This is why you need a direct booking website

I recently tuned in to a live.

Webinar with StayFi and future Stay and.

I was really interested in a stat that came up and I'm going to read it here now.

So in a recent survey of 4,600.

Short term rental owners and operators, less than 25% use a direct booking website to advertise their properties. Less than 25%, which, which is madness. 4600. And again, I've been doing some podcasts recently where I've talked about the surveys that I've been doing, but that one really hit home and this is why it's so important to make sure you get a direct booking website. And again, the elephant in the room is that we do boostly websites. We do websites that work, we have websites that help because I know the importance of a website. A website is so, so much important to your business and to your potential guests because it builds that trust element. With a website, you show that you are a brand, you are a business. They show that you are trusted. It shows that you're not by a fly, by a night, or a scammer that is looking to rip off a potential guest. A website can also do so much more. It can separate you from everybody else in your town, your city or your state. I've said this a lot of times that you could have a hundred properties on one street in a town or a city, wherever you are, they could have all the same bedding, they could have all the same breakfast, they could have exactly the same wallpaper and decoration. But at the end of the day, what makes you different from everybody else is you. It's your personality. It's how you put that stamp across, it's how you showcase you, your team and your personality. And a website is a great way to do this with an about us where you can show your face, show a picture of you, you and your family, or you and your team, or you and your guests and then just really put your personality on it and you get that with a website.

I want to take a quick break from today's show to talk about something that's been on my mind for a.

While now and why it's important that.

Everybody acts on this as soon as possible. In 2016, Joe Gebbia, who is the co founder of Airbnb, spoke on a TED Talk stage about how Airbnb designs for trust. As a company, their main focus on the early years of their growth was trust. They had to convince both guests and hosts to be on their platform. Now they are one of the Biggest OTA providers in the world and they have based everything on trust. The core focus for every host and property manager who wants to increase their direct bookings this year should be on trust. When you try and take a guest off the OTAs, the trust is reduced. If you can make a future potential guest trust to book with you directly, then you are going to come out the end of this year. When joining, the question is how do you build that trust? IPRAC is a globally recognized accreditation and certification service operating with thousands of members around the globe, including some of the biggest brands. When IPRAC reached out and said they wanted to partner with Boostly, it was a no brainer. I asked if they could offer something never been done before for the community. They were kind enough to go away and think of an amazing offer. And here's what I've got for you today. When you go to iPhone prac.com you can see they've got yearly memberships. An average membership is around about 200 pounds which is $250 a year. They have said that for every Boostly member that wants to sign up to IPRAC they will get two years for the price of one. That works out at just under $10 a month, which is a bargain. To get this offer you have to email in so you're going to email sandra-prac.com I'll spell that for you. S A N D r a I hyphen p r a c dot com. When you email, make sure you include the code boostly2022.

I just want to say thank you.

To Chris Marn of IPRAC for making this happen.

Please make sure that you reach out.

To IPRAC directly and get the trust factor back into your business. Now let's get back on with the show.

So to me to see that, you know, 4625% of them, so there's a large chunk of that, over a thousand people are not currently using a website to promote their properties. That is really worrying to me because at the end of the day in this industry we've got so many people coming into it. There's so many people coming into this industry right now and it's not like 2019 where you could literally throw your pitches on a, on a website where.

It'S Airbnb, VRBO or booking.com and you.

Could be pretty much guaranteed to bring in revenue now because there's so many people in it because it's coming so saturated. You've got to really nail down who is your niche, who is your customer avatar and then you've got to be.

Able to speak to them.

And the best way to do that is with a direct booking website. Now, if you want to find out more about this and if you're thinking, well, I don't know where to start, I don't know where to go, I don't know where to begin, go and check out the book. The book Direct Playbook is on Amazon, it's on Kindle, it's on Audible, it's on Print. However you consume your content, it is there for you. 240 pages of absolute direct booking gold. It's 10 years of my work, all in this book and it's designed to help you wherever you are in the world. So I really hope if I watch the Same webinar in 2023, that number of less than 25% is actually more. 50, 50. We've got a lot of people who are utilizing a direct booking website to promote your business. Now I want to throw it over to you and this is why I want to give you a little bit of promo as well as also asking a question. It's what I love to do in my podcast episodes. I love to throw the question over to you. So please do get involved in the comments below. Drop a link to your website.

So whatever your direct booking website is.

Whether Boostie created it, you created, or someone did it for you, I don't care. Put a link in below. Let's see if we can get some inspiration from other hosts and maybe yet to bite the bullet. Again, the best way of doing this is if we all come together and we communicate in the comments. So whatever you're tuning in on, whatever you're watching this or listening this to, please do jump in the comments and drop in your website, whatever it may be, wherever you are in the world, or whatever your niche is. As always, I'm Mark Simpson, founder of Boostly. Started us in 2016. We've got over 1,500 clients and clients means website content creation or training in the academy and there's over a hundred thousand hosts who have currently downloaded and using the free guides and the things that we've got on the back end. So if you want to find out more, boost.co.uk I really am looking forward to chatting to you in the comments. I'll be around for the next 30 minutes. Wherever you are in the world, thank you so much for stopping by. I'll be back very, very soon with another podcast episode. Until then, stay. Awesome. Let's go and get some direct bookings.