The SECRET Tool That Airbnb Hosts Don’t Want You To Know About!

Hi, everyone.

Welcome to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training, and most importantly, the confidence so you can go out there and get yourselves direct bookings. We've got Arthur from Stay Fi with us today. He's a returning guest. And if you're in hospitality and you don't know about StayFi, where have you been? Stay Fi is one of the best ways to not only get direct bookings, but to market your business. It is. I'd say hospitality is worst kept secret because everybody needs to know about this and it is the best way to get your guests to come back and book. So we're going to be talking today with Arthur about how you go about getting those emails, what mistakes to avoid, and all the things that you can do to make your business stand out from everybody else's business that doesn't take part in email marketing in general. So welcome along, Arthur. Thank you for joining me today.

Yeah, thanks for having me again. Thanks.

So, Arthur, for those who haven't heard of StayFi, can you just give a little teaser as to what it's all about?

Yeah. So StayFi offers a service which I'm sure you have encountered at a coffee shop or an airport or a hotel, where when a guest in a vacation rental logs into the WI Fi or joins the WI FI network, in order to gain access, they have to put some information in what we call a captive portal, which is branded with your company's name and logo. And so that way we collect the name, email, email, phone number of not just the booker of the vacation rental, but everyone staying there, which could be 5, 10, 15, 20 people. And then within StayFi, we also have all the tools you need to go ahead and then follow up with those guests to make sure that they come back and book with you direct for their next day, or refer you to someone else in their network that wants to come and enjoy your vacation rental.

That's really cool. And for people who, in this industry, some will have heard of property management systems, what's the advantage of using, like, StayFi to build an email list compared to these other methods that some of the listeners might already know?

Yeah. So definitely the big difference is, one, we're going to capture data from guests no matter which platform they booked on, whether it's Airbnb, VRBO, booking.com, etc. So we're going to capture that information no matter the OTA they came from. And then, of course, the second and most important advantage is we're going to get after the non booking guest information. So a lot of times the PMS or whatever tools you're using, maybe to get an email today, they they're just focused on the booker. And the unique characteristic of vacation rentals often is that they are large and have very large parties of many, many adults. And we just want to make sure that you're getting brand awareness amongst everyone there, not just the booker. And that's not just great for remarketing in terms of other stays that can also be helpful in terms of upsells getting other helpful trip information in front of the non booking guests like a guest guidebook, so they ask less questions. So there's all sorts of advantages associated with engaging the ENT guest party, not just the booker. And the WI fi is definitely the best entry point to do that because it's something everyone will engage with during the course of the stay.

Is there any kind of examples where you've got where somebody's used StayFi and you've seen a noticeable jump in repeat bookings and particularly direct bookings?

Yeah, of course. You know, we've done a ton of case studies whether it's somebody with just one listing or hundreds, where over time they were growing their direct booking percentage. And not just that, but also their overall occupancy rate. Because the email list is also a great way to advertise nights that maybe are not getting booked through the channels. And that's one of the most important things to emphasize is it's not just about cannibalizing an Airbnb booking with a direct booking. It's also about selling nights that otherwise would have gone unbooked if you're only on third party channels. One that springs to mind is we have a customer in Canada called Cottage Stays. They're a mid sized property manager, you know, between 20 and 40 listings. They already were doing great with direct booking, so in their high season they were already 100% book direct. But what they used the email list for was actually to help push solar season months. Because up there in northern Canada it's very hot in the summer. Not hot, sure it's a little hot temperature wise, but very popular. But in the fall and spring when they're still open, not as booked. And so they leverage the email list to get nights booked in those weeks of the year. So you can think of the email list not just about driving up your direct booking percentage over time, which is obviously important, but think of it as a whole new source of demand that is going to complement channels so that you can increase your overall occupancy rate and get more nights overall booked.

One thing when it comes down to data that people worry about is depending on where they are in the world. And of course, StayFi is available. People will be listening to this in lots of places, the us, the uk, perhaps Europe. One thing they'll be worried about is their local data regulations and are they allowed to collect data and all the stuff to do with privacy and all that stuff. How does StayFi help with this? Is it, is it all legit? Is it all okay for us to be doing this to our guests and collecting the data that we do?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the great reasons why collecting data on the captive portal or like the WI FI splash page works is because we can comply with any local opt in regulation. And by default, when you use StayFi with our own email tool, we are always placing a marketing opt in checkbox on that splash page and making sure that every guest that receives your emails has opted into your marketing program. And that's the most important thing when it comes to email marketing. And then obviously, whenever you send an email through our tool, we include all the unsubscribed links that you're also required to. And so we definitely want our customers to be compliant with email rules and we kind of enforce those. If you do use our email tool so you can't go astray and do something that's not compliant, what's one of.

The common mistakes you see from hosts when sending either their first email or getting email marketing set up in general, and how can they avoid it?

Yeah, I'd say there is definitely some hesitancy of like, oh, if I don't send the perfect thing, I shouldn't send anything at all. I definitely think it's better to do something than nothing. The biggest mistake you can make is to not email at all. And then once you do get around to emailing, your list has gone stale. So you can imagine if you logged in, provided this host with your email and they didn't contact you for nine months, and then out of the blue you got an email, you probably will have forgotten that you opted into their email list. You probably forgot who they are and why they have it. So it's really important that you start emailing right away. We help a lot with that by having automation so you can set up an email in a minute that gets sent. When they log in, you can send another email. Once they check out, you can send an email a month later. Those Automated touch points are great because you set up an email one time and you know it's being sent to everybody on the schedule. But then it's important at some point to layer in a monthly newsletter because you want guests when they are in the book booking kind of time period for their next trip. The most important thing is that they remember to go to your website to look there as well, in addition to going to all the channels, which they're probably going to do. And that's why it's just important you're in their inbox every month so that when they're in that trip planning phase, they remember your brand and want to engage with it and remember the benefits. So that's the other key thing is just making sure you are driving home that value message. Most operators, we find the main value message is booking direct will be less expensive than booking through a channel. So that's the easy basic one. Obviously you can get more sophisticated and offer other types of benefits like free show tickets or you guaranteed early check in, late checkout. There's all sorts of other things we see people do. But the basic one is drive that value money saving message and just doing that repeatedly in every email just so that it clicks with them. You know, they have to see it seven times. Right. So that when they are trip planning they do compare the rate on your site versus the rate through a third party channel.

What would you say is the best time? So somebody who's listening to this at the moment just going, well, I know I need to do this, but I just don't know when, when is the best time to send these emails and what kind of content should we put in there to encourage direct bookings? I know you've, you've mentioned the message which is, you know, it is cheaper direct. What would you say to people who are worried about repeating that message too many times?

Yeah, I mean I think that's one of those things that can just be subtly interlaced. Like on your website it should say that right on the front page there. We have in our kind of standard email template there's always like a little section at the bottom that's like book direct and save that you can customize. Then when it comes to the content outside of that, I definitely think it really comes down to your destination, understanding your calendar and who your guests are. So some easy ones to start with are events in your destination. Whether that's ones that happen every year or there's special occasion events. That's a super easy one. Just figure out Get a calendar of what's happening in your destination and then feature those as they are relevant, kind of like in the appropriate booking window in advance. Another one is if you are a property manager or even someone who owns and operates multiple properties, you can feature specific homes like, like the X home, the Y home, maybe ones that person didn't stay into, or new homes that are joining your portfolio. As you should also include your owners if you're a property manager and a co host into your email newsletter so that they can see, hey, this person is going above and beyond to promote my properties. And then of course availability and discounts is an easy one if you know you have or cancellations is another great one. So if someone cancels and you have a, you know a some somewhat open cancellation policy and they do so X days in advance, then you can feature that opening right there. So you know events, properties, cancellations and discounts and openings, those are kind of a great one to start. And then the other one would be like brand building. So your story that maybe makes more sense in like a sequence like as part of the introduction, once they subscribe a dedicating email to who you are, why you're in hospitality, why you run this property or multiple properties. And then one other one which can be great is if you have other services. So let's say you provide or help arrange services for your guests. That can also be a great thing to emphasize as it may also be a differentiation with a direct booking versus an OTA of just making it easier to fulfill on those types of things for your guests.

Arthur, thank you so much for coming on. If people want to check out Stayfi, where do they go? What's the links to go and check out?

Yeah, so just go to stayfi.com and on stayfi you can sign up for our service. So you don't need to book a demo, you don't have to have a call. Anyone can go to Statefi, create an account and get started. And then of course if you do have questions, you can go to our demo page and book time with our team and get a one on one a tour of the product and help you get started collecting emails and sending more marketing which at the end of the day is going to improve your business, make it more resilient and profitable.

Amazing. So guys, you heard it here first. The new feature for Stayfi. You've heard how to do email marketing, what to send and all of the things that ultimately is going to increase your direct bookings. Big thank you Arthur for coming on the Boostly podcast. I hope we have your back as you're a returning guest this time and we hope to have you back again in the future. And tell us all the new updates. Thanks for listening to this on the Boost Lee Podcast. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.

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