Utilising Referral Groups & Communities To Boost Bookings

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives host the tools, the tactics, the training, but most importantly, we're going to help you with the confidence to go out there and get more direct bookings. Today we're going to be talking about how you can get more bookings, particularly how you can use referral groups and communities and how you can kind of use those to your advantage as a short term rental host. And the person who's going to help us with that is a short term rental host herself. She's also a recently published best selling co author of the book Hospitable Hosts Too. And I'm just really excited I've spoken to this person on social media. I'm really excited to find out more about her story and the things that she's doing that works well in her business that you can then do in your business as well. So I'll introduce myself first. My name is Liam, I'm Mark's co host and today we're going behind the host with Mel Creel. She's got a company called Beachfront Apartments in Sharkers Rock and we're in South Africa here. So this is going to be a really cool, cool sort of bit of information from somewhere that we don't normally hear from in terms of the host. So I'm really excited today. So without further ado, welcome along Mel. Thank you for joining us today.

Oh, thank you, Liam. Really honored to be here and super excited to catch up with you. Like you said, we've been chatting on social media for a while now and it's really nice to be able to chat in person.

Definitely, definitely. So for those who aren't familiar with yourself, if you can give yourself an introduction, anything you'd like to share and any information about your business that will really help to, to build up the picture of your kind of business in their mind.

Okay. Well, it really started. I'm actually married to a farmer, so we live on a farm and I had a bit of empty knee syndrome as most people do when their children move on to university and ultimately they've actually left the country now in the uk So I was finding it really difficult to sort of find my place again. Needed a sense of purpose and really hospitality really found me. I think like a lot of us, but it's just been the best thing I've ever done. It's just opened doors to new friendships, new business opportunities. It just really has been such an awesome journey. And what's the biggest takeaway for Me so far is just the community that's around it. Like we always say, you know, really are hospitable people right down to our core. So I'm really, really chuffed to be in this industry and it's just, it's overtaken my life. I actually love it. My husband rolls his eye when he sees me chatting to somebody because he knows it's going to be another hour before, you know, I come back. But it's, I can't resist it and I just have grown so much through it and it's been an awesome, awesome time.

Your business itself. So I don't know the location, what is the location like, why have you chosen that and what, what does your short term rental, Is it just the one at the moment or is there, is there a bunch of them that you look after?

I do have five on my website, two of which I own and two I do a profit share with the owner. We are located on the Dolphin coast of South Africa which is kzn. It's warm water, it's not like Cape Town where you swim in the cold water. We've got warm waters, we got a tropical climate so you pretty much can come to us all year round. So we definitely a destination point rather than just a seasonal one. My apartments are fortunately on the beachfront so hence the name. So I'm right in, you know, on the beach side and they direct access to the beach. Very secure, very well located as far as for families and for elderlies and for everybody. It just, it really is a perfect location from that point of view. Flights are easy and we've got a airport that's only 20 minutes away. So we often are on, on route. So people are either flying up from Cape Town, they stay with us and then go to the, the parks, you know, the Kruger park or something like that, or do it the other way around. So we are sort of on that, that route. So from, if you wanted to drive from us to Joburg or Johannesburg would be a six hour drive, from Cape Town would be a longer drive, it's about 20 hours. So I would suggest you would fly there. But we have flights that go out from Durban to all of these different destinations. So we ride in the middle. Put it this way, we sort of halfway between the two.

It's a great time to sort of branch into the, the guest avatar. Who is it that you normally host? Does it tend to be more international travelers and if so where from?

Initially it's been a bit of a mixed bag. Covid did throw A proper curveball for us then I was building up my internationals nasty and majority came from the uk. Australia is another big one and of course Germany, we have quite a big German community where actually I live. My husband's half German. So yeah, we have that as well. Some others as well from Europe, but not a lot. We tend to sort of have that main market. I know there's a lot of focus on attracting more internationals and we would love to have them back. But at the moment post Covid has been a bit slow from that point of view and our own market I think with our exchange rate has also thrown a little bit of a curveball there. So they are actually traveling within South Africa. So we have been busy. It's not that we're quiet at all. We are, you know, coming up to Easter we fully booked but you're on a whole. It's been a bit of a mixed bag. Majority, our own country and Africa. So you'll get people from Zimbabwe, from you know, the rest of Africa coming. But yeah, a bit of a mixed bag.

Let's just dive into your new project which is hospitable too. So for those of you listening into the the podcast or watching on the Facebook live, Hospital Host two, I'm sure you've seen some posts because they are everywhere on Instagram and on social Media. Hospital Host 2 is a project by Jody Sterling which has got some amazing short term rental hosts from all over the world together in one book. This is the second edition and Mel is one of the, the authors in it and this book just went to bestseller in the last two days. Is that correct?

Yeah, it has, yeah, we've done really well with it. It's. It's in three different categories and it's doing well. So yeah, it's been fantastic journey. Honestly the, the people that I've met through this and chatting and it's. I'm seeing them all now in the States and just thinking, oh my gosh, only I could be there like I said to you earlier on. But it's just so you know, when you find somebody that talks the same language, I talk about my tribe and oh, I feel like I found my tribe. It's just so nice to be able to network with the same people who understand the language we speak and our passion behind it. So yeah, just so honored to be in the book.

So how does it feel first of all to be a best selling author and how did it feel to write your chapter?

I think it's really sunk in to be totally honest. I think when I get to be with everybody and hear the excitement and see it, then maybe I actually feel like I'm a bestseller author at the moment. It doesn't quite feel like that. It's all just seems a little bit surreal. I'm getting there. It's the. I know it's written. Yeah.

When.

When you've got the. I'm just holding up to the camera. I don't know if it'll reverse it, but yeah, as soon as you see it in. Yeah, you're in the. You're in the book, which is amazing. And for the people listening, what can they expect from your. Your chapter? What do you share within the book, and what do you want them to take away from. From your story?

I think my chapter was really about finding my sense of purpose, like I mentioned right at the beginning. And from that, I learned that when I first bought the property, I was so concerned about pricing it and understanding the dynamics that I lost focus as to what was important. And I can't quite remember who I heard on the. On one of the podcasts, but he talked about abundance and having abundance mindset. And once I fully absorbed that and got over the hurdle of trying to watch what my neighbor was doing and what everybody else is doing and just looked at what I was doing and then started to reach out and said, I actually reached out to the. The. The other host who's got basically a mirror property of my own, and said, well, look, why don't we chat? Because I kind of saw her on Airbnb and she dropped her rate, and I would drop my rate. And I was, you're playing. And I thought, you know what? This is actually not working. Let's rather talk together. So my chapter talks about networking and reaching out to fellow hosts rather than just concentrating on getting the guest. The guests obviously come to you, and it's important, and it's important to retain them and build that relationship, but it's also important to have a relationship with the hosts and people in your own complex, particularly because we do look out for each other and we do look after each other's guests if the one person isn't there. So it becomes a real collection of minds that think the same way. And also from that, I learned to share my knowledge and not be, not hold it back, because the more I shared, the more they shared. And so it became a much easier transfer of information, and the whole process has been so much more rewarding through it. So I think it's a change of mindset. I think that was my biggest thing that I'd like people to take away, is that you don't have to hold everything to yourself and think you can't share, when actually the opposite is true. And the more you share, the more it comes your way.

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