Why Jotform is a secret weapon for hospitality owners

All right, welcome to the Boostly podcast. Very special episode coming up. Today, I interviewed Liam Carolan of Ginger and Gold over in Norwich for a Behind the Host special. This is where I'm going to be interviewing hosts just like you all over the world to discover the tools and the tactics and the advice that they have in the business and that they can pass on to you. Today was a really good one. I'm really glad we started with Liam, a real nice guy. Please do reach out to him and say thank you for this. So without further ado, please do go and start. Say hi to Liam. But most importantly, let's get on with the show. Now, what other tools do you have in place for your business to help you run the business behind the scenes?

So one of the things which a company in the website is we use something called Jotform, which we every guest who books. So as soon as they've gone through that process on the website of, you know, whether they come from Airbnb, booking.com or going through our website, they'll get sent a welcome message and that will ask for a link to Jotform, which effectively is a Google form. We've found that since having this, it's really good for two reasons. One, it allows us to take the ID from a guest. We also check the reason for their stay. So whether it's business, leisure, seeing friends and family in the area, and we just grab some key bits of data from the guest, which is really important for us both for us knowing what the guest is visiting for. So we can start to tailor, you know, their experience a little bit more towards, you know, if it's leisure, we'll send out a recommendation list. If it's business, we may not do that and instead just ask how, give them a call and see how long they're working in the area, that sort of thing. So that's a really good bit of tech, Jotform. The biggest benefit of it is it also hooks into mailchimp, so when they've signed up their email address to that, they'll have an option at the end to. So, yes, if they want the latest news and promotions, that'll sign them up to mailchimp instantly. So it's all automated, we don't need to get involved with it. And then the first email that goes out to them basically will offer them a better price if they book direct. So if they have booked for, say, two or three weeks in the future for a stay, they've completed the form. Once they've booked, then the email that comes out will offer them a discount. And also the benefits of book and direct. So early check in some Norfolk goodies on arrival and, you know, a discount as well. So people from that may then decide to book direct. We get a certain percentage, not a huge percentage of people who then decide to book direct, but the rest of them then start to understand that, you know, there is opportunities for discounts whether they're booking now or in the future.

And for those of you that don't know, Jotform. How do you spell it, Liam?

J O, T F O, R, M.

Yeah, go check it out. It's a free. It's basically the similar ish to Google forms, but it has that extra, extra bit as well.