The Secret to Boosting Business in Hospitality: Knowing Your Guests

Hi and welcome to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts all over the world the tools, the tactics, the trainings, most importantly, the confidence to go out there and get more direct bookings. My name is Liam Carolan, I'm Mark Simpson's co host and this is the mini series on the Boostly podcast which goes behind a successful business which you need to know about as a short term host and hospitality owner. So today we are joined by a very special special guest. We've actually got Hannah Oden.

If I pronounce that correctly, it's Auden, but it's fine.

I, I always, I should check before we go live, but yeah, all the way from Super Hog. She is based in the UK and Super Hog is this amazing company which we're going to find out about today, which Bruce Lee, as you know, is all about direct bookings and part of people's worry when it comes down to direct bookings is how do we know who our guest is and if we can trust them ultimately, are they going to be a good guest? So today's episode is all about how Super Hog as a service can help you know, your guest. Let's get started. If you wouldn't mind introducing yourself, obviously your role within the company and really what, what Super Hog does. I know I've given you a bit of a lead up there, but you.

Have, you've told them everything that they need to know. Yeah, so I'm in part of the sales team, Super Hog and I, I guess my job is to entice property managers to buy our service in a nutshell. But obviously I do things like that I'm doing today. So I'm quite well rooted in the industry and like to do webinars and I'm at the conferences and stuff like that. So yeah, and yeah, I've been at Super Hog since, since it started. So Superhog's been around for like four years. So yeah, I've been one of the, I like to call myself one of the OGs, which is some sort of Gen Z language or something, isn't it? An OG person is what I would say. So yeah, I've been, I've been there for, for the full duration of seeing Superhog go from like, you know, the idea to, to what it is now. So yeah, it's been very enjoyable so far.

What is your history? What did you do, I guess before you got into guest verification and the hospitality industry?

Yeah, so I have worked in insurance. So in the insurance industry everyone goes boring for. Since I was 17. I won't tell you how old I am now, but it was a long time ago. And yeah, I just, I, I always, I never. I went to college for a bit, but I was like, I always wanted to work, I always just wanted to make money. So I joined an insurance company and I worked my way up to being a manager there and then I just decided that I wanted to take the leap out of there and do something different. And the opportunity with. Well, it's Guard Hog Technologies is the company in the uk and then we've got Super Hog as well. So it was kind of like a leap because it was local to me down the road. So we've got an office round by where I live, but it was a startup company, as many are in this industry and it was a bit daunting. I was a bit like, shall I shantai join? But I'm really glad that I did. And to me what we do isn't insurance, it's, you know, solutions for, for the industry and it's a completely different industry compared to insurance. Like, like I say, it's not boring. So. So that's what I've done basically before. This is just remained in insurance and that is it.

Let's dive into, into Super Hog. So what problem does it solve and why?

Lots, I would say. So Super Hog prevents bad guests essentially from staying in your properties in all shapes or forms. And I have this conversation with property managers like every time that I'm on a call that, you know, your perception of a bad guest could be anything. It could be a criminal, it could be someone that trashes the place, it could be someone that stays but does a chargeback. There's like so many different reasons why you would say that someone's a bad guess. In fact, we actually had this like chucked around the office the other day, like, what's everyone's interpretation? Everyone was like worried they were going to say like the, you know, give a bad answer. But I don't think there is like one answer for a bad guest. It could be multiple different things. So. So we do that by validating who the guest is in order to prevent damage happening or financial loss happening down that end. So that's kind of like our bread and butter. It's always about prevention. We then also provide a deposit management solution which includes a way that we can monetize damage protection for property managers so we can actually make you money and provide that pot for damage in case you need it, which obviously is something that a lot of property managers come to us for is deposit management. They don't want to do it anymore. They don't want to have to pay the fees to the, to the bank and all that kind of thing. So we take that off of the property manager as well and provide that. And then the most important thing, which I actually think is the most important thing, but I don't think everyone thinks it is, is the big stuff. So what happens when something really does go wrong in your property, like, I don't know, a fire and the guest causes a fire. Like, what have you got in place for that? So we have protection in place for, for the big stuff, I like to call it. That's good. So yeah, that's it.

In summary, let's go with how does it work? So if I'm a host.

Yeah.

What is the process for? How do I stop that guest from, from, from causing problems?

So, yeah, so what we implement is a way of verifying the guest through and we connect. We do that through communication. So we have to, we have to get the guest to do something once they've booked. So essentially what would happen is the guest would book. We would then follow up in some shape or form with a verification link. The guests would know that this is coming to them before, so you would communicate to them properly beforehand because obviously you get pushback otherwise. So we communicate with the guests to get them to verify. We can do that through a manual integration, link their PMS or we have a direct API that some people will build to. And then what happens is the guests would then be going through that verification. They would provide their email, telephone number, address, their id. And then once they're verified or we look at the verification, obviously if they're verified, we give them the green light. If they're not verified, we give you the red light. I was going to. Don't know why I thought about the brown light then I don't know what was thinking.

It could be a brown light. Depends, you know, like how, how much of a situation it is.

I don't know what. Yeah, I don't know what my brain was thinking then. But yeah. So essentially we giving the green light or the red light if the guest is verified or not. And that's us saying, great, we think they're okay. We think you should be confident hosting that guest in that process. We can also, as I said earlier, do deposit management so we can add in a step for the guest to complete, which would include either a deposit, paying a deposit, or a damage waiver fee. And the guests would come to the end of their journey and then we would tell the host that the guest is verified or not on that basis.

How does this work for guests? Is this something which puts off guests from booking in general? How would you answer that?

So, I mean, it's difficult actually to answer in regards to, like, whether guests get put off because we don't see that kind of side of it as a. As providing the service. You know, the property managers see that, but we've never had any feedback from property managers to say, my guests, you know, my occupancy is down considerably because. Because I've implemented super hog. If anything, it's obviously staying the same or getting better for them. But in terms of the guest process, it's, it's very simple and it's. I always say the same thing. It's always about communicating with them first, as long as the guest knows what they're meant to do before they've even booked. So we provide all of this, we provide all the wording and stuff. You know, we wouldn't just allow you to just go off and just make it, you know, make it all up and stick it in your thing and hope for the best. We, you know, have wording that we specifically say, put this in, in your listings on the OTAs or on your website to tell guests what exactly what's expected of them if they book with you. Because the thing is that is going to put off the bad ones. The good ones are going to keep doing it. You know, they're not going to worry about. About having to verify because genuine people, they're booking your property for a holiday, you know, to spend with their family or whatever, they don't mind providing that information. So as long as you're communicating first, great. And then the process of actually doing it takes a couple of minutes. The only thing I think that you would. We do get the occasional pushback on is maybe the ID feature. The. The giving of email addresses and things is just quite a normal thing for people to do online, like when they register on a website and bits like that. But the ID feels like, oh, I'm giving my ID over to someone on the Internet. I mean, everything's secure, we have a proper data protection policy in place and all that kind of stuff.

Thank you so much for answering all of our questions today, Hannah. That has been fantastic to have you on. It's always a pleasure to speak. Was there any questions I missed or any final shares before we bring it to a close?

No, I think you covered everything. Now. It's really enjoyable to speak speak with you today. Thank you.

Thank you Hannah. And thank you too. If you're listening on the Boostly podcast or watching on YouTube, we know there's a lot of places you can put your attention and we thank you for spending that with Boostly. We hope this has been useful for your book and direct journey, and I hope you can now go out there and have some more confidence to get those direct bookings. Thanks for listening.

Having a blast Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee cuz it's so hard and the T is loose leaf making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely.