What Guests Really Want: A Better Hospitality Experience

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome to everybody who is tuning into the Boostly podcast live. This is the second episode in the Disruptor series and today I have got the queen of guest experience with me. But before we dig into all of that, as always, like we always do, let's go and have a little freestyle rap, shall we?

This is a freestyle going off the dumb. Ready for my close up, good looking. Let me tell you, get more bookings. Aw, that'd be nice. Giving me tips, tools and advice. Yeah, you're gonna get em hun. You're gonna sit back, listen to Mark Simpson. Whoa. 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 loose leaf making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you better butt direct.

Mmm.

Here are the words in the podcast.

That's.

And we are live. All right, Ty. And thank you so much for joining us today. This is a busy week, obviously. We are recording this the week of Thanksgiving and we were just having a chat before we came on air about the busy week that is happening all over America. So I appreciate you giving us your time. What we're going to dig in today in today's episode is all about the guest experience. Because we talk about direct bookings, we talk about repeat guests, we talk about marketing, we talk about all of these things. But it's. It boils down to one in my opinion. One very simple aspect is that if your guests have got a five star experience, then they will not only return, but they will be your number one superfan, your number one marketing tool for weeks and months and years to come. And I couldn't think of anybody better to get onto the podcast than you could self because you wear many hats, short term rental host owner, you work for a vendor, which we're going to talk about. And you also now are building up a very good reputation of being the event queen as well. The pre event. What should we call it? How do we call it the pre event party queen? I don't know, but we'll come up with something. So Tyne, if you could just do me a massive favor, just give everybody a little bit of background of yourself about how you got into short term rentals, how you become working at Touch Day and filling everything in between, please.

Hey, thanks so much, Mark. So very, very short version. Back in 2005, I mean we're talking pre Airbnb, so let's go way back. My family got into it. And it became a little bit of a competition. So between my aunt and uncle and my parents and then myself and we all started building purpose building vacation rentals at Table Rock Lake, Branson, Missouri. And fast forward, I just celebrated last week the 15 years to the day of hosting my very, very first guest, which, yeah, that was pretty exciting because to me, you never forget your first. It's the butterflies in your stomach and everything. Is the guest going to really, really enjoy this? Did I do this right? And in those 15 years, I've made a lot of mistakes, a lot of failures, but the good thing is I've learned from them. And we have increased dramatically. So now we own and manage at Branson, Table Rock Lake, it's called Branson Family Retreats. And then also in Missouri Wine country and that's called Missouri House. And then also in there, I started working for Touch Day digital guidebooks and my official title with them is the Queen of Guest Experience. What I love about touchday and I am so die hard using them, is because it makes me look amazing to my guests and it takes off so much stress and the communication flow that I can hand over to them where I'm not doing a whole lot day to day with it. But I'm able to set things up to answer my guest questions before they even ask them down to the very little details where my guests feel cared for. And it sets their expectations to the point I have guests saying, hey, we are ready to leave you a five star review and we haven't even arrived yet.

Which is what everybody, which is what everybody wants. Absolutely everybody wants to have that experience. So let's, let's just sort of break down because what I really wanted to do with yourself on here is to sort of pack away everybody listening with some actionable tips that they could, they could do. Whether they've got a digital guidebook on that. And obviously we've got so many people tuning in and I know whether it's live or if it's going to be on the replay that our Touch Day fans, we have the hospitality community group. And when anybody asks in there, you know, which is the digital guidebook, do you recommend? There's so many mountains of people coming and jumping on Touch Day. So which, which is good. And if you do have a link to your touchday guidebook, why not drop it in the, in the, in the comments below? It always good to see. So when it comes to getting that, let's just call it the five star review before they even arrive. What are Some best practices, best tips that you could recommend to somebody that is even starting out or somebody that's experienced. How could they sort of embed into that sort of guest experience for people, Please.

The biggest thing is your communication flow. So when the guest books, you have got to say thank you. You have got to send your own message. Don't leave it to the OTAs. Don't leave it to, you know, there are other people in the group saying, hey, thanks for booking. It's like, no, no, no, you need to be the host and say thank you so much for booking. We're looking forward to you, to your arrival. And then direct them to where they can find more information. So if you're just starting out and you're not to a digital guidebook yet, you're thinking, okay, we'll just send a big long email, we'll send a canva created PDF, maybe we'll send a word doc, maybe, you know, that's a good place to start. And then later you can upgrade to a digital guidebook. But the most important thing is to start the communication flow and to think about when will guests have a question? How far away is their booking? For instance, I just this weekend visited my son. We met in North Carolina. He's going to college there. And so I booked a place for us to meet up for a couple days. Well, I booked on an ota. It was the, I didn't want to, but it was the only place this property that fit my needs for this time. That's the only place they are available. So I thought, okay, I am going to experience the side as a guest because we need to do that business research and see what's happening. Well, I booked the stay and I got my confirmation and then nothing from the host. And I booked over two weeks out. And I'm thinking, okay, no, thank you. No setting expectations of when I will receive my arrival information, when will I see the door code, when do I receive parking instructions, when do I find out the finer details? Because this is also a listing that was extremely short in their description. It was very basic. It had had basic photos. That's, that's cool. That's all we needed. But between booking and arrival, they were silent and I started to get concerned. I'm like, okay, do they know I'm even coming? Because as we know, you can't count 100% on the OTA. Sometimes there's that minimal glitch of.00,0001%. And as a human, you just want, you want to be Thanked, you want to be welcomed. So finally, 48 hours before arrival, I received a message on the platform from the guest. It was long, poorly formatted. I had to really dig through the information to find okay, how do I get into the house. And then after that point from arrival on the host was amazing in their communication. So as a first time host or someone who hasn't been doing it very long, yeah you might think okay, in, in house, in state communication we got to nail this. Yeah, you do. But you also have to nail the pre communication that time between booking and arrival. And I think that is the biggest tip. Whether you decide to do this manually or you decide to let Touchstay take care of it for you with our memo proper these with our memo communication flow or with your, your PMS system. There's different ways to do it but it is so, so important to do because as a first timer, guess what I did? I did manual and I'd forget and then my guest would call me as they're standing on my front porch saying hey Tyen, what's our door code? We can't get in. So then that means sending them out for pizza and making things right.

So yeah, we've been there, done that. I would definitely was, was guilty of doing it all ourselves and forgetting to do things. And I feel like there's a nice little mix here between automation and personal. There's definitely, there's definitely some elements that would be lovely to do a personal touch. I talk about it a lot about what we started to do. Our business was 24 hours after a guest had booked with at least somebody would drop a call in. If you're time poor and you don't have the time to do about even, you know, just picking the, picking the phone up, sending a voice note, you know, we're very lucky that we do still get access to the phone number if they book for an ota. So take full, take full use of that. But let's set the scenario then. So we've got a host who's got maybe one property and they've got a property management software tool, whatever that may be. And they have just started using touchday and they're going right, I want to make sure that we don't leave it to the scenario that you're talking about. So it's 48 hours out from the point of arrival because that is far too late. 100% what is a nice mix.

So Mark, just to throw in there, I don't know if you saw VRBO last week sent an email out saying if you don't get the guest arrival information to your guests before 72 hours before arrival, you could be delisted. That is how important it is that VRBO has sent this out and pointed this out. Hmm.

So let's. Okay, let's play on that then. So let's just say that at the moment you're a host and you're currently only doing the foyer just like the host. Wait, where you stayed at the weekend. How would you combat that? How would you fix that from a, from, from a sort of guest experience, from a host point of view?

So the simplest thing is to set up an automated message and you can do this whether it's through your property management system. You can do this if you're only on airport messages. And say when a booking comes in, it replies with hi, guest name. And you can put in that short code so that it puts in the guest name. The personalization. Always important to say the guest name and say thank you for booking. And here's when to expect xyz. And XYZ is going to be your door code, your arrival instructions, the parking information, the WI FI code. And that could be. Here's a link to your digital guidebook with touch day. It could be you'll get it 48 hours before arrival. Expect that email at that point. But the important thing is, is to set the expectations. Because unmatched expectations are the death of marriages, businesses, friendships, movies and those five star reviews.

And I like how you pointed about the thank you. I think the thank you is, is so important. I feel like it's something that is easily forgotten. And it's so easy when you know, if you've been doing this for a couple of years and you know you've seen hundreds and hundreds of guests, it's very easy to forget the thank you. But that you've got to always remember that that guest who's booking with you, this may be your 1000th guest, but it's the first time that they're staying with you, it's the third time that they've experienced you. It could be the first time that they've experienced your local area. And I believe that setting off on the nice touch on the right with a thank you goes, goes a long way.

Yeah. It's not only manners, it's also the point of the love languages. So if your guest has a love language of words, of affirmation and you don't say thank you, oh, that is a big black mark against you right away. Just from their Personality and the way they're made. So really think about. Absolutely. If you're going to answer a guest question, sometimes what I do and I put, okay, this is the answer to my question. And then I go back to the top and say thank you for messaging. Even if it's something where I have to say the guests, no, I always, always thank them no matter what.

Love languages. I like that. I've written that down. There's some, there's some really effective little words that you can drop in throughout the guest experience that will nudge them towards that five star stay. Danny from Optimize My B and B. Here's a really cool template in his book that you can sort of go and read and check how he sort of pretty much guarantees a five star review before people check in by the words that he uses. But those, that little thank you is, is very important. And another thing that I picked up as well is with the, with the name, the personality, the personalization. So for those that don't know what a, like a merge tag is or something like, can you just sort of simply explain the power of saying somebody's name? But also as well, how to easily do it maybe within the property management software tool or the digital guidebook or just doing it manually. Can you talk to like the power of that, please?

So if you go to Louis Vuitton, I've never been there yet, but I plan to go there one day. But the thing is, is Louis Vuitton, they use your name. You go to a really nice luxury resort, they use your name no matter what. I mean. So if you go back to our podcast, the guest cast with Andy and I, and to the very first episode with Alyssa Cincad and she talks about this experience specifically. And these are high end luxury places doing that one simple thing that we can all do because everybody loves to hear their own names. Think about all the road trips you do or gift stores you go to. What's the most popular gift? It's the one with the name. I mean, you sit there and you look for a little keychain with your name on it. You look for a mug with your name on it to give a gift or for yourself as a souvenir. Your own name is the sweetest thing to your own ears. So why are we not using that as host? Don't say hey guest, it's hey Mark. I'm looking forward to hosting you soon. We're looking forward to your arrival. So when you're using a PMS or even the Airbnb or with touchday digital guidebooks. Those merge codes or short codes is just a simple piece of code that pulls information from the booking. So I can say hi and then short code, first name and then I can go on with my message. Thank you so much for booking shortcode my property and this way I can write a single message that is pertaining to all my properties and then the system automatically drops in the correct information where it's needed. This way I can personalize a message while automating it as well and then putting my brand voice into it.

I just want to quickly touch upon the guest cast. This is obviously Touch Days podcast and I'm a big fan and I love how it is laid out and done. It's done so different to most and I got to give a very special message to Hannah Gardiner who we borrowed the vocal skills for the upcoming book, which is the book Direct Blueprint. We've been working with Hannah over the last week and we've just finalized the audio version and it is sounding amazing. So thank you very much for, for borrowing Hannah to the cause because it is, it is lovely. She's got such a nice voice. So yeah, please go check out the guest cast. I did an episode way back when and I just love how it's always put together. I love the, the experience of it. So do go and check it out on all your favorite players. Spotify seems to be the number one podcast player at the moment, so go check it out on there. It's everywhere. So lovely stuff. And yeah, the name again, bringing it back to it. We've got some really cool little things that people can pick out of this with, with the. Thank you. Very important with the name. So giving somebody a name but also as well the, the timing. I think I've stayed this year maybe a handful of short term rental experiences staycations and every single time, every single one of them has communicated too late in the process. Like the, the verbo turn around and saying it has to be 72 hours. If I think right now everybody should be looking at their system, looking at their automations, looking at how they communicate with guests. And if it's under 72 hours you need rectifying it as soon as possible which is, which, which is definitely a big one. So when it comes to things that you've done in the past, because I look at you not only with the, the Touch Day hat on, but with the, with, with the, with the Branson in your short term rental hat on as well. I mean you put, you put a Slide in one of your properties, which everybody has to go and check out. It's fantastic. But how, how do you go about coming up with these ideas? How do you go about doing it? Is it inspiration from others? Do you just think about what you would like? How do you set yourself apart from the rest?

So those are two of the points that we do. So we think about what have other people done that works really well. What is it super cool that we've seen other folks? The slide. It's a twisty slide off the back deck that was inspired by a very, very long time ago when I saw a photo on VRBO of a house, I think it was in Big Bear, California with two twisty slides off the back deck. And I said, one day, one day I am going to have a house with a twisty slide off the back deck. So when it came time to build this large 10 bedroom house and I could justify the cost, I think it cost me like $12,000 to have this custom made slide brought in and installed. Because on top of that was commercial grade. The insurance company looked at the design, made sure it was all approved. It's like a thousand square inch per of weight, thousand pounds per square inch of weight. So adults can use it and everything. So like we're going to do it the right way. So there's inspiration from others, there's what we want as hosts and owners. But the very, very, very most important thing we look at when we set up a house, whether it's a purpose build or historical home that we renovate. And we look directly at who is our target guest and who are who's coming, who do we want to stay and let's set it up exactly for them because that way the experience is created around them and what they need and we're answering their needs exactly how they want it. So for example, in Branson, our focus is large family groups, three to four generations at a time. One of the things we know is they are coming to have family dinner together. That is one of their sole purposes, is to eat together. So we make sure every single dining room has enough seats for everyone to sit together. And we look at the makeup of the folks in there. We make sure there's a place for a wheelchair to roll up, we make sure there's a long bench for the little kids to all sit together. We make sure everybody's in the same room and you're not putting someone else in the living room or having to go sit on another level of the house just to eat their Dinner. You know, looking at exactly what our guests need, what they're coming for and how we can serve that purpose just creates so much of a better experience and why people come back to us again and again.

So I've just done a little bit of a look around and I think if this works and I see the power of eCamm. I found a slide. Can you see that on the screen? Yes.

Yep, I see it.

So beautifully modeled. This is your partner, right?

Yeah, that's my husband.

I see the kilt. So beautifully modeled. Lovely. So if you want to go check that out. Bransonfamilyretreats.com and then if you put in forward slash Skye, it will take you straight to the property, which is lovely. How many properties do you have at the present?

So in Branson, we own two, manage another four, and that's going to double by next year as we're building two more and our clients are building four. So we're very much into the purpose build. And those are all the large homes. So four to 10 bedrooms. Wine country. We own two and manage another six. And that ranges from a tiny house to my bank with original vaults where you can launder legally in the Ozarks and than a large six bedroom historical home, renovated as well.

So here's a question and it came up last week when I was interviewing John Hildebrand with the Airbnb changes. Do you list on Airbnb? Just quick question.

Yeah, I do, but I use it as a tool.

As a tool, yeah. So the question is, with the changes that are coming on Airbnb and they're making it harder for parties, obviously because they want to distance themselves from parties. We were talking about large homes and how with all of the changes that they're making and they're having a lot of the AI try and shut down party requests. Now, how as a large family, have you ever had a situation where they have tried to cancel a potential stay because they thought it was was a party? Or how are you going to look to not get caught up in in all of that sort of over the coming three, six months?

Yeah. So our big homes in Branson, I don't even open my calendar on Airbnb until there's maybe some holes I want to fill. So we are. So that's one. We use a strategy with the calendar. The second one is we write our listing description talking specifically to the types of guests we want and we don't write to the guests we don't want. So we're very, very clear with that. And I think that helps tremendously. Same thing with our Missouri house brand. Those we don't limit the calendar so much because folks use Airbnb more so there. So with our larger homes, again, it's, hey, this is who we want to host. This is who we host. We don't host xyz. We even have a, I guess you would say a puke fee. Just to be very clear that we don't tolerate that type of thing either. And that has helped tremendously. The other thing we do, this is one of my big secrets, so. But I'd still love for everyone to steal this one, is we actually raise our rates on Airbnb by 50%. That's 5, 0 over VRBO or booking direct. And the reason we do that is because we want those calendars open for our Missouri house properties. So we show up in the searches. But we also want it to be painful to use the OTA that we don't want them to use and that drives direct bookings. But if they go ahead and book on Airbnb, yes, they've just paid what I call the PETA fee. And you know, we get extra money for the extra work that happens with those guests.

There's lots of lovely little, little gems of advice in, in number one, popping the, the rates up on an OTA instead of booking direct, which is, which is lovely. 50 is fantastic music to my. My ears. There's a lot of people, I guarantee, who'll be listening to this going, what if do you say five zero, but fantastic. And there's another thing I've just noticed and let's see if this little works. If I hit share screen, let's see if I can choose this. So I talk about this a lot and I've come onto the website. This is your website, right. And one thing that I talk about a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot is the pictures on your website. And the pictures on your listing site are not to be set in stone. You have to change it depending on the time of the year and the type of guests will be searching throughout the year. And you know, obviously we are coming into the winter months, right? And you come onto the site and what can you see here? Christmas tree. Christmas tree, Christmas tree. It's got that, it's got that winter feel. Now if you, I assume in the summer you change that up to a totally different picture, etc. But it's the perfect example as I was just going on looking at the slide and you can see it in the Bottom right hand corner here, the lovely slide. I noticed these and I was like this is, this is perfect. So there's a couple of really important things that everybody can do. It doesn't take a lot of time and it has maximum effect. And also as well, I love at the bottom, it's shaken at me to look at it. It's about the giving up the email for the, for the free guide which is obviously about growing your list as well. So a couple of really nice little pointers that I hope that everybody's paying attention to and try and implement it into, into your business over the, over the couple of weeks, months and look to see if you've got any. If you do do it, give some drop in the comments what you did do and share some results, which is lovely. All right, we are coming to the end now. Before we finish, I just very quickly wanted to mention about the events, the, the conferences, the industry events that have been going on throughout 2022. At what point in the process did you go, you know what, Touch Day is going to become the perfect pre event event. Where was the thinking in this and how did you go about how did you implement it and what has been the results?

So one, the results has been fantastic. Absolutely. And not only just to myself. I love doing it the small groups but getting the touchstone name out there as a marketing tool. So what has happened is, you know, Touch Day, we're small, we bootstrap, we, we don't take on the big giant VC backed. We're not that way. Me personally, I'm an investor in the company as well and we want to use our money the wisest way possible in the best way possible, just like any other business. But the thing is, is we also have super creative people and we decided that, you know, these events, the best thing is the networking, getting to know people. But the problem is all these happy hours and parties that happen in the evening, it gets a little difficult for those of us who one, don't want to stay out all hours of the night and two, it's a lot of loud, loud music and you have to get up next to each other's ears and shout and you lose your voice. And you know, it's fun but it's not necessarily the best use of really to get to know folks. So Kate and I decided, you know what, we're going to have a little pre event and get everybody started so that they can meet a couple people beforehand and then you know someone during the event and it just makes your event A whole lot better at the conference that you go to. So we also decided, you know what, we're going to do things that you don't normally get to do. So you know, last we've done a Nashville, we've done a trolley tour, we've done the murals. Yeah, you get to do that. But we've also set up special tastings at like the Donut distillery, Edley's barbecue in Vermont. In Vegas we actually got everybody on a party bus. But after breakfast, after brunch, we went to the Goodwill shop and we did some thrift store shopping and everybody got to pick out a new outfit and then we went to the Vegas sign for pictures. So super fun things that gets people next to each other where they can easily talk. So one of my rules for our fringe prevents is you have to change your seat every five or ten minutes and talk to someone new and focus on that person for those five to 10 minutes and really get to know them.

It was, it was really good and it, and it was strategically done beautifully because again, being in a bus scenario, you are up close, you sit next to each other and, and the whole switching around thing was, was perfect. Especially when if you're traveling by yourself or you haven't seen somebody for a long, long time or any of those things, it can be a little bit crazy. But it's just nice people, the right people in a group. And it was, it was perfect. And I've witnessed it in Nashville and I'm looking forward to witnessing it again in Nashville 2023 and many other events. And it's, I love how it's expanded as well. So it went to the, he went from the bus to the boat and to the fristad to the Vegas. It's, it's a lovely little collection and obviously as well the reels get filmed and the pictures get taken and it looks, it looks lovely on social media. So, so well, well, well, well done.

Okay, so if anybody wants to join us. Yeah, 2023, email me and I probably need a form set up but we are going to do them several times this coming year. Would love to have all of you.

On there until the form gets created. What's the best email to send them to?

Tianouchday.com Lovely.

And how we spell it. Yes, that's the one. And the only other thing to sort of leave people with is that Tyan and Andy and Kate and the whole team at touchday joined me very kindly for the booked out blueprint. This is coming out very, very, very, very Soon. If you are listening or watching this, this is lovely little moment. After 12 December, the book is ready. The book. I've just given the release date. Never give away the release date. I've given a release date. But anyway, if you listen to this after the 12th of December, then please go and check it out. Just go to boostly.co.uk forward/brew lupin. You can go to that link now and you can sign up for the pre release and you can get access to loads of cool stuff now. But then after the 12th, it's going to be taking you straight to where you can go and get the book in print, in Kindle and Audible as well, which is awesome. And every single profit from the book sales is going to be going to charities, food bank charities, and it's going to be not just in the uk, in America, wherever. We're going to build up a little kitty and do all, all that cool stuff. Right, thank you so much. Time for doing this. Have an amazing week with your family. Thank you for giving us the time. Go and get all of the ingredients that you need to do. We will let you go. Is there any final words, any final pearls of wisdom, any little tip or anything you'd like to leave the listeners with?

Okay. Yeah. Treat your guests like they're amazing guests that they are, and communicate with them, please. Please communicate with them.

Perfect. All right, thank you so much. All right, we will let you all go. Have a great week, everybody, and we shall speak to you all very soon.