The Secret System That Triples your Bookings

Hi there. What can I get for you when ordering from your favourite fast food restaurant? Can I have a cheeseburger and a milkshake please? You'll typically wait in the drive through lane for an average of 240 seconds. Thank you. This efficiency is in part thanks to the McDonald's brothers who introduced something called the Speedy Service system back in the 1940s. So they used assembly line processes resulting in faster service and consistent quality. Now, businesses across various industries have adopted system and process approaches. In my own business, we use customer relationship management software to track deals and manage customer details. And we use automation tools to streamline our processes, making them quicker and less time consuming. However, this approach is rarely seen in the short term rental market. Most short term rental owners I work with manage bookings on Excel sheets, calendars and try to keep everything in their heads. It's a big part of why they feel so overwhelmed. The good news is there are simple processes and systems that any short term rental owner can quickly implement, giving you an advantage over 99% of the competition. Using our STR case studies, I'll show you precisely how. There are four key areas that I like to prioritize when working with a short term rental host. Number one, property management software systems, which is pms. Two, Customer relationship management systems, automation and pricing. If we can optimize these four areas, they're well on their way to running a successful and profitable portfolio. Let me demonstrate how I improved each one of those with Justina and Cuny's portfolios. If discussing systems and processes isn't your idea of exciting content, just remember we're talking about potential savings in the thousands of pounds of so it's definitely worthwhile sticking around. First up, Justyna and her property management system. Justyna did have the right idea. She was already using some systems, but by our own admission it was far from optimized. I have had a PMS system, I had CRM system. I've used Zapier in the process as well to get all the systems stuck in together. However, I haven't used it to its full capacity. Now a pms, if you didn't know, stands for property management system. So in layman's terms, a property management software tool will become your day to day place to go to run your business. It stores all of your bookings, it stores all of your contacts, but also as well it pushes the data of your availability and your pricing to Airbnb, to VRBO, to booking.com. one of the main things that we talk about is making sure that you're listed everywhere, but when you're listed in more than one place, you the increased chance of getting a double booking heightens. And there's nothing worse than a double booking. So by making sure that you're listed everywhere but it all connects to one central hub is a core essential for every short term rental owner looking to grow. But a PMS is more than just a place to avoid double bookings. It's also a place where you can take payments, so you link it to Stripe. It's a place that you can have your own direct booking website, but it's also a place that you can manually enter a booking. So if I was to come to you via email and ask for a place to stay, you could then take that booking direct and it's all done and powered through a pms. What we did with Justina was we improved and optimized her pms, which was uplisting. So we realized that she was not taking advantage of 80% of uplisting's power. We were able to connect her to Google Vacation Rental Manager, we're able to connect her to vrbo, but we were making sure that everything that was on uplisting and everything that we were able to do, we implemented into her business. We noticed because she wasn't taking full advantage of everything that uplisting offered. Justina wasn't getting the right results, she wasn't able to get more bookings and more visibility because she was only pushing information to Airbnb. She complained about booking.com, but on further investigation, the right information was not being fed to booking.com so what was being resulted with and what was being viewed from a future potential guest who went on booking.com and found her property? It wasn't the right results, it wasn't showing the right pictures, it wasn't showing the right prices, and it wasn't showing the right information, which meant in no bookings. So by taking a step back by rewriting the whole information and making sure the right information was on uplisting, that was then in turn pushed to booking.com it meant that she had the right pictures, was talking to the right guests and the prices were correct as well. And that's what happens when you take the time out to properly implement everything that your property management software offers you. Next, we looked at her CRM, which stands for Customer Relationship Management System. Justina was using folio, which is a very good CRM, but isn't specifically designed for the short term rental world. What we did is we put her Onto the Boostle CRM, which is specifically designed for the accommodation industry, we were able to implement our templates that are designed to turn a looker into a booker that has been created by an expert copywriter. And we were able to plug everything into her business. It was designed around cosy spaces, it was using her language, her terminology, and we were able to plug it into our workflows, automations, systems. Everything was in our CRM already. She just had to personalize it, copy and paste a few things and ready to go. The most important thing what we did with the CRM is we were properly tagging the right guests. Some guests were coming in for business, some guests were coming in for leisure, some guests were family relocations, some guests were staying for one, two, three months. We made sure that every single person in that database in the CRM was properly tagged. So when we sent an email out in the future, we were able to make sure the right person saw that email. For example, we didn't have a business guest getting an email about a leisure event that was coming up in Leeds and vice versa. So when you properly tag the right people with your email CRM, it means you can send the right messages to the right people. And that is exactly what we did with Justina's business. Since Kearney has just one property, our primary focus was on automation and pricing. One of the first things we tackled was setting up an automated messaging sequence for guests covering everything from the moment they booked to their arrival and even post checkout. We did this because when a guest makes a booking with you, they are wanting to find out more information about your business, wanting to find out more information about the property that they're going to be staying in. And they also want to find out more about the location that they're going to be visiting. So what we did is we spent a moment to work out this automation messaging sequence so that when a guest books instantly, they're getting more information about the property. We also added in a Google form which we're able to gather more of the guest details, find out why they're coming, what they're celebrating, but the guest as well. From their benefit, they were able to find out check in times how to gain access. They were also able to figure out where they were in relation to Disneyland to Universal Studios and our top recommendation on places to eat in the area. The software that we used was simple. We used and tapped into what the property management software tool was providing. CUNY uses guesty for hosts and they have an automated messenger sequence built in, so we didn't even have to use a third party tool, which was a massive win. What we also did is as well is we tapped into Google forms to create a free survey. So we were able to find out exactly what the guests were looking for in terms of a booking, what they were doing when they were staying and what they were celebrating. The final thing that we did with Kearney and his messaging sequence was have a post checkout message. The post checkout message was designed to do two things. Number one was to ask for a review. We find that the hosts that ask for a review, I'm more likely to get one instead of just relying on the automated messaging that maybe Airbnb or VRBO or booking.com send. So we asked for a review. And not only do we ask for a review, we asked for their feedback, their honest feedback. How could we be better? Could we do something different than what they were expecting? How did we present ourselves online and what was the outcome of it? The second thing that we asked for was a referral. So if they truly had a good stay, all we asked them was to tell their friends and families. They can tell them on social media, they can tell them offline in the school playground, or any of the above. We also dangled the carrot. We said, if you leave a review and if you refer us and if somebody books on the back of your referral, then we will give you X in the future. And X could be Amazon vouchers, free stay, or any of the above. That X is for you to decide what you want to do. The result was fantastic. Cuny had his first ever direct booking on the back of a referral. A family member of somebody that was staying with us was looking to come to Orlando during spring break and they booked on back of that referral. The reviews went through the roof. They have got over 20 reviews that are five stars now. And as we all know, on Airbnb, as soon as you hit 20 reviews that are five stars, you get seen by more people because they're pushing your listing over everybody else. Next, we examined his pricing strategy. When we first met Kearney, he wasn't tapping into any dynamic pricing. He was looking at what others were doing on the Airbnb platform and he was mirroring this. Now, the problem with this is that he's being far too reactive and he was relying on the fact that his competition in the area were pricing experts, which they weren't. With Cuny, we used a dynamic pricing software tool called Price Labs, because if you're not Using dynamic pricing and CUNY wasn't, you're leaving money on the table. These pricing software tools like Price Labs use data, they use AI. They look at all of the pricing variables that will make sure that the price that you're getting is the best price for your property. The benefits is that Kearney saw instant results. He was able to identify key dates in the calendar that he could put his prices up. And also as well, it was able to identify slow dates so that he could maybe lower the rates, which meant that he would get the booking over other people in the area. So the big results for him, higher occupancy, more revenue per booking, which meant that he could then reinvest that extra profit back into his business. And we'll talk about that later. For Justina, we looked at several different pricing options. Andrew Kitchell, founder of Wheelhouse, was very grateful in giving up his time to have a zoom call with Justina and talk to her about the importance of dynamic pricing. We'll give Justina our platform for free. I'll personally coach her through it. Teach, like if you wanted to learn about revenue management or dynamic pricing, like, we would teach you all the things. In the end, she went with Price Labs because it's what worked best with her uplifting pms. Justina's problem with pricing was very similar to Kearney. She was looking at what others were doing and was pricing according to that. When you do that, you are setting yourself up to fail. Please, please do not look at what others are doing. Instead, tap into the software and this technology and leave it to the experts. She was able to raise her prices and was able to ask for more per booking than anybody else in her area. And the best thing about Price Labs and the best thing about dynamic pricing is that you can literally put it in automation. You can set your rule set, you can set your highest and lowest variable and the price you want it to be, and then you can let Price Labs do the rest. And that is what happened with Justina. She was able to let go of pricing. She was able to trust this software to do the work and it delivered the results for her was more money per booking, which meant that she had more revenue, but means that she could add more properties to her portfolio. But also as well, she was able to expand on her business model again. We'll talk about that later. Kearney also benefited from a fantastic addition, a digital guidebook using touchday. This handy tool allowed guests to access essential information without constantly messaging Kearney. This not only improved the guest experience, but also gave our host more free time. Lots of guests asked the same questions. You can go right now into your inbox, whether it's on Airbnb or in your emails, and you'll be able to find all of the questions that your guests are asking. And I guarantee you there's 20% of questions that are being asked 80% of the time. To help you alleviate more time in your day, you can put the questions and answers to those questions in a digital guidebook. And when you see a guest asking a question, you can reply back saying, hey, I will 100% answer this, but did you know that we've got a full FAQ on our digital guidebook and send them the link. The more times you do this, you're training your guests to to just go to your digital guidebook. And another benefit of a digital guidebook is that you can put in your recommended places to eat, to visit and to go and check out. The best thing about this is that when your guest is looking to book a stay with you, you're able to create for them their experience, their stay with you, and they'll love you for it even more. And you're giving yourself more reasons to get that five star review because to the guests it looks like you really care about them and their stay. And you get all of that from a digital guidebook. Quick word on guidebooks in your properties. If you've got one of these, which a more traditional printed one, please get rid of them. The reason being is that number one, they can easily go out of date. Number two, they can get coffee stains on there or rips and people not taking care of them. And number three, if you're going to have to come and change it, you're going to have to physically come into the property or get a member of staff to come into the property, you're going to have to print out new sheets to put in and it's a waste of time and resources and it's not good on the environment. Instead, having a digital guidebook means that you can update it from wherever you are in the world. You can update it in a matter of seconds and it means as well it's good for the environment. Switch to the digital Digital Guidebook and Touchdate is my 100% recommendation of the company to go with. Finally, for both properties, we looked at the data provided by airdna. I had the privilege of speaking with the VP of Research of airdna on my Boostie podcast, spend my day looking at data and helping our clients understand how to best use that data to help inform their business. There, he gave us an in depth look at the product's backend and the dashboard. If you'd like to explore this topic further, which I highly recommend as this episode received great feedback, you can find the link to the episode below the video. But in a nutshell, airdna is going to become your next best friend in your investment journey. Before you go and buy that next property or bought before you go and invest in a new location, you are able to see other properties in the area, the average daily rate adr. You'll be able to see the demand for that property, but you'll also be able to narrow it down based on the amount of bedrooms. You'll be able to narrow it down on location and the amenities that they offer. There is no need to invest blindly with software and solutions like Air DNA. You get a head start and it just means now when you're looking to invest in a new location or in a new property, you can find out all the information that you could possibly need that will give you all of the confidence that you're whatever you're putting your money into is going to get you the highest return of investment. Investment the way we used Air DNA in this case study was to combine it with the data we were getting from Price Labs. So we didn't just rely on one place to get our data, we combined it with Air DNA and that's how we were able to come up with our pricing strategy that resulted in more revenue per booking, a higher average daily rate, and end of the day higher P Ls so we can intake that extra money that was coming into the business and reinvest it into the property in Orlando and Justina's business in the uk. I understand that systems and processes may not seem very exciting. However, there's a good reason why the biggest and most successful businesses prioritize them above almost everything else. Because when you commit to making small improvements every day, you'll gradually enhance your business and start attracting more bookings, just like Justina and Kearney did. If you need assistance and in implementing systems and processes in your own business, remember that you can request a personalized Insights report using the link below the video. Alternatively, feel free to leave a comment and we'll have someone reach out to help you get started.