The Difference Between Google Vacation Rentals and Google Business Listings

In this video I am going to walk you through the main differences between a Google Business listing, Google Vacation Rentals and how if you are listed as a short term rental business on Google Business Listings, you need to pivot over to Google Vacation Rentals as soon as possible. Google actively looking in 2023 moving into 2024 to removing all hosts who are listing their business as a short term rental on Google Business Listings off the platform. It's already started. Listings are getting taken down without any rhyme or reason and this is how to prevent it and this is how to sort it to move forward into the new style of advertising on Google. My name is Mark Simpson and I give hosts all over the world the tools, the tactics, the training and the confidence for you to get more direct bookings and to cut down on Airbnb, booking.com and Vrbo. And Google is a fantastic way of doing so. You all you have to do is go back to the boostly back catalog and watch the videos on bid on brand and how you can make your Google Business listing as good as possible. Now if you're a bed and breakfast, you're fine. Bed and breakfast, small hotels, keep doing what you're doing. This video is for you. If you are running a short term rental business or medium term rental business who is trying to advertise and promote your business as a Google Business listing. Now for some of you this will not be a short term thing. This may not affect you until the back end of this year. For some of you, you have to act fast. For a lot of people who are trying to get listed but can't, this video is for you as well. I'm going to share my screen and I'm going to walk you through exactly what you need to look for, how you need to pivot and how you need to change it. But most importantly, I want to walk you through what each one are. So let me just share my screen here. So we're going to go straight in to Google Maps. Now this is a Google Map app as we know it. So for anybody that is on their phone or on their computer and they are looking at a Google Map, what you will notice at the present moment in time is you've got these little bed icons here. Now these bed icons, they are Google business listings that are being listed as a place to stay. Anything with a car over then that's obviously a rental company. Anything with a shop over, that's a shopping center and you can easily identify the different ones. So if somebody comes into this location which is in Spain and is looking for a place to stay. They could be on the phone that could have arrived in the town. They need a place to stay. They could be just looking for general to see who's there to see what's about. Then this is what they see at the moment. Now what Google want to do is they only want to have hotels, bed and breakfasts. Those sort of places come up on this map. Okay, that's important. They want to have hotels, bed and breakfast. It's they don't want to have short term rental properties. If you look at the T's and C's behind Google they say to be on here you need to have a front desk. So a place where somebody can check in. Now short term rental businesses, cottages, glamp sites, etc. You've been able to basically get around this for years. And Google know this. But what Google is trying to do next is they're trying to get a piece of the pie when it comes to booking.com revenue, Airbnb revenue and Expedia revenue because they know that so many people go from Google to the OTA platform because they charge the OTAs a lot of money for advertisements. So let me just quickly run a search. If I type in hotels in York as an, as an example, what will come up at the top is all of these ad spots. So you've got an ad, ad ad there, advert ignore all of this on the right hand side. But if I zoom in on the screen, what you'll notice then is you've got this which is this is basically Google Vacation Rentals which is I'm going to tap into and talk about in a second. And then you've got the organics here. So Google make a ton of money, a lot of money. We're talking millions in charging booking.com and all of these places to come up when somebody types in a very generic keyword term in their, in their search results. So for example, if you type in places to stay in York again those, these key tags and these keywords are very, very, very popular. So they're going to be charging stay central, they're going to be charging all of these that has an ad next from a lot of money to be there. Now at the same time they also know that people are using their new platform and their new portfolio which is Google Vacation Rental. Now let me just quickly show you what that looks on a map. And this is this, is this. So as you can see at the top, google.com travel so Google vacation Rental now this is where people can go and do flights. This is where people can go, things to do, hotels, explore, et cetera, et cetera. So, so if I bring it in here and this is going to be the new style of what they want everybody to move towards. This is what I mean by Google Vacation Rental. So if I come and hover over these properties down here, you'll see that they've got a house which is a home, which is holiday rentals and you can see how you can click on them. So if I click on this one here, it takes me to their Google Vacation Rental page. You've got the images on the top, prices, reviews, location, about and etc. And all of this information is simply being pulled from a, a specific place. Now the user doesn't get the chance to edit this yet. This is the next step and the next phase that's coming. But at the moment it's pulling it from specific places and I'll show you where those specific places are in a second. But as you can see what it's doing right now is it's acting like a Trivago, it's acting like a meta search where it is searching the Internet and it's finding out where the best best rate is. Now as you can see here, the only option that is showing at present is their official website where they can book direct. Okay, and this is, and again I'll walk you through that in a second. But what Google wants to do is it wants to pivot every short term rental, every non hotel, non bed and breakfast to here. So we'll have a very clear holiday market every and they'll have a very clear holiday rentals market. Now this is fantastic exposure. It's what every one of us should be looking to, to be visible in because as we know on the guest booking process people start at Google and then they go down the filters and the funnels. Okay, so you need to be on here. Now the problem at the present moment in time and I'm recording this early 2023, the only place and the only way to get listed on there for your direct booking site is via your property management software tool, otherwise known as PMS. And these @ the present moment of recording, which is early 2023 are the only PMS providers that are currently listing on there. I've highlighted the boostly partners, these are the ones that we partner with for our website. So if you're with Reynolds United, uplisting, lodfi, avivo and bez24 then you will then in Turn be synced into your PMS from your Boostie site where you'll then be listed on Google. So you don't have to worry yet for everybody else who's currently not on this, they are actively in 2023 looking to add in more. So whoever your PMS is, keep pestering them because then you can get visible on there. Now the next step, once they've done this, is to be able to give everybody the opportunity to list on there because Google are really making a big, big, big play on Airbnb booking.com they do want a piece of the pie. Now they've been talking about this for a long time. And this is the problem with a company as big as Google is that they can't just make a decision, flick it and it works. They have to slowly build this into what they've currently got in place. And so this is what's currently happening at the moment. But when it does, you'll be able to log into your own Google Vacation rental page and to be able to make amendments. Now if I just quickly log over to our login, as you can see here, with a Google Business listing, we you can log in right now and you can come in and you can add your business, add your property, and from the back of that you can also manage what you see is visible. So once you've got something that is visible, you can then go in, you can add pitches, you can update the news, you can share new things, you can send people to there to leave reviews. Okay, because one of the biggest pain points that we have as short term rental hosts is, is that it used to be TripAdvisor. So if you were to send your guests somewhere online to leave a review, it used to be TripAdvisor, but now TripAdvisor isn't really a thing anymore. And so you then start sending people to X, Y or Z. The big advice at the moment is to send people to Google. But if you're going to send them to a Google Business listing, then what's going to happen is that, is those reviews going to go? Is it going to disappear? No, what will happen is that everything will get moved over to Google Vacation Rentals. I would still right now send people to leave reviews on your Google Business listing, if you have one, if it is verified and if is a big word because as you will know on the platform, we've had so many people that have tried to register who then get a verification code which says here, verification requested. But what happens is that these verifications are going through the Google system and they're going, well, this is not a short term rental. This is not a, sorry, a bed and breakfast. This is not a hotel. This is a short term rental. We're going to not verify it or worse, there's businesses that have been verified that all of a sudden are getting taken off the platform. And the reason being is that bots are going around and the AI is going around and all of that cool stuff is going around Google and they're trying to take them off the platform, they're trying to unverify and remove them. Now, if you got a Google business listing, please do keep having people leave reviews because it does make it stand out. Now if I come back to my Google map here and I highlight Casa Cabana, they've got Casa Christabel and Casa Annabelle, they've got 28 reviews and this looks lovely. Now these will eventually get pivoted and moved over to the Google vacation rental listing. But at the present moment in time, you need to have reviews. So this is why it's important. So if you've got a business on Google, a business listing and somebody's looking for a place to stay, the more your reviews you get on this, the more new content you have on it. It's like any other algorithm. It'll bump and be visible to more when people are looking on this and millions of do look at this. So don't, don't rule it out. Now this is becoming so powerful and so popular as you can see here. Booking.com are even trying to advertise on the page, on the page here. This is why what Google wants you to do now is pivot over to their new model, which is going to be the way that we move forward with Google Travel. Okay. And what you will notice is that booking.com will get into here. You'll also notice Airbnb and TripAdvisor, wherever you list your business, expedia, verbo, etc, will try and get into here and they will try and take your business away. But Google is really trying to go all in on direct bookings. They are trying to go all in to make sure that people are going to your website and not the OTAs, which is really encouraging to see, which is why they're putting official site. Again, I truly believe that one of the reasons why hosts aren't booking, so I guess aren't booking with you directly is because they just don't realize that they can. They feel like the only way that they can book with you is Airbnb. Which is probably our fault, because if you've ever called yourself an Airbnb business or say, you can book at my Airbnb, you are literally branding them every step of the way. So if we can just all, as a collective, stop calling ourselves Airbnb businesses, that'd be a good little place to start. But obviously, then start pointing them to your own direct booking website where a guest can make that booking. So if I click here, I will then go in turn to this property's direct site at Cozy Spaces, and I'll be able to book directly on there because it links into their pms, which is Uplisting, which is one of the PMS providers that are currently working with Google. So how do you get your name down? How can you potentially do this? Well, number one, you either join one of these property management softwares that you can see here or you go to this, which is the Google Vacation Rental form. So what you need to do, I've even turned this into a pretty link so it's easy for you to understand. If you just go to boostly.co.uk Google vacation rentals with an S, it will divert you to this form. It's a lot of blurb. It's a lot of nonsense, to be honest. But if you go to the Google's vacation rental interest form, you click on there, it'll take you through to the next stage where you can fill out your details and you can say, hey, I am ready to get listed on Google Vacation Rental. Because what's going to happen next is that when you log into your Google business listing, they'll have a separate section for travel and for holiday rentals, where you can come in here and you can update pictures, you'll be able to update the text because at the moment, this information is coming straight from uplifting. Now what we need to do, as you can see, the pictures don't look the best. They don't match. They look better on Obviously Airbnb or booking.com or one of our channel partners, but it doesn't look the best on Google. So we need to amend that. We need to be able to update the information and we need to make sure that everything is, is correct in there and that will be the next step. It's exciting, but obviously as well, at the same time, you need to make sure that you're ahead of the game. So make sure that you're following boostly. Follow this YouTube channel. I've got some really good contacts can that can guide us when it comes to Google and I've got a very good contact within Google who wants to work with Boostly members, who wants to direct booking, sort of motto and mantra to be spread around. So make sure that you do tap into the Boostly YouTube channel, boostly.co.uk YouTube. Make sure you like it, make sure you subscribe and turn out the notification bell. And as soon as I get more information, I will let you know. The first people to find out, as always, will be the Boostly members. So if you want to come and join Boostly, we've got two packages. If you're between one and six properties, you can come and join on our light package. If you want to. If you've got more than seven properties, you can come and join as part of our Pro package. Every single one of them comes with the tools, the tactics, the training, but most important, the confidence that you need to increase your direct bookings. It'll get you a website that you can be proud of. It gives you all of the social media content you'll ever need, email templates that you can literally put into practice now, that will boost your direct bookings and to convert lookers into bookers. But also as well, it comes packed, jammed with direct training that you can implement that you need to help with most into your business. So with that being said, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for watching this episode of the Boostly podcast. If this is the first time that you've discovered us, then you've got a lot of episodes to go back on. We've got over 500 with interviews from other hosts delving into the tools that they're using, but also interviews with some of the biggest people in this industry and sharing their knowledge to pass on to you on how you can increase your direct buckets. Without more being said, thanks for tuning in. Be proactive, don't be reactive and let's go and get some direct bookings.