Mark Simpson built Boostly, a marketing agency helping 2,200 hospitality businesses book guests directly instead of through Airbnb and Booking.com. He grew up in a family B&B, started a Facebook group for hosts, and now shares 101 free tactics to get bookings without paid ads in his Book Direct Playbook.
Questions this video answers
About 2,200 clients.
"Book Direct Playbook."
$0.99 (99 cents).
Top 1% of downloads in the industry (nearly 500 episodes).
Scarborough and Whitby.
Chapters
So my introduction to my talk is a little bit different. This is not going to be a normal event. As you can see, I've got a shot on stage and I'm going to introduce you why this shot is with me. So a normal tequila shot is obviously salt shot and source. Now, I like to create a shot called the Simpson Tequila rasmapat, otherwise known as the SCR shot. You can feel free to take it. My goal by the time I finish my talk is one of you will have a direct booking. So we are going to make this actionable because I see everybody writing. I've been walking around these past few days. I see all of the notes. I don't want this to be one where you write a note and forget about it when you get home. I want you to take action right now and actually get some money and direct bookings into your business by the time you finish. Does that sound good? Okay, so before we begin, let me explain why I have this shot with me. So I'd like everybody to stand up. So obviously a tequila shot starts with a bit of salt. So some of you aren't going to like me with what I'm going to say, but it needs to be said. So stay standing. If 90% of your bookings come in from Airbnb, stay standing, sit down. If not. All right, I need your salt. So congratulations. You do not have a business. You have a job. Brian Chesney is your boss. And the shit thing about having a boss is that they can change the rules at any time. It's because you are building your house on someone else's land. Now, every single time somebody says to me, I've got an Airbnb business or I'm staying in an Airbnb, a little bit of me dies inside. Because you are branding at Airbnb. Do not uber this industry. Right? You are not staying in Airbnb. You're staying in a short term rental. That salt is just hitting, by the way. I should not have done that. Fuck me, right? So you can all stand up again. Now, I'm a nice guy. I like to be light. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put the sugar. So part of the SCR shot, we have salt, but we also have sugar. Now, I have brought goodies. Who likes presents? I have got hundreds of worthies, originals from the UK here with me right now. Now, my granddad, whenever I heard a worvy's original, I always think of my grandad. Sadly, he passed away, but when I was Younger. He's always said, mark, one day you're gonna be on stage and here I fucking am. So here we go. Now, unfortunately, I've not got enough for everybody, so we need to play a little game. Does everybody know rock, paper, scissors? Turn to your left. Turn to your right. You're going to find an opposition partner. You're going to play a game of rock, paper, scissors. Right? Now, are you ready? Play one round. Rock, paper, scissors, shoot. Go. Rock, paper, scissors. Shoot. Rock. Yeah. If you won, stay standing. If you won, stay standing. There you go. All right, please pass these around. Pass them around. Open them up. Yeah, open them up. Pass them around. Pass them around. Thank you so much. Pass them around. All right, there you go. Thank you so much. Pass them around. There you go. All right, that's the sugar. So now I've got you back on my side. You can all sit down. By the way, thank you so much. Now, it's why I do this and why it's so important that you all listen. But most importantly, take action. I've been in hospitality since the age of four. I grew up in a farm, safe bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere in England. My family business grew through offline word of mouth. There was no. There was no Facebook, there was no online, there was no booking.com, there was no Airbnb, there was no Expedia. It was all done via word of mouth. And me and my wife and my eldest boy, Alfie, he was one at the time, now he's nine. And all that we did and all that me and my wife did, we had to get that business online because my mum and dad were still doing everything on pen and paper. It was ridiculous. So we bought it online. So we took that offline word of mouth and we put it online. We didn't spend any money. It was all natural referrals online utilizing the things that we had. We had a website we listed on booking.com, we listed on all of the channels that we did and we grew the business. We worked at it so hard that within 18 months, we were top 15, three rated on TripAdvisor in our area. Our Facebook pages grew to be one of the most popular in the area and 80% of our bookings was direct. In 2016, I went to my first ever hospitality event in my local area and I met so many hosts who were over reliant on booking.com or Expedia. And Airbnb was starting to get a bit attraction and so I asked them, what are they doing to generate their own bookings and they looked at me blankly like all of you are doing now. So I asked who is helping you? Is the local council? Is the local tourism doing anything? No. And so I started a Facebook group called the Hospitality Community. Please come and join it after this event. I started it and I created it for the local area of Scarborough and Whitby where I'm from. But every day I showed up and I was giving help and advice and I was showing tactics, the same tactics I'm going to show you today. I've got 101 to fit in in 38 minutes for no pressure. And because of that, word of mouth spread. So we had people from overseas, from France and Germany and Spain and then Australia got involved and then America. Before I knew it, this community had grown so much. It grew so much. And I was being asked so many questions about all of these things every single day. And I was like every single day replying to messages. So my wife just said, why don't we turn it into a business? And Boostly was created. Whose hospitality shop for boostly. And in six years we have now got 2,200 clients. We're the most recommended website agency and marketing agency in the industry. In February of this year, I released a little book called the Book Direct Playbook. Hans, you have a copy? I found out today from the publisher that it is in the top. I can't believe it's top 10% of book sales in the world. And the good news for everybody here, the publisher said to me, I asked her to do it this morning and it's just happened now. We've knocked the price down to 99 cents. It's less than a bottle of water. So I promise you, go and buy it, go download it, go grab a copy. Because it will change your direct booking business, especially those that are 90% of the line. This year as well. I got involved in an amazing project called Hospitable Hosts plenty of the authors that here right now. The reason why this book is so important is that every single one of you has a story. I've got a shit ton of stories and I picked the best one. But every single one of you has a story. This book has been so popular that I guarantee Jody Sterling, who created this, will do number two and I want every single one of you to do it. There's an amazing person in this room called Will Slickers. Where's Will Slickers? Will is giving this industry a voice. My belief is that every host should have a podcast alright. And will giving you the opportunity to do so. Go check out Hospitality FM between Jody and Will. Every single one of you will be a bestseller and every single one of you will have a podcast. The Boostly podcast that I started in 2016 is now in the top 1% of downloads in the whole industry, the whole world, which is crazy. And I started out in 2016. We're closing on 500 episodes. There's over 500 hours of free content that you can go and consume. You don't have to buy from me. I am very proud that my free shit is better than the paid shit that's out there. So go and grab it, go and check it out. And today what I am going to share with you is 101 tactics on how to generate your direct bookings. And this is why it's important. Brian Chesky was on a podcast last year, the Sway podcast. And the podcast host asked him directly saying, do you think your hosts, as in you should be able to do their own bookings? And Brian Chesky dismissed it. He said, the hosts don't know what to do. So I'm on this stage to say that not only can you do it, I'm going to show you how to do it. And everything that I'm going to show you today will not cost you a penny. You don't have to do Facebook ads, you don't have to pay. Mr. Zuckerberg, you don't have to do Google Ads. Everything I'm going to show you is free, easy, and doesn't take any time to do. Now, I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to say, barb ready. Okay. Are you ready to increase your diet bookings? Sorry, that is my English accent. Born ready. That's what you're gonna say? Are you ready to increase your diet bookings? Born ready. I can't hear you. Are you ready to increase your diet bookings? Born ready. Well, here we go. Cheers.
