This Tool will grow your direct bookings

Welcome back everyone to the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives you the listener, the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence so you can go out there and get yourself more direct bookings. Today we've got the Spotlight series and this is where we focus on people services products that can help you as a host. My name is Liam Carolan and we're talking all about direct bookings today with our very special guest, we've got Chris Walker. He's the CEO of Direct Booking Tools. And you can go and see directbookandtools.com as if you want to see their website. And it's a tool which basically is aimed to really help your guests make the right decision and come a book direct with you. So I'm not going to give more away than that. Let's dive into it. Welcome along, Chris.

Thank you, Liam. Pleasure being here. Thanks for having me.

Whereabouts in the world are you at the moment and where's the business based?

We're located in a rough place called Hilton Head, South Carolina. It's, it's actually a beautiful resort community in the States. Actually just became named number one resort island of the US So it's not a bad spot to be Nice.

Nice. And I mean, obviously I, I've had a look at the, the business and I'm excited for people to understand what it is and how it can help them. But from the top, if you give us like the elevator pitch, what is direct book booking tools?

It's quite simple actually. It's something that's been done in the, in the hotel industry for about 10, 12 years now. When they came out with the price comparisons for room nights. No one's been able to do this for the vacation rental industry. So we spent about 18, 24 months in development and came up with a way to where we could show the public the price differentials between booking direct versus the OTAs. As you can see behind me, that's a direct pricing that was generated on the product. It shows up on the property manager's website, the traveler, when they look to book any particular property for any given date range, this product goes out, gets that direct total price out the door pricing for the, for the property and shows it to the public. It's just price transparency is what it's all about.

Nice. Nice. Now I'm going to ask some more questions about how that works. Now obviously the listener will understand kind of what, what it is, but can you give us a history of the business? Why, why does this matter to you? Why does direct bookings matter to you as an individual?

Well, direct bookings are very valuable in and of themselves. You know, you get, obviously you get direct communication, you get to set proper expectations. You get to actually review the guests before they book or make sure that they're the proper guests that you're looking for. You know, we have our own restrictions in our own company that, you know, we don't like particular events and things happening in our properties. And we have some very large properties where that's very advantageous to do. However, we have to turn those people away because that's not the type of clientele that we cater to. So that type of control is very important. And you don't have that control with OTA bookings a lot of times, and sometimes you have to cancel those. And of course, everybody knows we get dinged for that even more so with some of the new rules that are just rolling out with one of the platforms who I failed to mention at this time, but we'll actually get monetary, you know, dinged on that from. From canceling those reservations. So it's important to have control of your business so that you can control the destiny. You're not beholden to one source of income. We're proponents to some degree of the OTAs. We think that they certainly have done a lot of good for the economy or for the market of the vacation rental industry. It has absolutely exploded due to their cash investments into the marketing and things that they've done. But, you know, and they're good partners to have. But they also, you know, should. You should control your destiny. And so, so that's really what it's about, is being able to control how you run your business and not be holding to someone else's the way they would like for you to run your business.

We completely agree with that. And you know, here at Boostly, we are all about direct bookings, which is why Mark Simpson wrote the the Book Direct Playbook, available on Amazon for anyone listening. But we are literally, we live and breathe direct book. And so can you take me back? What, what's the history of the company? How did this, how did the concept come around?

Well, you know, as being in the industry, started selling real estate in 03 and then opened up a vacation rental company in 07 and have just been in the business and my partner in crime, if you will. Josh is an IT guy of one of the brightest individuals in the IT world. He sees the opportunities that are out there. And so he and I, after working together for about 10 years off and on and doing things. We came together about two and a half years ago and started brainstorming on some ideas and we've, you know, this is brought to you by Booking Insights because Booking Insights has, is a bigger parent company with a lot more things that we're going to bring to market. This was the first product that we're bringing to market because one, it's, it's, it's simple, it's needed, it's fast to install, it's immediately responsive as soon as it goes on a website. So it's, it has an immediate impact for property managers and, and growing their direct bookings, improving their conversion rates on their websites. So you know, we started with this product because it's, it's low barrier of entry and it's an immediate impact and that's what we've been working on, you know, is rolling out this particular product. We've only been in sales for about nine months now actually.

Really? Wow. What's been the biggest challenge so far in, in regards to growing this product?

You know, actually getting in touch, getting in front of the decisions makers. You know, the companies, as they grow, they get larger, they get gatekeepers in front of you. You can't get past the front desk people and that kind of thing. I mean, but that's with any business I think you've got to get with the decision maker. And those people are typically higher up the food chain and they're harder to get a hold of. But interesting enough, we've got a little twist to that is for vacation for reservationists. They can show this product to their clients that are calling in or emailing in and they can send them this product to those people and convince them that they have the best price in the market. It also prevents them from having to offer features for discounting because perception is reality. It looks like you're already discounting your rate to the, to the guest. So we're helping them convert more sales and by doing that they get excited so they move us up the food chain. So it, it works out pretty well that way.

Cool. And just turn that question around slightly. What's been the biggest success then? Like you say, it's only been nine months. What's been the biggest success so far and what are you excited about?

You know, the greatest is the impact that it's having on the property managers websites. It's the conversion rate. The industry average, believe it or not, is 0.52% conversion rate. That means you need about 200 people to come to your website. To get one booking. And I don't think, I think if you interviewed 100 property managers, 90% of them probably wouldn't have a clue with their conversion website conversion rate is because, you know, as a, as a property manager and a fast food and beverage guy, we're all hospitality people. We just love to deliver a great experience. A lot of us don't delve into those, those, those nuances and those facts that really are impactful to what's happening with your business. And when we can take the industry average of 0.52% and move it up to 1.2%, we've cut your need for, for number of people to come to your website to 80. And so now do you reduce your marketing and, and take that as a, as you know, as a savings or do you keep your marketing going and actually end up with more bookings because you're converting more clients instead of coming into your site? The other beautiful thing is, you know, my, my own company, we went from 23% direct bookings to 65% direct bookings. I mean, just a massive change. And I didn't change anything intentionally on my own website because I wanted to see what this was all about because, you know, we think it's a great product, but we need the numbers to be able to tell us that it is a great product. And We've got about 65 companies on the platform, never lost a single client. And everybody who's on it is very, very happy with the product, seeing amazing returns from, from having this installed on their, on their platform. So that's just exciting in of itself. I mean, that's why we built this, because we knew it would be impactful. And you know, that's, that's what, that's what gets us out of bed every morning because we just love what we're doing.

Quick break from the podcast to let you know that the two boostly books that we brought out, the book Direct Playbook and the book Direct Blueprint are two of the top rated and the best selling in the hospitality category on Amazon for just two pounds. You can grab both of those books right now. The foundations and the structures that you need to put in place is in the blueprint and then for 101 marketing tactics that is in the Playbook. So go and grab a copy on Amazon now just type in Book Direct Playbook or the Book Direct Blueprint and we'll see you on the other side.

You know, it's really exciting and also it's so human nature isn't it when you're looking for somewhere to book, you go, well, I found a deal, but let's see if I can get it cheaper. And this is exactly what our guests are doing. A lot of the time they're landing usually on the OTA because the OTA has got this big budget for advertising, but then they're also looking for the best value deal. And the thing is, when they've ended up on your website, on, you know, your hospitality website, that's where you want them to stay, you want their journey to stop there and they don't need to go to the next OTA or the next OTA after that to really figure out the price. And so really what your tool is doing is keeping them on the site because then they don't have to go from, you know, where they are once they're on the hospitality website to the other places they can see everything quite clearly, which is really cool. So let's talk more about how it actually works, because this, you've mentioned that I'll work on websites. So as a host, every time I think about websites, I'm a host first. Although I've got some tech knowledge. My first thought is, well, what's involved? How much work and effort do I need to degree in it to be able to install it or how does it work, the installation and that side of things as a host.

Right, thank you. And back to your previous point, we call it stickiness of cart. It keeps people on your website. If you have a product that they're willing to buy, they're going to stay on your site until they find it and they're going to buy with you. If you don't match their demographic of their property, you don't have a six bedroom house and that's what they're looking for. Well, they're going to leave. You just didn't offer what they were looking to buy. But, but yeah, this definitely keeps people on your website. So that's very important. But the beautiful thing is I'm not the tech guru either. Josh, my partner is. And again, being a business owner and owning multiple businesses, the last thing you want is to engage into a long onboarding process or conversion of any technology because it's just time consuming and everybody's so busy. I mean, absolutely. Going as wide open as we can. And so the beautiful thing about this is, and we worked on this very, very hard is that literally it takes the property manager about 10 minutes to get us the information that we need. We go back, build the product, we simply send Them an email with two lines of script that goes on the footer of their website which they send off to their, to their booking engine provider, put it on the foot of their website and it's done. It is absolutely done. They're up and running instantly. It's, it's already working on their website and then we collect forward booking demand data on the back end. So in two weeks or four weeks down the road they can go look at the demand that's actually taking place on their website and see what the people are looking to book, you know, into the future. That's a piece of the product that we haven't even mentioned. I mean this is the forward facing tool. But you know, to your point, installation, simple, easy, it's not a, it's not a big lift, it's not complicated. It's almost so simple. It's like really, you know, I mean that's what some people, you know, say to us. And yes, we built it that way because we understand time is money for everybody and if something's hard and difficult and arduous that they just don't want to mess with it because they just don't have the time for it with.

The website side of things. So I'm thinking WordPress. But will it work for things like WIX Squared, space, stuff like that, or is it got to be a WordPress website?

No, sir, any website that you come up with, any booking engine that derives a total price quote on that booking engine. So you know, as long as you're, as long as you have a booking engine that shows you, you know, ABC street for these dates is total price, then we can work with it for the most part. There's, there's very, the market we can't work with. But it doesn't have to do with the, the website itself. It has to do with the PMS on the back end. And I don't want to throw anybody on the bus but, but, so we can work with 97 of websites out there.

That's cool. That's cool. And just talking about PMS's, if I've got a PMS, it's still something which could, could work with your product. Is that right? Does it depend on the pms? I guess.

Well, the idea is it's the website. So as long as the website is generating a total price, we can typically be able to work with the product. Okay, so doesn't matter which PMS you're working with, it will develop and work with the product.

That's amazing. And of course I've got to mention obviously we at Boostly do website development and stuff like that. It would work with a boostly website as well. So if you're listening to this and you've got a Boostly website then by all means you know that, that should work with that. Am I right in saying that Chris?

Absolutely. In fact we're helping you guys out with Mark and his 3.0 platform where we're, we're a standard supplier of that platform and every, everybody who goes to a 3.0 website will get this product on their site.

Amazing. I'm so excited about that because that's such a bonus that is, isn't it? For, for everything. So I mean when it comes down to the product it seems like a no brainer to me. This is something which is, is, is going to happen. What, what's the plan for this company in the future? Is there is that you mentioned as part of a parent company and things like that. What does the future look like for direct booking tools?

Right. So we, you know every day we're further developing the product. You know, you know I can show people a demo of the product even just two weeks ago we came out with the, the checkout page slide in. So on the checkout page once a person goes to book a property there's going to be a slide in. It says you saved so many dollars for booking direct. So again we're trying to prevent card abandonment in that scenario. We have the data dashboards in the back end that we're constantly updating. We're about to go to. We're not API connected now. We, we intentionally went script connected because we could work with anybody. Instantly we're going to start to go API connected. That way we can further delve into our data dashboards and be able to report even more information back to the property manager about their actual bookings and the conversion rates and things. I mean the website conversion we got. But, but you know there's things that we can't get a hold of until we are API connected. And we didn't need that. We still don't really need it. The product still works. We're just trying to develop our back end data analytics to a further extent to give them greater insights into their, into their, their business. We do have some other things that are in the pipe but I, I can't quite open up the can of worms on those yet because they, they, they are, they're pretty cool, they're pretty neat and, but I just don't want to, to to open that, that box just yet.

So that's cool. You've left us on a cliffhanger there. There's. I remember an old saying, saying, never name the target until the arrow lands. And so if there are things in, in the plan, then obviously once, once you know the arrows there, then, then talk about them.

If you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boostly and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only your niche, but could be in your location as well. Boostly has helped over 2000 hospitality businesses all over the world increase their direct bookings. And if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to boostly. B o-ostly.co.uk call and booking an appointment with one of our sales team.

That leaves us with what, what is. You've been a hospitality owner, you own multiple businesses. What is your top tip for hosts? So there'll be a host listening to this, just thinking, well, you know, obviously getting the direct booking tool on the website is one. Is there anything else around tips of getting direct bookings that you can share with the listener?

Yeah, you know, there's a lot of things. We actually consult with the people that call in and have a demo with us and give them a lot of tips and tricks because it's, it's important that we're helping them succeed in their business. It's just about selling a product and we help them in how they can optimize their OTA listings, how they can little tips and tricks they can do on those sites to, to improve their, their, you know, so that people are finding their website, finding their, their company. Especially for smaller brands that can compete with the larger brands in certain markets, we help give them insights on those, on those tips and tricks and it's really effective because I am a small player in Hilton Head Island. I don't plan to be a big player, but you know, from a ranking standpoint point, you know, it's hard to compete with a larger operation because they obviously have more, more going behind their, their websites and stuff. But we give people a lot of tips and tricks about how to do that and how to circumvent, you know, a little bit. And then, you know, it really comes down to communication is a huge thing with people. You know, there's a lot of Distrust in the market overall. People just have got, you know, to where they just don't trust people as much anymore because of the scams and things that have happened. So communication with your guest is key and certainly providing the services that you say you're going to provide and, and do it well and do it consistently. This product alone, you know, because of the rise in our, our direct bookings, not only did we generate more travel insurance, that's a revenue thing, but we generated more travel insurance, you know, sales versus the OTA selling it. But also, you know, our Google reviews have gone through the roof and that's more validity to your company. So as a small operator, even medium operator, you need those Google reviews to give validation to your company. I think that's very important because people look to reviews for, for, for validation of who you are and what kind of service are you providing. So no better way to see that than in, you know, and what people are writing, you know, especially on Google where it can't be manipulated. It is what it is, right? As far as the reviews, we really try to partner with people and give them a lot of, lot of information and as best we can help them, we still have people call us up after being on the product. Hey, what about this? What about that? We're happy to answer any questions they have and talk things through and even learn things ourselves of what other people are doing.

You know, I'm excited, you know, and you're absolutely right. The testimonials just mean so much is your issue. It's your social proof at the end of the day. So that's how you're going to go out there and convince other people to, to come and book with you. So, I mean, in a second we're going to share how people can get in touch with you. But before we do, Chris, we love to do a couple of just fun, fun questions. So where in the world, if you could have a vacation anywhere, where in the world would you go and why or where have you been and why?

That's interesting now. I didn't think about that, that one. You know, I, I have actually have not been in your neck of the woods, never been over to Europe. So I'd like to go travel the, you know, the European continent and visit. I mean, because there's so much diversity over where you guys live. You know, going from, you know, in the states you travel 300 miles and you say the same thing. In Europe you travel 300 miles and you've gone through six countries. You know, it's you know, kind of crazy that way. So I've never done that and that's on my bucket list. We actually tried to do that prior, well with the pandemic set in, so that put the cabal on that. But we'll, we'll reorganize and come see you guys personally one day.

Oh, well, you'll have a lot of hosts who welcome you with open arms, with your knowledge and, and you know, like, I'm sure you know, a lot of hospitality owners in this neck of the woods. So.

Yeah, we've got 10 countries on the platform now.

Nice.

Sure did.

And another just fun question just put out there. If you could have any superpower, what superpower would you have and why the superpower?

I think my superpower would be to, to. To. To rid of untruths, shall we say? How's that?

I like that.

There's a lot of things in this world today that are getting twisted and manipulated and, and there's a lot of untruth floating around. I just, you know, if we could have a serum to make everybody tell the truth, that'd be a beautiful thing now, wouldn't it?

That's a good answer. I've not, I've not had anybody give me that answer before, so. Yeah, I like that. That's good. Okay, so I'm gonna throw it open now. How can we get in touch with you and, and where should we come and find out more about the services?

Yeah, please do. It's directbookingtools.com if you need to talk to me directly. If you'd like to. It's 843-816-1640. If I don't want to answer, it's because I'm on the phone. Just leave me a message, I'll get back with you because I'm always on the phone, it seems. But, but yeah, visit our website. Check it out. Please book a demo with this. It takes 20 minutes and we don't over pressure, you know, we're not used car salesman. It is what it is. It's a very powerful tool. It's 30 days free, no obligation. And then it's month to month from thereafter again. We've got over 60 companies on the platform. No one's ever canceled, you know, because it works. It really is having a very positive effect on, on. On property managers flow through, you know, their, their business and that's, that's what it's all about. So it's what's most important.

I'm sure you're Gonna have a lot of people reaching out to you after this, this podcast and we'll put the the website within the show notes. So however you're consuming this, whereas on the podcast or on YouTube, you'll see it somewhere in the show notes. Which leaves us with our final question, Chris. Is there a mantra or a motto that really has served you well and why?

Liam, you keep throwing me out. How about, you know, I really live my life this way? It's do unto others as you have done to you. I just serve my life that way. And I'm a true team player. Whenever it comes to anything that anybody needs to have done or wants to get done or wants to make any type of move in life, I'm always there to help and support. And that's just, you know, that's a beautiful way to live, way I see it.

Thank you very much, Chris. Brilliant. And I'm excited to see what you guys do in the future. I urge you, if you're listening to this podcast or watch on YouTube, go and check out the the website link which is in the comments there. And thank you so much, Chris, for spending your time with us today. Thank you too for listening to the Boostly podcast. We know there's lots of places you can put your attention and I really thank you for putting it with Boostly. If you want to find out more about the Boostly or hospitality, then you can go to the hospitality community Facebook group on Facebook and you can join our community there. It's a free community and if there's anyone who would get value from this, from this broadcast, feel free to share it with a friend as well. So thank you very much and we'll see you on the next episode.