you. So why can't you do the same? Create your own version of Airbnb's air cover. Package up your insurance coverage, your cancellation policy, your guest bedding. Tell your guests what they can expect when something goes wrong. Tell them about your insurance, your guest verification programs, your cancellation policies, everything. Don't hide. Tell them that they can trust you and list out the reasons why. Have a page on your website that is dedicated to trust. A trust page. Don't shy away from telling guests why they can trust you. Use language that is helpful. Spell it out by saying you can trust us. And here's why. Showcase the best reviews that build trust. It is important to have the most up to date ones on your site, of course, but go and pick out the best ones for your trust page, maybe even with photos from the guests and this will be a huge bump in your trustability. Ones that instead of just saying yeah, great stay, five stars actually go into detail about what was so great. Put the logos of industry and local organizations that you belong to on the page. The bottom line is that guests don't want any nasty surprises. So everything you can do to get that fact that you've got their back across in case something goes wrong, do it and meet it too. Don't just make things up, you know, in your marketing, make sure everything you say on your website is true. You can't build trust on lies. Now most people won't do this because they're afraid of being authentic in their business. They're afraid you are the CEO of your property management business. Whether you're managing one property or 50, now is the time to step up. Time to walk the walk. Time to show up. Show your guests that they can count on you, that you have their back when something goes wrong. And guess what? This makes really good social media posts and great content for your email newsletter. Spread the word about what you are doing.

Now.

Number three is communicate effectively. Now I'm sure you've heard of a fax or an FAQ page. You know stands for a frequently asked question. And this is a great way to create some trust. And it's something that you could add to your trust page or have it in separate. You know, go through your entire booking process. Make a list of all the questions and concerns that guests have had in the past or that you see that they could have in the future and address them them all, even the hard ones and don't stop addressing them just on your website. Start answering the questions before the guests have even asked. Do this in email newsletters. In your social posts, communicate often with those on your email list so you can build that connection with them as well as staying top of mind for when they are ready to book. Treat them with Respect again, be human. Don't hide behind your company's facade. Sign your name to the email, use their name, be personal, be helpful. Don't just sell, but provide value for those reading your emails or seeing your social posts and keep your branding consistent across everything. The last thing you need is to confuse people or lose potential guests because they don't think your website is the right one. After viewing your social post after all the work you've done, you don't want to lose any bookings because of that. Now, most people won't do this because they're too busy. They think their booking process is probably fine. However, if there are any red flags there for your guests, you need to know about them and fix them. If you feel like you're too close to this, you know, ask someone else that you trust to do it for you. Just make that time to work on your business, not just in it. So this has been a part of a presentation that I have done this Spring Can Stay's Rent alliance conference in Canada, the VR Nations Conference in Boise, Idaho and the Book Direct show over in Barcelona, Spain. And I've taken this this part out because I think it's really important to build that trust. It is super important important and it's not talked about enough. So here is your action plan from this this session. Show your face people buy from people. Create a connection and they will look direct. Prove you can be trusted. Don't be sleazy sleazy and promise what you can't deliver. Be upfront with what you offer and answer the questions before they're asked. Communicate effectively. Keep it simple, Communicate often and be personal. Make sure your guest booking journey is smooth and on brand. And I know you're taking in a lot of information this week and I don't want you to get stuck or for this action plan to fall off your new to do list. So I've got something for you. Get your phone out. This is your warning. Get your phone out and get ready. Here's a QR code. If you click on that QR code and sign up, you'll receive a checklist with 10 ways to build trust. You'll get a copy straight to your inbox. I've also included the Direct Booking Success Summit's website. This is a free global event for property managers, owners and hosts who want to increase their direct bookings through marketing and an amazing guest experience. The wait list is open, so head to that website. Sign up. You'll be the first to hear all about the exciting things I've got planned this year. Okay. It's happening on the 8th to 10th of October. It's the fourth year that I've run this. It's huge. Each one gets bigger and bigger and better and better. I look forward to seeing you there and do get this QR code, snap it with your phone and head over on the link and you will get that checklist with 10 ways to build trust to help you increase your direct booking things. Thank you.

And there we go. Book Direct Success summit coming in later this year. Q4 I want to say Q4 go ahead and put your name down totally free and hopefully one year fingers crossed I'll get an invite. But even if I don't, please do go ahead and get part of that. Another phenomenal session and that's it. That is most of the education done for this for this week. We have done a lot as you will all testify to. You have learned a lot and like Jen said, don't get too overwhelmed or I think take something and try and implement it. And I really do hope you enjoy. These are what we're doing now. I couldn't leave this week without A dropping a session in myself and B talking about what we're going to be doing tomorrow. Because tomorrow is the wrap up party 5 o' clock shark app. We're gonna have a nice little party to finish up. So tomorrow is all about fun. There's no learning. We'll do a game of spin the wheel as we always do. We'll announce some winners and we'll let you know what's going to be happening up next in the world of Boostly. But before we finish I thought, you know what, I recorded something earlier today and I was like I haven't done anything this week. I've literally just bring all of this together. But I wanted to drop you with a little thing that I learned last week and this, this is where we tap into the world of AI and I'm going to really blow your mind on this one. So I recorded this earlier today. I want to quickly flip over to that screen. You're going to see that we're going to come back and I'm going to let you know what time we start tomorrow.

To the Batmobile. Let's go.

Welcome to a very special session for the summit and this one is is all about AI. Now you'll have seen people talking about AI LLMs and all of that chat GPT open AI grok, you name it for well over a year now and you may have experimented it but you've gone, I can't get my head around this. It doesn't work. The trick and the art to a good experience is about the questions that you ask. Now these questions are otherwise known as prompts and you'll hear prompts come up a lot the more that you dig into the world of AI. Now I want to show you exactly how to create the best prompts that will help you. And not only that, if you look in the comments below or in the Description, I've created 57 prompts you can use to implement into your business to boost your direct bookings. Which sounds good, good, right? But before I share with you those prompts, before you click off and go grab them, here's what I want for you to do is watch this screen. I'm going to share it right now and it hopefully you will be able to see Chat GPT. Now, Chat GPT or open AI are probably the one that is most recognizable when you start talking about AI. They've been around for a long time. They are probably the market leaders, I would say, although there are other bots and LMMs that are out there. But one of the thing that is very cool is number one, it's free. Number two is they've created an app store called GPTs. Now I'm not going to bore with you what GPTs mean, but basically when you ask a question to LLM Model Chat GPT, it can be very generic with the reply that it gives you. But GPTs on the most simplistic level is that this is something that is specifically trained on a certain topic. Now if you go into chat GPT, if you look at your screen now I've highlighted it.com forward/GPTs, you'll come to their store and if you scroll down you can see what's trending, you can see what's being created by Chat GPT and the team they've got writing ones productivity ones research, education, lifestyle, programming, you name it, it's got it. But what we want to do is we want a GPT that is just going to talk about prompts. And this is the one that I use as my go to. It's called Prompt Engineer. Now when you click on that, it will show this and it will go to start chat and then this will open up and now you're in. Okay, now this, if you keep looking at the screen, I'm going to flick to my prompt engineer because my prompt engineer is going to be different to yours. This is the question that I asked, asked. I need Your help to create for me 50 prompts I should be using when it comes to generating more direct bookings. Can you please create 50 prompts that I could use to help? And it's gone and done that now. I've asked for it to fine tune it a little bit. I want it to go to 57. But we've come up with this in less than a minute. Now I'm going to share these prompts with you as promised in the video. But you can go back to here and you can fine tune it yourself. I mean, you could go, I need for your help to create for me a prompts, like ten prompts, a hundred prompts, a thousand prompts, ten of the best prompts on how to do X, Y and Z. I mean, it could be for anything. Social media diary, bookings, anything in your life and they won't do the job for you. I wish they could. It's not, you know, it's not an actual robot, but it'll help you at least, least get to the point where you can ask better questions. So one of the things, for example, it said is write a blog post about five benefits of Da da da da.

Right?

I'm going to take this and I'm going to come back into what is known as the normal GPT. So OpenAI. Now, I could just type in someone saying write me a blog post, but this prompt engineer has come in and is asked a better question. So again, it's all about typing the better questions. It's all about asking this robot how to get you from A to B but being more clearer with what you want. And the best way that I always talk about describing this is just imagine you've got a person in front of you. Just imagine if you've got the world's best intern in front of you. He's a thousand times more smarter than anybody else that is out there on this planet.

It.

And if you were to go to that person and just say, write me a blog post, they could do it. Yeah, but it won't be what you want. What you need to do is you need to speak to this technology, as mad as it sounds, as you're speaking to a person. So again, if I come back now and if I do this, it's giving me out five really cool things laid out as a blog post. Now again, I'm not, not advocating for the for one minute that you just need to copy and paste this into a blog post. You can maybe dial down on it. You could just go, okay, I don't need number four. Can you talk about this? Can you shorten it? Can you lengthen it and just keep going backwards and forwards and eventually it will learn. You'll learn your style and it will get you to where you need to be. So that is how I created 57 AI prompts in less than one minute. And what I would like for you to do, you do now is to go and do the same. Let me know what you create. Put it in the comments below. Enjoy this bonus session. Thank you very much for watching.

If you want my respect, you're better but direct. Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.

Now I hope you like that. Do go open over to OpenAI. It's been a long week. Bear with me. Go with it. It's all free now and you can go find Prompt Engineer and it will help put together these amazing prompts that you can then go in to chat GPT or even better go into the boostly bot B-O-O O-S-T-Ly.co.uk forward slash bot. Put that prompt in and you'll be able to get better responses back. Again, I say this a lot and I said this in the video and I'll say it time and time again. You've got to treat it like you've got the world's best intern in front of you right now. And the better the command, the better the question, the better the prompt, the better the what you need to do, the better instructor, the better your response will be. Go ahead and try that. Go ahead and try that now. Why not go and finish today's session, Let us know what you do. I'll be back tomorrow. 5pm 5pm UK sharp. And we are going to finish this whole week out with the wrap up party, give away some prizes, do another spin the wheel and all that good stuff. Can we just give a massive round of applause to Alex, to Cayenne, to Deb, to Jen, to Price Labs. What an unbelievable session it was today. Thank you very much to our sponsors, which of course were Price Labs, which are Future Stay per O Craig Webb and his phenomenal team. Paul Anderson, the social media hotelier. If it wasn't for you, we couldn't have put this together. Go away now. Come back tomorrow. Tomorrow there's no more education. We can go over your debrief and a little takeaways of what you've learned from out this week and I'll see you sharp tomorrow, 5pm in this group. Same place, same time and we will basically break down what we've done, debrief on the training, and then I will let you know what's going to be happening with this group as of the end of this week. Thank you very much, and we'll see you tomorrow.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee? Cause it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf Making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loose.