Why hospitality businesses are experiencing a sweet moment in direct sales

There has been a growing trend over the course of the last year in the world of hospitality, and that is direct bookings, which is music to mine and many hosts around the world and there are many factors around it. But recently I discovered a blog on the Focus Wire website and I wanted to dig into it today with you. So for those of you that are here for the first time, my name is Mark Simpson. I founded a company called BoostLeaf five years ago and it was all designed and created around the knowledge of helping hosts just like you increase your direct bookings so you don't have to rely on booking.com Airbnb, the Expedia Group to bring in your bookings. Getting heads on beds. And in 2018, I started this podcast. We're nearly up to 300 episodes, which is crazy. And every day I upload an episode. Video is on YouTube, audio is on Spotify and Apple, and the written blog is on the Boostly website. So doesn't matter how you like to learn, I've got something for you. And like I said recently, blog is by Pablo Delgado on the Focus Wire website. And the one thing, and he delves into many different reasons, but the one thing that really stuck out for me is, and this blog is definitely around hotels now I help all hospitality owners, whether it's self catering, whether it's BNB's, hotels, etc. But one thing that really stood out was this one. More domestic and even local customers. So less need for air travel and therefore for package sales. The big loser being Expedia. Expedia, massive losers over the last year, greater relevance of brand and reputation, which again greatly facilitates direct sales over OTA sales. Same language time zone. Many customers are are local. It's much more convenient to contact the hospitality business via website or phone for answers to questions or bookings. And as it's a local call, it doesn't cost anything. Da da, da, da. So again, it goes into a lot of unnecessary talk, but if you break it down, it makes a lot of sense. How many of you have international guests? How many of you, when guests book internationally, they book via an ota. And then let's think about it, why would they do that? Again, it's. It's a lot easier to just book through there. They don't have to worry about any language barriers because again, say that you are an expat and you get English guests, they don't know at the point of booking that you are English, they will go onto your ota, will find you via there and you know unless you make it super obvious, as in as a picture of you waving British flags outside, then they don't know. So then they just naturally assume it's easier to do it this way. But when you have somebody who's doing a staycation, they know the area, they're comfortable with the language and again, they're much more likely to click around. So even though this blog was definitely based on a hotel base, it's really good to I love reading these blogs because again, it gives me a greater insight how the hospitality world is playing out because again, it starts at hotels and we just whittle it down and we get our data and what we're looking at. So why have direct bookings increased? This is definitely one factor. Another big factor that this blog doesn't really talk about is that the OTAs closed off a lot of their calendars and because the OTAs closed off a lot of their calendars because of restrictions and because they just couldn't there were people who still need to travel, traveling nurses, doctors, key workers, people in between homes and etc so they were forced to go to Google to run a search on the maps, you know, run a couple of searches on, on on Internet search engines. So again people were ending up going to website calling via Google business listing. So this is why it's super important that you're not just putting your eggs all in one basket. IED OTAs, you've got a Google business listing which is going to change to Google Vacation Rentals very soon. If you're a BNB hotel owner, it'll stay exactly the same. It's very important you've got a website, it's very important that you can take diary bookings and it's very important on your website and again they talk about it in this blog is that the incentives that the hotels offer their guests when they book directly is a big factor why people were choosing to book direct. So what does this tell you? If the big hotels, the big chains are giving incentives to people who book direct. Why aren't you? Why aren't you? So everybody on your website now go and think about what incentive you can give a guest when they book direct. It doesn't have to be a price, it doesn't have to be the best rate it can be. For example, maybe you give them a little welcome basket, you know, tea, coffees, etc maybe you give them free wi Fi. Maybe you could do an earlier check in. I talk about this before just Google Boostly YouTube channel and it's on there in the playlist on how you can give an earlier checkout time and put a later checkout time on the OTAs and is a great way of flipping an OTA book into a diary booking. So interesting. And again, I will, as always do my research. I will go look around, look at the blogs, look at the articles and and I will share them with you so you don't have to go sharing. So as always, thank you so much for tuning in. I'll be back tomorrow with another daily podcast. If this is the first time that you have tuned in, please do go and subscribe. Hit the like button, download, share it with another host around the world. Share this in Facebook group, share this in LinkedIn groups or just email or text somebody to link. It would mean the world to me. My goal is to help 1 million hosts increase their direct bookings and cut down on the over reliance. And it all starts with you. So if you do have any wins, if you've listened to any of these podcasts and you're celebrating your wins, please do share them with me. Send me a message on instagram @boostly UK and as always, I'll be back tomorrow. Stay proactive, don't be reactive and let's go and get some direct bookings. Okay everybody speak soon.