The Pros and Cons of a Lodgify Website
11 Jul 2021 · 10 min
Mark Simpson compares Lodgify websites, which sync easily with your PMS but limit customization, against WordPress sites that offer full control, richer marketing features like embedded reviews and trust badges, and better direct booking potential. Lodgify is quick to launch; WordPress gives you the flexibility to stand out.
Questions this episode answers
"July"
£5 per month
1,000 new hosts to register and sign up
July 11, 2021
Chapters
Before we start today's episode of the Boosted podcast, I have got some exciting news to share with you. For the month of July, I am giving away one month trial of the boostly content creator. Now, you may be asking and you may be thinking, well, what is the boostly content creator host that I have come into contact with in the five years of doing Boostly? And when I say to them, you need to be posting every single day on social media, you need to be emailing, emailing your guest and your list, they always say to me, I haven't got the time. And I can't think of a better month to promote the boostly content creator than July. Because right now everybody around the world is busy, busy, busy, busy. And they haven't got the time to think about the marketing or the social media or the emails, when in fact the best time to do marketing is when you're at your busiest because that means that you always have a pipeline coming through. So I created the boostly content creator for busy hosts. Now what do you get? Every single month you get 30 to 40 pieces of fresh social media content that you can use for your social media channels. LinkedIn, Instagram, et cetera. You also get video templates which are designed to stop the scroll on social media, which is really powerful. Email templates designed by expert copywriters that are working so well. Georgina Bearman messaged up in our Facebook group to say that she used one of the email templates and got free bookings, direct bookings instantly, which more than covered the cost. You also now get website headline generator tools. You get a money back guarantee and you can cancel anytime. The price is only five pound a month. And right now when you sign up, you go into the boostlycontentcreator.com you add to your basket in the coupon code section, you type in July and you get the first month free. Now that is only available for the month of July. After that it's five pound. If you don't want to continue, you can just cancel at any time. But please make sure that you go and you use the boostly content creator. My goal is a month in the month of July is to get 1,000 new hosts to register and sign up. This is how powerful I know this tool is because the email templates in itself are providing a massive return of investment and I would love for you to come and join. This is for new members only. Just go to boostlycontent creator.com add it to your basket, put in coupon code July and I'll see you on the other side. Right now we've got that out of the way, let's get on with today's podcast episode. Okay, welcome everybody, back to another episode of the daily podcast. And today what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk you through the pros and cons of having a lodgify website, but more importantly, a PMS free website. I'm going to delve into it, I'm going to show you what I mean, and I'm going to give you a little comparison to what you get when you get a WordPress website. Just so you really aware of this? Because again, I think what's really important to state is that every PMS is very, very clever. They sell as an additional benefit for you choosing with them a free website. Because again, they know that when you're looking to start a business, when you're looking to start a hospitality business, there's all these costs that start to tally up, you know, and I'm not even talking about getting the property ready, I'm talking about everything else on top of it. For example, when you have to then think about using smart B and B or breezeway or X, Y or Z, which has an additional cost on top of everything. So when it comes to a website, a lot of the property trainers and the course providers out there, they tell you you don't need a website, which I don't agree with. You know, I think it's very, very important that you start to build your brand as soon as possible. You start to build your list as soon as possible. I think everybody needs a pms, but what is really important is that Whether you've got one property, you've got seven, 10 or whatever, you need to have a website that you're in total control of. You need to have a website that you can amend and you can structure how you like. And this is the problem with a PMS free website is that you are literally having a glorified landing page. Now, there are pros and cons, so first and foremost, let's look at the pros. So as a, as a host, when it comes to, to the creation of it, it's super simple. One of the biggest time elements that we found with a WordPress website is that you're always having to duplicate. But when you've got a PMS website or a logify website, this is a logify website, this is what casa for you currently use. Again, it's all synced in everything that you see here. Is synced directly into Logifi's pms. And again from the outside in, if you're a guest, this looks great. And it does. I mean compared to a couple of other PMS websites that I see, booking pages, direct booking site, whatever you want to call it, Lodify have got a nice little put together one, but it does still have problems. So for example, this is the backend, this is the extranet of CASA4U and OnLogify. And if I wanted to amend anything or add anything, I haven't got the ability to do so. As you can see, I'm very limited. I can change the colors if I like, I can amend the fonts if I wanted to. The, you know, I can change the picture etc, but as far as structure and layout and, and the bits and bobs that I want to go in, I haven't got that freedom. For example, I can add in a plugin here. I can't add in a plugin that I want of, of real time reviews to come and sink in from Airbnb and booking and Facebook and go etc. So again it is very, very limited in the, in what you can present and do. Okay, so this is the, the Casa Fu logify website. Now if we were to compare this to say a WordPress website. So this is a WordPress website. Full disclaimer this is a boostly WordPress website. We've been doing this since 2018. But when the host gets one of our WordPress websites they're in total control of the layout and everything that is coming in here. So Ryan Luca, the founder of Luke Stays, wanted a video to show his IPRAC Trust certificate. You can do that. He also wanted to break down not only the, the property highlights, so the, the highlights of the business, but he also wanted a section on the benefits of booking direct. And again you do not get the opportunity to do that with a PMS logify website. So again how are we meant to convince the guest to book direct with us instead of booking through airbnb etc, you get to do so with one of these. You also get to add in these FAQs as many call to action prompts as you want. And again this is the real time reviews coming in from Airbnb, Facebook and Google etc. So these are, these are some of the benefits that you get. And again, this is one in Myrtle Beach. Nice video, nice map. Etc. So one of the, one of the big pain points, like I say that we've been doing one of the pain points that we have been Noticing is that the WordPress website clients how we're having to waste a lot of time by having to duplicate everything from their PMS over to their boostly website. So this is why one of the big things that we've been doing this year is solving that problem. So now with a with these boostly websites that you see, these do sync directly thanks to the power of API, straight and directly into the pms. So Alpine Lodging, Myrtle beach, they use hostfully, Luke Stays uses uplifting all of this syncs in directly so the host doesn't have to keep repeating itself over and over again. And the also the cool thing is, is that these rates, they sink in directly into the pms. The latest availability sync straight to the pms. And it also means that you can actually make a booking. Now 99% of the booking can get made on the boostly website. So so again these free websites, they may sound tempting because they are free, but if you really want to start increasing your direct bookings and have total control, then you need to have a WordPress website. Don't go square, don't go wix or anything like that. Get a WordPress website. And if you want to cut out a lot of the FAF and you want the experts to do it, we are the market leaders in web design for hospitality businesses, then please do get in contact Boostly B o o s t-l y.co.uk WC and I'm sure my lovely video editor will have a nice little link somewhere along here that you can go to to click on that. So again, this video was purely a case of me trying to figure out how can we can amend the website. But it's obviously limited in what we can do with logify because the good news is is that very soon Tim and your neck are going to be moving PMS to another one. And the beauty of that is that we will be able to then help them with a website Q4 of this year, which is really exciting. So this video was just a case of breaking down what we're doing as as you know, I'm helping casa for you to fill out and get some bookings in an apartment that are finding tricky to do. So this quick video was just to show you the limitations of a of a free PMS website. And again, if you're a host who is looking to break free looking to get a website, then please do get in touch. I'll be back tomorrow with another podcast episode, another video, another podcast, audio podcast, blog, etc and just documenting a little bit more of what we're doing. But until then, have a great day, a great night, great morning, wherever you are in the world, remember, be proactive, don't be reactive, and I shall speak to you tomorrow.
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