Callum Morgan lost £40,000 in bookings during COVID lockdown at his North Wales holiday rental. He kept guests by offering flexible date moves and payment options, then rebuilt through direct bookings. His advice: communicate early, stay flexible, and prepare for the next crisis.
Foreign. Is all about what is going to happen next in the hospitality world. I invited on Callum Morgan to get him on because he's been unlike other guests, he has properly been affected. He has got a cottage in the middle of Wales, can't take any bookings, can't really take any key workers because there's no key workers that would benefit from being at the property. Obviously lost a lot of bookings, a lot of revenue. But it's what he has done, communicating with the guests and how to be proactive. I really wanted to share his story.
Callum Morgan based in Warrington, England. So just between Manchester and Liverpool, for those of you that know the area, most of all is I look after my parents self catering holiday let which is over in Bengala in North Wales.
What proactive, whether it's saving a potential cancellation, you know, because I know you're big on this, you're big on your direct bookings, which is fantastic. What have you been doing proactively on that front but also as well, what else have you been doing proactively to encourage guests or potential guests to come back once this is all over?
We were pretty booked up. You know, we tend to book up all school holidays so our house sleeps up to 22 people. So big focus on family groups. So school holidays obviously a big priority and also weekend with big groups. You know, if it's your 50th birthday in February, you want to come in February. So we are seasonal like most businesses, but we do book up all year round.
We're open.
We were pretty booked up till about November for every weekend of most school holidays. Now I look at my calendar and we are pretty much emptying up to, up to August. We tried to get proactive, get in touch with guests early and set the tone and say, and try and get cancellation off the table. Being a large lap, we take around about £80,000 a year circa. But with summer being a big, big chunk of that so far we're looking at. And you know, I'm a numbers man so I keep our top numbers quite regularly. So we, we've moved just in the region around about £40,000 worth of bookings. See, everyone's struggling with money at the minute, so what, what we're also doing is giving some flexibility on that payment. You know, can they pay in two or three chunks? We do also take cards, so that does give people the option of buying on credit cards and stuff like that. Now I don't want to encourage people to get into debt to pay for their holidays, you know, they should be having a look at a long card, look and go. And if they can't now afford the holiday that they had booked nine months ago, they should be cancelling. So we are having some difficult conversations around that at the minute. But the key is being proactive. So I'm now talking to July and August guests. I'm telling them what we're doing for the guests that we're doing at the moment. So what we are doing is going to guests. You can move your dates free of charge at any time in the future.
With every podcast interview we like to finish on the quick Fire questions. This is the quarantine quick fire questions because we are obviously in the lockdown. So I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 quick fire questions. Are you ready, Swan? If you've had a movie or you've had a TV series that's been on your to watch list for some time, what has that been? What would you recommend? What should everybody be checking out on the Netflix?
So we've just. Me and my girlfriend have just binge watched Money Heist.
One tip that you would give to any host that is watching right now to help them increase their direct bookings. What would it be?
I'd say use this time to get all your ducks in order and understand where you get your bookings from and wherever that place is that you've got your bookings from. You know, whatever the thing was that you've been doing to get that pre lockdown, get everything organized. So post lockdown, you can double up on, on, on that route. If it was Facebook, stop messing around with Instagram and Tik Tok and whatever. Just do Facebook really well. If it was a certain website, we use a website called Group Accommodation. Make sure your listings up to date. Make sure your pictures are up to date. Make sure your descriptions are up to date. Do all that and come out of lockdown stronger.
That.
That's what, that's what I would do.
Amazing. All right.
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