Why you should get listed on niche websites with James Burrows of Rentals United

Foreign. Podcast. We are in season seven, episode 19 and today we're going to talk about niche listing sites and why you need to be paying attention to them. I've invited James Burrows from Rentals United. James is the CEO of Rentals United. It is a channel manager, not a pms. A channel manager that helps connects you to loads of websites that you never thought possible to connect to. It is a fantastic channel manager. It's a fantastic company, is a fantastic business and I recommend that everybody goes to rentals united.com book a demo and see if it will work with your PMS and with your business. You have to have at least 10 properties that is their niche. 10 properties plus. But for any property managers that are watching that have got more than 10 properties is one that I recommend that you 100% check out because not only will it save you time, it could boost your revenue as well. We're going to talk about niche websites, about why they're important, about how it works, and we're also going to delve into Rentals United a little bit more as well. Now, as you know the Boostly podcast, it is sponsored by Hostfully. You have got a couple of weeks left to submit your guidebook to Hostfully for a competition that they are running. To find out more, go to hostfully.com contest. You can win a number of prizes, including premium listings, including hoodies, sweatshirts, you name it, including a marketing review from me. So that's my prize that I've donated to it. It's totally free to enter. You get one free guidebook when you go to hostfleet.com if you would like to buy a premium listing, make sure you put in Boostly 2M in the coupon code section and you'll get two months free as being a Boostly member. Now, thank you so much for tuning in to the podcast. All that I ask is that you share this episode with somebody that you feel that might benefit from it. So you can share it on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, wherever, or just email it straight to somebody. As always, I'd love to Hear your feedback. Markoostly.co.uk or just send me a message on one of the social media channels. It's Ostleyuk. In the meantime, however you are tuning into this podcast, please enjoy it. Please make sure you rate, review and subscribe and make sure you share it with your friends. I'm going to now switch over to James Burroughs of Rentals United and we're going to talk all about listing on those niche websites.

Yeah, I'M one of the co founders of Rentals United and we're a company that's been around for about four or five years now. But I first started off in holiday rentals, vacation rentals around it's going back 17 years ago. So I left London to go and live in Italy. I set up a marketing business with my then girlfriend and we decided to focus on companies that wanted to market themselves outside of. Towards the uk, outside of Italy. And one of our customers was a guy that used to rent out apartments and we did so well for him that we ended up sort of developing a listing website between myself and my girlfriend called Holiday Velvet. You know, going back, we were distributing around 10,000 properties worldwide and it was very much a copy almost of booking.com we were one of the most. One of the instant booking websites at the time. So it's very kind of new, but it would. It was still nothing different from, you know, in terms of experience of going on to booking.com and I would say probably 10 years later, we started talking to a number of competitors in the market. We were kind of worried about the impact that Airbnb were having on our market share and we decided to create Rentals United, which was originally just a property sharing platform. So they had properties in Paris, I had properties in Rio, and we would just share inventory between each other. And we're all hunting for the same people, right? So why don't we start collaborating? So, you know, Rentals United has been built on competitors and businesses collaborating. First off, Rentals United now after five years, is we're based in Barcelona, we have an office in Poland of our developers with around 90 people altogether, and we're distributing around 100,000 properties worldwide. And we're fundamentally a channel manager.

We're going to talk obviously today about those little websites, those niche websites that we sort of touched upon. But the talk that you gave at Barcelona was really good about this. So I'd just like for you to just walk us through these niche websites about the ships and why it's important that people sort of pay attention to these niches.

I mean, the ships analogy was a, you know, a little bit of fun. And so the idea is that we tried to describe the difference between an ota, a copycat, which is really what my website used to be of someone like booking.com and the smaller niche website. So your OTA was a big tanker, so not very flexible. It takes a long time to be able to change direction. But it's stable. It will always provide bookings for you, but you're basically one of hundreds, if not millions of properties in particular locations. So you know, the chances are that you might be generating income from those, but where is the value of placing your property just on those websites? The niche websites were your speedboat. So really versatile, very nippy, could go where in places where the bigger ships couldn't go. And equally they were generally first at market. We had brought up a particular example about cannabis smoking thematic websites, right? There's one called Bud and Breakfast that only deals with smoking friendly accommodation. It kind of got a good laugh, but it's a very good example of what a niche website can do. Because if you really think about the time it would take someone like booking.com to really start looking at this, the legal challenges of working in that particular area, where suddenly a niche website comes along and offers this incredible idea about really catering to a growing trend of tourists that want to really take advantage of this type of accommodation. And that's really what we're trying to do.

You're right. I think the problem that so many people make is when they open the doors to their rental, wherever it is in the world, they just go and put it on, like I said, the big channels. What you have found in these niche websites now, the ones that have really sort fine tune which people should be on their website. And if you can find these websites, they're an absolute goldmine because number one, because they are very, very topical of what they're talking about. When you do a Google search, for example, of the location you want to go to or like the niche you want to talk about, they rank really highly on Google. So they've got a lot of people on the websites, they've got a lot of people that are around your niche that you give the pet friendly option. But you know, there's so many different topics you can go down, whether it's a solo travel, health and wellness. So it's definitely something that people should be looking at more than just doing the bog standard list on Airbnb. If you've got any success stories of any of these small websites and any of your clients that may be on there, and any sort of, sort of testimonials that they've given you or any sort of success stories that you could share with people that have maybe listed on these niche websites and got some.

Good results, you know, I really want to emphasize that. Let me give you kind of an example. We've got people like Spain Holidays that obviously, you know, given the name, they really focus on Spain Travelopo again is a, they're a majorcan based channel, but again, they're very strong. In Spain we've got a company called Hand Discover that focuses on disabled travel and even e domicile which actually has accommodation around the world, but it's a German website and they really focus on the German market. But you know that in hand, if you focus on someone like E domicile, you really need to start thinking about the type of content that you've got. You know, you're going to need to translate your inventory into German and you might need to even be able to cater for German people when they arrive. I mean, we kind of used to do it Google Translate, but I suppose you need to be a little bit more professional these days. When you start talking to these people, that's the kind of mindset that you need to go. It's not just a case of, look, we've got 70 plus channels and if you're going to go on 70, you know, you're not going to get, certainly not going to get the kind of level of bookings that you are going to expect. So you need to be a little bit more clever about it. And you know, it requires kind of a little bit more planning around it, but they're certainly there. I mean, we've just got connected to a company called Spotter Home who are a minimum 30 day channel and you know, they're bringing some nice bookings for our clients. And so our clients are now starting to think of one different sort of pricing models that can really accommodate 30 and equally maybe some of their inventory needs to be put aside and they're only geared towards 30 plus type customers. So you're really kind of spreading your risk and not really only focusing around just your, your short term rental customer.

I think what's key around this topic is we're not saying what we're going to do here is going to replace the big guys, but it's another layer to add to your online visibility because at the end of the day, if you're not visible, nobody's going to be able to book with you. I mean, obviously on this podcast I encourage everybody to look at ways and means to increase your direct book. But like with everything, you've got to be everywhere, listed everywhere, because that's where people's eyes and attention is now, obviously booking and the booking holidays group, Airbnb, the Expedia Group, they're doing what they're doing and you need to get listed on them and you need a decent channel. Manager to connect all of that. But as well got to be looking at the smaller guys just as an extra layer of visibility, which is, which is the key. Now the one problem that I found in the past, and this is before I knew of Rentals or I had a decent channel manager, is that we would get listed on these niche websites for our family business. We had the Farm Stay business, we would get listed on them, but the problem is that our calendars couldn't link up or things couldn't match match. And there was, there's always a case of where inquiries would come in and we couldn't, we couldn't cater for them because we're already booked out or X, Y and Z. Now this is where being on Rentals United is a benefit because you take care of all of this for your clients and your members. So could you just break down for us exactly what Rentals United does? Now obviously you're a channel manager, you're not a pms, but how does, does it work with yourself and getting listed on these websites, these niche websites, connecting to obviously the other guys and making sure that there's a constant stream of availability flowing around.

I mean, obviously we need to connect to the guys in the first place. So we're connecting them via an API. So there'll be a two way exchange of data. So bookings from your Farm Stay website would come into Rentals United. Right. And if there were price changes that you wanted to make with your property or that you would make the booking direct through your own website, that would block your calendar in Rentals United we would send that block to Farmstay and any other channel that you'll be connected to via us. So there's constantly a synchronization of information that is in Rentals United and equally a copy, exact copy of whatever in the channel. And so, you know, we're trying to right now focus on the right channels for particular markets and different kind of themes. And also for us, whilst we're not a pms, we can also have, we also have a kind of a guest communication module. So meaning that, you know, emails that are coming in from your guests can be sort of managed in a more aggregated way through an inbox. And that's kind of really helped our smaller customers. And I think that, you know, you're right when you start to say that you, as a property manager or an owner should really try and have as many bookings direct as you can, you know, you're not going to be paying commission. You can build up relationship with your customers. But I think that as business, you need to have some kind of mix with your, with your marketing. We do it. We don't rely on one area and I think that all of your, all of your listeners should, should do the same. We all need to have a varied mix of how we can get our bookings.

So you've got, obviously the channel manager, so you sit in the middle and then you've got the websites that you connect to are on this side and you've got the PMS here. The PMS is where everybody will have, whether that is free to book, whether that is vivo, Supercontrol, xivu, you name it. There are ton of. So how does it work with you connecting your channel manager, Reynolds United, to the pms? Do you have a connection where you can work with everybody, or do you have like a set amount of partnerships you've created over time that you work? So how many PMSs are you currently working with?

Yeah, I mean, you know, we're going through a list and so far we're connected to 50PMSs worldwide. So, you know, there are generally a PMS in pretty much every country that has some kind of number of inventory there. So, you know, in the UK, you're looking at people like I Pro365 Villas Bookster, who up in Scotland, Resharmonics, who are kind of in the middle of the country in Birmingham. So we're kind of going through country by country and managing them. So in terms of a connection, we would generally, we would sit on top of the PMS and we would offer their customers to our channel, but we would try and encourage all of their customers not to come into Rentals United. So they would generally be able to change rates, change availability, all in their PMS and obviously receive all the bookings that are made through the channels that they connected to through us as well. So again, a booking comes in, we would send it directly back to their pms. So everything's tied into where that one platform that they should be using, which is their pms, which is basically the source of all their data.

Say that I've just signed up to Reynolds United and it's connecting to our pms, whoever that may be. When we're talking about the niche websites, do you have a full catalog that when they. Look, when I log into my sort of dashboard, do you have all of these websites available to me or do we work together? Do like I would work with your team to go, right, this is what I do, this is who I am, who Should I connect to? How does that sort of work between signing up and getting on these sort.

Of niche site, you know, and it varies on client by client, depending upon what kind of level of help they need and support. I mean, everyone will get an account manager, everyone gets an onboarding period where they get trained in how to onboard to these channels. And so, yes, we have a. We have a kind of a service area where they can pick and choose which websites they want to connect to. We give certain data, you know, where they're strong, what type of inventory they take, the restrictions, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then the account manager should be able to work with them and identify core one that first is going to help their business and then create some kind of roadmap for them in over a period of time. So we'll probably concentrate on the big guys at the start. So you generate bookings and then start looking at your more niche ones.

For anybody that is watching and thinking, yeah, this is great. Reynolds United. Sounds good. What stipulations do you look for in a property owner so they can come onto your platform? Do you have a criteria like, how does that work if I want to come to you? Do you have a process that you look for before you agree to work with somebody?

We do. I mean, we're aiming towards probably the larger property management segment. So we have a minimum of 10 properties for those guys who are less. We have some PMS partners that would be happy to recommend to. So you can get access to our channels. But through this pms, we also ask for generally exclusivity on the calendar. So you can always guarantee we work generally on Instant book. So the channel sort of inventory, you need to trust availability and they need to be able to work with the likes of the bigger guys as well as those smaller ones. We do have some channels that work on request. It's not really a big focus of.

Ours, obviously, to keep everything in sync and keep everything working. On Airbnb, for example, you can't have that inquiry. You've got to have that Instant Book feature, which would make sense because then it doesn't sort of delay the system anymore, which is, you know, which is where everybody should be moving to a modeling in 2020, 2021. So if we're going to put a full list of the 50PMS providers that you can connect up to on the show notes on the Boostly website. So go to boostly.co.uk podcast, scroll down to season 7, check, look out for James's name and you can go on and see the full 50 now for whatever reason they are. With a PMS that isn't connected to rentals. Are you looking for more recommendations? So can people come to you and go, hey, James, you know, we' X, but we want to be with Reynolds. Is there a way that you could work together? Like, is that something that you're currently looking to build more partnerships?

Yeah. So it's a core strategy of ours to connect to more. PMS's got this kind of partnership program with all these guys. We work really closely with them, and we're looking for more. So people have got recommendations. If there's a PMS that we're not connected to, then really drop us a line and we'll be happy to talk to them, make an introduction.

Okay, so moving on, what is the one big mistake that you see other accommodation owners make when it comes to my marketing their property online?

For us, it's always been about quality of content. And this could mean anything from photos. You know, you need to have a photo of each room, a photo of the key amenities. You know, swimming pool needs to be your first one, and a great description and really good amenities. And focus on these and try and play with stuff within it as well, and you'll see kind of a big difference. And work with the channel because they can tell you which amenities their customers are looking for. Generally, our focus is more about content quality than anything else. And some of the stuff that we get is of a very lower, low quality. So we have a content quality minimum. So we'll only send inventory to the channels in an automated way if it goes through a particular filter.

You're right. So many people just blanket list their property on all these channels, whatever that may be. You've got to be flexible on where you're listing, because, for example, Airbnb, you get to add a lot of content in the description, and you can be really. You can manipulate the title. So it really stands out where with booking.com, you don't get any of that. So the question would be, if I'm with Rentals United and I've got my account manager, and I just, like, literally just brain fart everything that I do to the account manager, would they then go, right, so, Mark, get on this website, you really need to be telling us about X, Y and Z. So do you take that more of that quality approach? So we don't just throw it onto a random site. Does the account manager pull us up and go, right, we need to do X, Y, and Z to get it on?

Absolutely. I mean it's a very much a consultative based service that we provide. So they really start to identify your titles on Airbnb, for example, and it's good you mention it. I mean it makes a massive difference when you see you've got thousands of properties in a particular location and you know, how do you stand up, how do you stand out and get that first click to your, to your property and title tags are incredibly important. So is your first photo. So you know all the these little things that you probably take for granted and when you start complaining that you're not getting enough bookings, you're not getting enough click throughs, there are small little changes and improvements that you can make and so we'll help you identify those.

If you have been listening to the Boostly Podcast over these seven seasons, you'll know that we have spoken about this in detail. Members of the Boostly Academy, the private training group. You know that there is a video in there from Danny from Optimize My B and B where he gives some really insightful tactics and tips with titles, emojis and all of the things that you need to do with your listings. So yeah, please do go and check that out. When I like to finish these podcasts, we always like to finish on Quickfire Questions and James, I've got someone, you know, I have pre sent them to you so you have had a chance to have a little look at them. All the answers to all of the things that I'm going to ask, it will be in the Show Notes. So if there's an answer that James gives and he's going, I want to go check this out. Please do go to the show notes boostly.co.uk podcast scroll down to season seven, look for James's name and you'll be able to find out more there. So let's start off with the first one. Then James, your favorite business book. So the business book that you that always springs to mind when someone asks this sort of question, what's your go to?

You know, obviously I don't have one. You know, I generally I'm reading business related books when I have a particular need or maybe the business is in a particular stage. You know, currently I'm reading a book called Blix Gaming by Reid Hoffman who's one of the founders of LinkedIn.

What's your favorite podcast? Is it Reid's podcast or is it something else?

Quite a listener of Sasta podcast and Sasta is about anything SaaS related. We're a SaaS business so that's quite good. They had some really good interviews and equally I don't know whether you've listened to Vanessa's own secret sauce of large property managers. You can get that on our website. That's pretty insightful.

What is your favorite purchase under a hundred pound or €100 in the past year?

Probably a flight somewhere. You know I don't buy stuff that much to be honest.

Okay, so you don't really make a purchase if you got like your favorite, like a favorite splurge, whether even if somebody's like tiny, even if it's like a go to coffee or a go to thing that you, you know, like food wise that you have to buy, what would that be?

You know I've just gone vegan so I'm a bit boring when it comes to my, to my food, you know, wine I'm quite partial to. So I like.

Are you a fan of YouTube? Do you watch many YouTube videos? If so do you have a YouTube channel that you always like to subscribe and recommend?

Yeah, I love YouTube but I don't have a particular channel. Maybe I'm just too old.

Are you literally just watching funny videos of cats, just.

Yeah, exactly. Cats or dogs or you know, people falling over, that kind of thing.

Next question. What is the biggest pain point in your business right now? It could be what you're having to do on a day to day or just overall for rentals. What would you say would be biggest pain point for what you're trying to achieve? Achieve?

We're growing at the moment so we're trying to bring in number of people in different areas. So for us being in Barcelona it can be a challenge bringing in the right people. That's the biggest pain I think.

Moving on. And this is one I love to ask because it's what the Boostly podcast is all about. It's what Boostly is all about. Direct bookings. What would be your one big tip when it comes to getting more direct booking?

When we talk to our smaller customers or I mean even bigger ones, to be honest, they tend to be, they tend to neglect their previous customers they've had before. You know, create some kind of CRM, even if it's just out of an Excel spreadsheet and keep in contact with these guys and email them and contact them periodically and remember when their birthday is and you know, remember their kids will also grow up to be adults. And so I think that this is really important to be able to constantly be in their are in their mind when they start looking at vacation.

Everybody's always chasing the new money or the new guest or the new booking. You know, sometimes some of the best decisions you can make to increase your bookings, to increase your revenue, is to reach out to past guests. And obviously it's gotta be GDPR friendly. You don't get in trouble, but there's ways and means that you can do so. All right, final question. What would you say would be Reynolds United's superpower?

Look, you know, I mean, being English, I tend not to shout about things too much. We're pretty modern this. I suppose that, you know, last year we onboarded more properties onto booking.com than any other company within our sector. And I think that, you know, for us it's a really big achievement. We really focus on delivering big return of investment on bookings, but also making sure that properties go into the channel super fast so you can make revenue and bookings as quickly as possible.

You are being modest because I think that what you guys are fantastic at and your superpower would be visibility. You give. You give small accommodation owners or small property managers the chance to get visible a lot quicker, a lot faster and a lot. That saves a lot of time as well. So I think, you know, I mean, what you guys are doing is fantastic. I'm a big fan. You know, I've seen the podcast, watched the YouTube videos and I love the brand and I love everything about what you guys are doing and I wish you all the best moving forward 2020, 2021 with all this crazy growth and yeah, I look forward to seeing you at more of these short stay show events that are coming up. Obviously you're going to be in London, is that right?

I'm going to be in London, yeah.

Yeah. So I'll probably see you then March 12th and yeah, and all the other events that seem to be on at the moment, which is amazing. So thank you very much for tuning in. If anybody has been watching this and going, yeah, I want to find out more. What's the domain, what's the URL? What's the best place to go to find out more?

James, rentalsunited.com you can email me directly if you like. So it's jane@rentals united.com and I'll be happy to put you in touch with the right people. So, you know, send us an email and we'll be happy to help.

Amazing. When you go on to rentals united.com right at the very top it pops up, book a demo. So if you're thinking that you're not 100% if it's right for you. Book a demo, have a chat or email James so you can figure out and at the end of the day, if you can make it work and link with the PMS and do all of the things. And it's definitely something that I recommend that you do. So thank you very much for being on the show. We massively appreciate it and thank you to everybody that has tuned in. Whether you have watched this on video, on the YouTube, LinkedIn, tickety talk, or even if you just listened on the audio, thank you so much for tuning in. Before you go, go and rate, review and subscribe. That's really important. We've just passed the 10,000 downloads, which is amazing and we want to continue that to grow and the only way that we can keep visible through your reviews, your social share. So please do keep talking about it. As always, thank you to Hostfully, the sponsors of this podcast. You have got a couple more weeks to submit your guidebook, your digital guidebook to hostfully.com contest. They're going to be doing prizes for the best guidebooks. I've got loads of categories you can win premium listings, you can win hoodies and tops and all of the things. You can even win a marketing review from me. Boost Lee totally free to enter. You get one free guidebook for free with Hostfully. So go to Hostfully.com contest and you can submit it there. We'll be back very soon for another Boostly podcast episode, but at the moment, if you have yet to check out any of the back catalog, Simply go to boostly.co.uk podcast and you have got a ton to check out. So thank you very much for tuning in and we will see you all very soon.