BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 680: Why Hosts Are Backing Away from Travel Sites and Building Direct Bookings w/Mark Simpson

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

Most people stumble into short-term rental investing. At some point, they realize a long-term rental, mother-in-law suite, or family cabin could become a revenue-generating, passive income machine. So what do they do? They go online to all the big travel sites, upload their listing, and start hosting. After a few months or years, they buy another short-term rental, and now, they’ve got multiple properties across a few different sites. The reviews are flowing, and the revenue with it. But one day, it stops. This happened to Rob when his listing got locked—halting his revenue. Without much of a way to repair this, Rob started thinking of how he could host with autonomy and reduce the risk as his portfolio grew. Sooner or later, Rob and today’s guest, Mark Simpson, started talking. Mark, an expert in hospitality, knew that something like this would happen. It’s why Mark has been helping hosts build their own booking sites over at Boostly.  As a short-term rental expert, Mark helps hosts build an income stream that can’t be paused, limited, or removed. Instead, he and his team give hosts everything they need to get more bookings, pay fewer fees, and keep guests coming back for more. And, as the short-term rental space grows at lightspeed, Mark argues that hosts should start building out these direct booking sites now before it’s too late.  In This Episode We Cover: The danger of solely hosting your short-term rentals on online travel agencies  How so many hosts find themselves “held hostage” by guests and travel sites Building your “guest avatar” and modifying your vacation rental to fit your ideal guest Guest screening tips and how to safely rent your property on your own website  Underrated upgrades to make to your short-term rental that massively boost bookings  Effortlessly converting guests online travel stays and into direct bookings  And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Investor-Friendly Real Estate Agent BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Merch Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Learn About Real Estate, The Housing Market, and Money Management with The BiggerPockets Podcasts Get More Deals Done with The BiggerPockets Investing Tools Find a BiggerPockets Real Estate Meetup in Your Area David's BiggerPockets Profile David's Instagram Rob's BiggerPockets Profile Rob's Youtube Rob's Instagram Rob's TikTok Rob's Twitter Stop Relying On Airbnb and VRBO and Build A Business You Control 4 Things You Need to Know Before Buying A Short-Term Rental Boostly’s Property Management Software List Books Mentioned in the Show: Short-Term Rental, Long-Term Wealth by Avery Carl The Book Direct Playbook by Mark Simpson Connect with Mark: Mark's Website Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-680 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Check out our sponsor page! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. Sure. 680. If you are a host or a property management company that is looking to grow and scale, and if you are so more than 90% reliant on one channel for your revenue coming in, you're playing a very dicey, dangerous game. Because all it takes is for your account to get hacked, you're listening to get locked down,

or a couple of crappy reviews, or a total algorithm change by Airbnb where suddenly you're on page one and the next day you're on page five or six where nobody, look. So it's really important that we flip that around and we look to get everybody to a 65% direct and then at 35% relying on third parties, aka OTAs. Hello everyone. I'm your host, David Green of the Bigger Pockets podcast here today with my lovely co-host, Robert Abasolo. In today's show, we're going to be interviewing Mark Simpson, owner of Boussela and UK resident who has some fantastic advice for

us on how to book your short-term rentals without using the online travel agencies, Airbnb, VRBO, and their ilk. Rob, first off, how are you today? And second, what do you think about the show? That was, okay, first of all, my hat's off to you because you really went all in on that. And we did it all in one take. You know, most of the time that we would do that five times, but you nailed it first time. So today's episode is really great, man. I'm super excited. And we even get to hear me dabble a little bit with my accent repertoire. And we get into the art of hosting and the idea of getting into direct bookings and when you should possibly consider making your own direct booking website over just staying on all the typical OTAs online travel

agencies out there. So I'm excited to jump into it because I think if you're, if you listen to today's episode and you're a short-term rental host, it might, it might crack your brain a little bit, you know, and you might think, okay, maybe I should try, maybe I should try something else. maybe I should diversify a little bit. Well, if we're just being honest, this is a very relevant topic in the short-term rental space. And so much of real estate investing is starting to become dominated by the short-term rental space. This is what everybody's talking about.

This is where the highest returns are. In a lot of ways, this is sort of the future of real estate investing is you got to do more than just buy a property, set it, and forget it. You got to learn how to host something, create an experience, and outshine your competition. And in today's show, Mark gives us some examples of how to do just that. Mark actually came from a background of hospitality. He grew up with people in his experience. his house as they ran a bed and breakfast. And his mind was formed and sort of forged in the

fires of hospitality. And he gives us some tremendous advice for what you can do to make your place stand out. And frankly, I think if you're going to try to be in this space in the future, you have to know how to do it without relying on Airbnb or VRBO. Rob, you can probably speak to this better than anyone, but it's getting harder and harder to stand out on those sites. Airbnb recently just readed their whole algorithm. And people's entire business models were shaken as they're trying to now scramble and figure out, how do I make my place unique? How do I make it different? How do I make it like, what's the word that you're like, clitchy sort of so that it can stand out with Airbnb? What's your experience been like since they switch things up?

You know what? It's still the same thing, right? We're still booking and everything, but there's a game to it, right? All algorithms out there, whether it's YouTube or Airbnb, there's a game that you got to play and you got to play by their rules. So that'll actually, you know what? I think that's a good segue, David, into today's quick, quick, quick tip. Pretty good. Pretty good. I like the combo here. So, today's quick dip is really going to be to diversify where you're listing your short-term rentals. I know as hosts, a lot of the times, our go-to is going to be Airbnb, but it's really smart to consider putting your different units and homes on other websites, Airbnb, Verbo, Booking.com, and even considering going direct,

right? Direct booking website where people can directly book from you and you can cut out the middleman and be sort of the customer service. You can be the person that's dictated. all the fees. You can be the person that's providing that one-on-one experience with your guests. I think that this is very important and relevant today because I've just seen a lot of people getting locked out of their different accounts on several OTAs. And when that happens, it can be a really big stressful moment for you in your business. But if you diversify and you have your short-term rental listed on different websites, if one of those websites crashes or goes down or locks you out, you still can get booked on all the other different websites out

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And with that, let's bring in today's featured guest, Bustlezone, Mark Simpson. So, Mark, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. How are you today? I'm amazing. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me. Nice to speak to you to you to today. Yeah.

First off, I want to compliment you on your hair and your beard. You've inspired me. I may copy it. it looks incredible on you. You know, I went to the barbershop today and said, can I have the David? And he just said, I know what you mean to David Green. And he just went, he said, say no more, fam. That's when you know that you have made it when first off, you're known by one name, right? Madonna, Fabio, JLo. When you're known by one name, you know you're famous. Now, Mark, I understand that you and Rob have a previously established relationship. So I'm a bit of the third wheel here.

Can you tell our audience how you two know each other? So I can go first, Rob, if you like. I've been a massive fan of Rob's channel for about, I'd say the last year and a half. I've been really digging into it. And I was just being, every now and again when something comes up on Instagram, I slide in the DMs and just saying, hey, you know, massive fan, da-da-da-da-da. As our relationship grew and he started to actually look at the messages because he gets so many. I said, hey, let's have a chat about direct booking sometimes.

And, you know, every single time I've seen videos this year in 2022 of bigger pockets. And anytime Rob talks about direct bookings, I've slowly seen him get a bit more gentler towards it. And I like to feel like my influence in the DMs as being like a little part of that to where now we're sort of doing little bits together behind the scenes and super excited. But I do actually have an Instagram story about you, David. I actually sent you a message about a couple of months ago. And it was just as I feel like me and Rob were starting to chat. And I said, oh, because you followed me on Instagram. And I was like, oh, no way.

Mr. David Green's following me. So I sent a little message back saying, hey, massive fan. Thank you very much for the follow. And then you send back a reply, which is kind of like, hey. And I was like, oh, it must be busy. You know, it's a very like short, sharp message. And sent a couple of more messages back and forth. And then all of a sudden you sent me a message back and he started talking about crypto.

This has taken a turn for the, this has taken a turn. So before I knew. I was giving over my Bitcoin wallet and the rest is history. But it turns out it wasn't you good, sir. Turns out I was chatting to a David Green impersonator. And now Mark lives under a bridge. And now I have to sell everything. Yeah.

And yet Instagram still just won't give me the freaking blue check mark. It's like, oh, how many people have to get ripped off from this? I've tried about 25 times. So say, I'm loving. Here we are. Well, I'm sorry about that, Mark. Hopefully you didn't spend any money. I'm good.

No, I think he was just kidding. Yeah. But I did. I've sent you several Bitcoin, David. I'd like that return, please. So, yeah, I got locked out of Airbnb, like not too long ago for a very short amount of time. I think it was for less than a week. But that's a big deal for Airbnb hosts, short-term rental hosts, all together. I've been seeing more stories like this pop up. My students have been locked out. And yeah, Mark, Mark has been very, he's been very tenacious, I guess, on Instagram. And we would chat and back and forth. And then all of a sudden, I got locked out. And I was like, wait a minute, I know a guy. I know. know a guy that is all about direct booking so that this never happens again. So it all kind of

came together and culminated into a beautiful, beautiful relationship. And fast forward to today, he was speaking to my students not too long ago and actually delivered a Chipotle burrito to me in the middle of the presentation. And he instructed the Uber Eats eater specifically to interrupt my Zoom presentation when the burrito got here. So I ate a burrito on camera not too long ago. And that's our relationship. You really are, Rob, like the personification of a millennial in so many ways. You're like, the shirt you're wearing right now, you're very eccentric hairstyle, your obsession with Chipotle for 80% of your dietary needs. You've got that millennial thing like, you've got it down really, really good. But Mark, I don't know you, and I want to know a little bit more about you.

So tell us, I'm fascinated other than where do you live and where does that accent come from. How did you get started in real estate? Like, how did you, what is your story, your origin story of how you ended up getting your first house? Yeah, so I've pretty much been born into hospitality, pretty much. I grew up on a 200-acre farm in the middle of nowhere in the United Kingdom. As you can tell this accent is over the pond. So I'm from the UK, grew up on a farm. And in the 90s, my parents turned a 200-acre farm, and they converted a barn and put a bed and breakfast on it.

And then they converted another ban and put some holiday cottages. And this is before the time of social media. This is before the time of Airbnb and all that good stuff. And they literally relied on very old school methods to advertise their business. It was word of mouth and it was magazine advertisements and newspaper advertisements. And I just grew up in a world where I was so used to strangers being in our house, being in my kitchen, you know, all 24, seven, seven days a week. And I grew up like serving breakfasts and doing all of the things.

before school. And then eventually, as I grew older, I had an opportunity to sort of move away from the farm and do soccer coaching and spent pretty much my sort of 20s traveling around America coaching soccer an amazing time. Then eventually moved back to the UK. And that's when I came back into the business. There was me and my wife and my eldest. We moved back into the family business in 2011. And by this point, that had it for 25 years. They were still doing everything pen and paper. and my job was to get it online, being a millennial. My parents looked at me like, well, you've been on the internet once. You should know how to do this.

So I, and that's literally what we did. We grew that offline word of mouth and put it online and utilized online reviews. We utilized Facebook and social media to grow the business as well as the online travel agents. In the UK, booking.com is probably the biggest, was the biggest. And Airbnb has slowly been playing catch up over the years. but we built up a business where we didn't rely on Airbnb. We focused on our direct bookings and we grew that. And yeah, and then fast forward to 2016,

I started to go to hospitality meetups in our area, in the area of Scarabby United Kingdom and started to chat to other hosts, other hosts that were either one property in or five or ten properties in. And the big annoyance there was they were having to sort of rely on booking.com and the whatnots for their bookings. And that's when I started doing boost leave. That's when I sort of started helping hosts sort of figure out how they can generate their own bookings and not have to rely on Airbnb or booking.com.

It sounds like you're out there doing God's work. And I want to thank you for that. So Rob actually called me the other night in a complete panic, as he often does, 2 o'clock in the morning, freaking out. And he told me a story about a guest we had at our Scottsdale property that wasn't happy. Actually, he wasn't in a panic at all. It was one of those like, if I had hair, I would be pulling it out of my head.

I have another person asking for a discount over nothing. And apparently this guest had actually pulled a gun on our cleaners and then had the audacity to turn around and ask us for a discount. And Rob was like, and you know what? I had to freaking give it to him because you get in this position with Airbnb where you're being held hostage. And if you don't give this person what they want, they threaten you at the bad review. You end up playing this really, I don't know, like just disastrous game of,

of chicken with the guests where Airbnb has to figure this problem out because sometimes you're a normal person. I've never even thought of asking for a discount. If I go to an Airbnb and they run out of toilet paper, I just go buy more. I don't think about threatening the person with a bad review if they don't give me what I want or hand delivering toilet paper, but I'm finding out many people do. And it sounds like it's turning in some ways into Craigslist where like you're offering a bicycle for $200 and someone offers you $75.

And that's just, it's like a bidding war. It turns into an auction. So I wanted to ask you, Rob, not just with our house, but with your experience on Airbnb in general, how big of a problem is the threats of bad reviews and hurting your standings with getting bookings and how important is a direct booking system like what Mark is talking about to the operator's chances of success? I have always considered Airbnb walking on a tightrope of sorts where it's, you know, It's just a game of balance, right? It is a hospitality business. And so in some regards,

I do feel like Airbnb, which I use anonymously with just any OTA. OTA stands for online travel agency. I'm sure we'll use that term several times today. But in any platform, whether it's Airbnb, Verbo, booking.com, there is some push and pool here with customer service and the checks and balances of the different securities that they offer to their hosts and everything like that. and it does force me to stay very hospitable, right? Keep up the hospitality aspect of my business. I'm happy to do that. But there is a very interesting moment where, yeah, you know, this guest, a guest might

damage something. They might leave you damages anywhere from 50 to 500 bucks. Usually anything that's under $50, I'm not really going to charge a guest back for. But over $50, it starts getting kind of hairy, right? And it's like 51 bucks. I don't know. Am I really going to charge a guest for that? $75.

And as hosts, we get very scared to charge that back to the guest, even though it's within our right to do it because the moment you send a guest to message and say, hey, you stained our rug, it's going to be $75 to get it spot cleaned or whatever. Then now they have a tainted experience at your place, right? They'll be like, oh, come on. It was an accident or whatever. It was just a wine glass. You really want to charge me for that?

So you get into this mindset where you ask yourself, is, you know, you know, is, you is charging a guest $50 worth a four-star review? And if you're just starting out your Airbnb business or your Airbnb listing, it's not worth it, right? Because if you have five-star reviews and then one four-star review, guess what? Your ranking just went down to like a 4.7 or a 4.75, all because a guest, and it was their fault, broke something in your house and you charge them for it, and it forced them to think of all the negative things that happened during their stay when it would have just been a five-star stay otherwise. So this is a huge pain point for Airbnb host, and that's just on small things, right? But then you get into other situations, like the, you know, the Scottsdale

guest that you're talking about, David, where they smoked a bunch of pot in the house, and it smells like pot in there right now, and that can affect future bookings and that can leave a bad experience for other people. We've got to charge these people, right? 500 bucks, whatever, to fumigate it, do the ozone treatment and all that stuff. And now we know that they're probably not going to leave us a five-star review. So it's a whole thing, right? It's like the customer service aspect of Airbnb. It's a hospitality business. But at the end of the day, it's still a business, right? And you still do have to make money. So yeah, when you're kind of at the mercy of the checks and balances of OTAs, it kind of makes it tough to be profitable in certain situations, if that makes sense.

So here's my understanding of how OTAs have sort of evolved over the years, Mark, and I want to get your professional opinion on if I'm accurate. At first, People put a house on VRBO, Airbnb. It booked like hotcakes. You almost couldn't miss in the short-term rental space. Everyone was crushing it. The money started to move in that direction. The market got really hot.

It became hard to get cash flow of any kind if you weren't doing short-term rentals. And so more and more people got into this space. Now it's become somewhat saturated. In some areas, you're okay. But in others, you're competing with other people over these guests, and it's pushing the prices down to the point. It's almost not making sense. And now you're at a point where the 10,

tenant has the leverage in the relationship. They get to choose which properties they want to book. They get to ask for discounts. If they come, they break the rules. You're afraid to say anything because you don't want a bad review. The owners of these properties, not only do they have to deal with problems of neighbors, problems of the possible city changing regulations, the evil landlord clause that sort of reigns over the industry right now, and the tenant's having power, you seem like you

figured out a way around that. Like, just don't go through those means where you don't have the leverage. First off, am I accurate with my understanding of the evolution of the industry? And then second, what is Boosley now doing to try to fix this? Yeah, no, you're 100% spot on. And for a lot of people, and especially a lot of people who are coming into the industry right now, believe or not, there was a time in this industry that was before Airbnb, before OTAs, before instant book. I mean, 2015, you go on to any of these online travel agents, and it was request a book.

So even like early days Airbnb, there was no instant book. The only reason that they bought that in was to compete with booking.com, which is the booking holidays group, and Verbo, which was Home Away, which is the Expedia group, which owns Expedia and all that jazz. And with instant book coming in and with commission being a big thing, because back in the day as well, to be on a listing site,

you paid an annual subscription fee. But then people started to come along, like booking.com, etc. and say, hey, don't pay as any annual subscription fee. Just pay as a commission if a booking cost. comes in. And for a first time host, it's like, wow, this is amazing. For marketing and for advertising, if it doesn't work, I don't have to pay any money. And we are in an industry, and I class hospitality, short term rentals, midterm rentals, whatever you want to call it. All of

this is hospitality, as Rob alluded to. And in this hospitality industry, we're in the industry of making memories. So it's not like when you buy something from Amazon, it's just a one-off purchase, that's fine. We are in an industry where people literally come and stay with you and they will remember it for years. They will talk about it with their family, with their friends, et cetera. And because of that, it is so in demand. Like, you both now can look at your calendar and you'll just know there's dates in that calendar for all your properties that you could book three or four times over depending on the time of the year. And because it is so in demand, it is so easy to get bookings. And Airbnb, booking.com, verbo of marketed and spent billions

making sure that they are in the right product placement. So again, when you first start and you've got that one property and you've got all those plates that are spinning, everything that you have to know to do. When it comes to marketing, you can just take a couple of pictures on your phone. You can upload it to a website, Airbnb, and be pretty much guaranteed to get bookings. And because it is so easy, you then become over, overcomplacent and lazy and over-reliant on one platform. And it really becomes a problem when. So it becomes a problem when, for example, you get a bad review from a guest or, you know, a guest complains to air, Airbnb and they side with the guest or for whatever reason, your listing gets taken down. And it's

happening more and more and more now. And if you are a host or a property management company that is looking to grow and scale, and if you are so more than 90% reliant on one channel for your revenue coming in, you're playing a very dicey, dangerous game, because all it takes is for your account to get hacked, you're listening to get locked down, or a couple of crappy reviews, or a total algorithm change by Airbnb where suddenly you're on page one and the next day you're on page five or six where nobody looks. So it's really important that we flip that around and we look to get everybody to a 65% direct and then at 35% relying on third parties, aka OTAs. Yeah, do you want to add to that list because you were saying all it takes is a hack or this or that.

It also takes things that are not even like actual problem. Like, okay, let me articulate this correctly. We had a bedbug scare in one of our properties like, I don't know, three or four months ago, maybe five months ago. And the guest sent over a photo of a bug. And we sent that over to our pest control people were like, oh, my gosh, is it a bed bug? And they're like, we don't think so, but we'll go check. So they go and they report that to Airbnb, obviously. I mean, you know, I don't necessarily blame them for that. But Airbnb immediately locked that listing. They deactivated the listing. And then we got the pest control people to come out and then the pest control people were like, oh, actually, it's not bedbugs. It's a thing called bat bugs. Easy to treat. They kind of found all the different

places to plug the home. All that type of stuff. We had it resolved in, you know, a day or two. But even with that, we had to submit like a report that basically vowed that we didn't have bed bugs. We had to do all this stuff. And that account could not be booked or that listing could not be booked for six weeks. And that was a property that we had with an investor. So we're over scrambling, trying to like, you know, make it happen as much as possible. Luckily, it did end up getting resolved. We've been booking like hotcakes otherwise and like, you know, we still are making a lot of money on that property. But, you know, for people that are just starting out, if that's your first experience with a short-term rental, that can really taint the rest of

your journey, right? And so luckily, you know, I've done this a while now, so I'm able to stay calm whenever there's a bed bug scare, whenever a guest pulls a gun out on our cleaner, all that kind of stuff. It doesn't faze me quite as much, but it is interesting to hear you say that, Mark, because really at the end of the day, using different OTAs like Airbnb and Verbo, that it gives the guests all the leverage. They have all the leverage to basically do whatever they want. There's some good and some bad, right? With short-term rentals in general, like Airbnb, they're going to bring the marketing, right? They're going to bring you the guests. You don't have to go and market your listing. But certainly now, as I've done this for five, six years, I'm definitely

starting to feel this stat of 65% direct bookings that you're that you kind of reference there because yeah it does make sense to kind of bring it all in house at the end of the day yeah and i think like it all boils down to when you are so reliant on Airbnb for your bookings you literally have a boss at that point and you are literally building your house and your business on somebody else's land because they can turn around at any point and change the rules or like you said if a guest books through there and they complain to Airbnb they are going to always side with the guest over the host. It doesn't matter what you've got systems and things in place. It just happens more often than not. And it's, and it's scary to see. Now, if a guest books direct with you and you've got

your systems and structures in place, which is what we will talk about, then that situation with the bed bug, you would have had direct communication with the guests right there and then. You could have sorted it on your terms, on your rules. And you're not then having to have that little niggling doubt in your head that there's going to be somebody looking over you making all of the, making all of the calls and the decisions, and you're worried about it. And the best. example I can give on this and one that I feel that any host that's been around since 2019 will be able to relate to is that in March 2020, when the world went a little bit upside down and all of these regulations and rules were starting to put in place, Airbnb in the

middle of March just sent a notification out to all guests and all hosts at the same time. So no word of warning to host to everybody at the same point, everybody woke up with a notification saying that obviously with everything that's going on in the world, any guests can cancel their stay, free of charge, doesn't matter what the policy is. Now, that ended up ending so many management companies and host businesses because they just couldn't, they couldn't, they couldn't survive it. Because straight away, guests went and canceled. There's no warning to hosts. Now, the kickback that I get when I talk about that story is, well, just because a guestbook direct doesn't mean they, they didn't cancel. Yeah, sure. But what we did at our family business is on that,

you know, in March, we were able to have the phone number and the email, address of every guest that are booked of us direct. All we did is we called them. We literally called them. We're real vulnerable and just said, hey, you know, everything that's going on in the world, obviously you've got a booking coming up with us. Obviously, you can't make it. But instead of canceling it, let's change it. So we adopted a change, not cancel approach. And we were able to save five figures in reservations and just move it to later on in a year or next year. And we're able to help get us through that part. Guests and hosts that relied solely on Airbnb weren't so lucky. They literally had no way of communicating with the guests because Airbnb don't share email addresses.

They don't like you communicating with the guests. And those that were reliant so on one platform didn't make it out the other end. And this is why it's really important that we actually now start to turn this around. And this is why I'm trying to help one million hosts cut down on our over alliance on the OTAs. Because if we can do so, if we can do this. And we will get a foot at the table at these OTAs. At the moment, all of these Airbnb booking.com verbo, they look at hosts as just a number. They just look a number of part of their massive stock list.

We are not partners, as they keep saying, partners with inverted commas. We have to get aware of them. And at the moment, they don't think that hosts, as in Airbnb hosts, want to do their own direct bookings. So it's, you know, I'm a stubborn Yorkshireman. And I want to show them that we can do this. It is simple to do this. And my whole thing is about going old school to go new school.

So what old school tactic can we do to drive in, to drive in, to driving bookings and revenue? Yeah, so knowing what you know here, I mean, obviously, you know, that the hosts are a number and everything like that, would you say, is there a dystopian outlook for using one or two major listing websites? Yeah. So very recently, Skift, which is a big industry publication, put out a graph, and it showed the reliance on where the bookings are going on these platforms. And out of the top five was the free standout. so Airbnb, booking.com and verbo. And in 2017, Airbnb had 15% of the market. So 2017, about five years ago, we had 15% of the market.

The way that the graph is going, the prediction is by 2025, so only a couple of years away, they'll have 60% of the market. Airbnb are not only playing catch up, they're going to dominate this industry in terms of where the bookings are coming from. Like my belief and my opinion is, is that Airbnb want to become the Amazon, of the short-term rental industry. And if they get to that point, there's nothing from stopping them,

from turning around to hosts all on their platform and saying, you know what, Dave Rob, we feel like this relationship isn't, isn't accurate, isn't fair. You know, you only pay, say, 14% commission at the present moment in time. Let's bump that up to 20. Let's bump that up to 25, 30, 40, 50%.

You know, Amazon, they take up to 66% commission for everything that is sold on that platform. that that is crazy. And there's nothing from stopping from Airbnb doing something similar. And then making all of the rules tighter, tighter, tighter, at the moment we're lucky. At the moment, we still, you know, some hosts only pay 3% commission. If you're a pro host, you have to pay a little bit more. If you've connected up to a property management software,

but we're going to talk about it soon, you've got to pay a little bit more. But the worry is, is that it becomes, this industry becomes so reliant on Airbnb that they can dictate the rules at any point. And when that happens, and it's bad enough now, if that happens in the future, then more and more hosts are going to be going out of business or having to pay deep, deep commission costs for something that is simple that we can stop now by starting to think about marketing ourselves,

marketing our own businesses, which is what every other industry needs to do. Like we do website designer Boostly. There's no listing site that I can go and put Boostley websites on and generate revenue. You know, I have to brand myself. I have to go on podcasts and do all of the social media things. Short-term rental hosts have to start doing that now

if we don't want to go down that route, we're being very reliant on Airbnb. 100%. I mean, you're talking about marketing your listing, right? If you want to market your listing out to the masses, I know that you have to have an ideal audience or demographic or kind of, you know, avatar in mind. And I've heard you say that most people don't know their potential guest avatar.

So do you think you could just really briefly explain what this means? And why would not knowing your avatar be impacting your bookings? Yeah. It's a great point and it's a great question. And when you say avatar, I guarantee it there's when so many listening to this or watching this, will be like, what is even an avatar? And the most simplest way to put it in terms of hospitality, short-term rentals, is the ideal guest that you want to walk through the door.

And when you really nail down who that avatar, who that ideal guest is, it makes everything so much easier. Because at the end of the day, you haven't got an Etsy store, you haven't got an Amazon store, you haven't got unlimited downloads, you know, there's only a certain amount of heads that you can fit on beds. There's only a certain amount of inventory that you have. And the biggest problem that I see in this industry with the millions of hosts that are out there is that we're trying to appeal to everybody. When you appeal to everybody, you appeal to nobody.

And another cliche phrase, the riches are in the niches. So if you can really figure out, number one, who is your ideal guest? So who is the type of guest that is coming to my location, Scottsdale, wherever it may be? Who is the type of people that are coming to here? Is it all leisure? Is it a mixture of business and leisure? Is it families? is it solo people, is it digital nomads, whoever it may be. So you figure out who that is. So who's

coming to the area? And then what you do is you look at your property? And it's like, okay, so what is my property good for? And then, you know, has it got a pool? Has it got, you know, a real good bed to bath ratio? Has it got private parking? Really good Wi-Fi. And then what you then do is you go, okay, so this is who's coming to the area? This is what my property is good for. Now, what can I do with my property to really speak to my, to my niche. And as a prime example, a person that I was speaking to, she had a couple of properties on the coast. Some amazing seaside properties. You could see the beach, see the sea, literally from the window. And the location where she was at was well known for surf. And she was trying to decide on who her avatar was. And the property, the way it was laid out,

it was repelling who her ideal guest was, because that was ideal for surfers to come away. for a surf break, but she was doing the exact opposite. So a little couple of tweaks. So for example, by stipulating in the listing on a marketing, on her social media, like literally how close the property was to the beach, by putting in some surf racks, private parking, all of that stuff, she was able to really focus and niche down on her avidate and her ideal guests. And with that, the people that walk through her door were the ideal people.

They literally, as soon as they landed in the door, it was like an instant five-star review, because it matched everything what that guest wanted and needed. So you didn't have people rocking up and pulling guns on cleaners and all that stuff. I love that. So here's what I like about it. As a real estate investor, we don't have to think about the avatar of who's going to be staying in our house. It's someone who needs a place to live. Maybe I might think, what kind of job does this person have?

So what kind of rent can they afford? That's about as far as it goes. But as a host of a hospitality asset, You do need to be thinking about that. So what are some of the mistakes that you see people making, Mark, that are real estate investors approaching it with the real estate investor mindset that don't understand that they're actually becoming a hospitality host? This is the main thing is that everybody comes to it and they sort of take off the hospitality

hat. I don't mind. I don't care where you've come from or what niche or where it's interesting that you're coming into. As soon as you have strangers coming to stay in your property, you're in my world of hospitality. So you always have to think hospitable first. Like hospitality is the main, main part of it.

And if you can, always think about making sure that that guest has got the most amazing state in your property, then you'll win time and time again. There's a saying that I came out when I created the book, Direct Playboy, which is the book that I put

out this year, that the tagline was there's a story behind every booking. And I don't care if a guest is staying with you for work or for leisure, or for a family stave as a story behind the booking. It's up to you as a host or it's up for you as your team to make sure that you can uncover what that story is and how can you make that stay memorable? Because if you can make that stay memorable, what it means is that you will not have to market your business.

Your guests will become super fans and they will market your business for you. The referral networks, the comeback ability, all of that is there for years to come. But the first thing you've got to do is you've got to sort of take off that real estate, hat, take off the numbers hat, take off the air DNA hat, and just put on that hospitality hat for a second and just sort of think, okay, what can I do to make sure that I can make my guest stay as best as possible? That's super fair. I think I always say this. I think I was selling you this too, David, because you just bought like 15 short-term rentals in like two hours. I don't know. It took you like a month. But either way, you know, you were talking about the idea of getting a property manager

and I was like, well, first, I honestly think to anybody that buys 15 properties or that's really getting into this, that you should really be in the weeds of your business for a little bit. You know, if you want to go the property manager route, that's totally fine. Do that. But give yourself two, three, four weeks at a minimum to just understand how guests communicate, how they communicate specifically about your property. What are the common questions that come up about your property? Because I have a lot of different Airbnb listings. And the common questions that I get for each listing are wildly different. You just, you never really know, right? And people ask you things and you're like, wow, okay, there's something not clear about my property or there's something super appealing my property and you sort of find out your guest avatar kind of to your point, Mark.

But either way, for me, I like people being entrenched in the nuts and bolts of their businesses before they hand it off just because if you learn how to be, you know, how to drive up the hospitality and how to be a good host, then you know how to manage a property manager. That's always been my stance. Well, let me just say, I would not recommend anyone else do what I did, 15 short term. at one time has turned out to be a very taxing endeavor that I don't think was very wise to get into. I do that often. Mentally taxing, not financially taxing. That should probably help you out on the financial taxing. That's exactly what I'm getting at.

I've actually had to, I had somebody who was helping manage my portfolio that I had to let go because they couldn't keep up with the strain of all that goes into this. Plus, a lot of them had rehabs. And it's a very challenging time for me right now trying to keep up with all of this stuff that's going on. So I think you're right. it would be much better to have taken this at like one or two at a time. So I don't want anyone to hear this and think that they should go copy what I did there.

It's been a little bit crazy. And I actually was thinking, Mark, maybe I'd hire you as a consultant to see what could be done to get some of this stuff off the ground a little bit quicker. But you do make a very good point there, Rob, that you want to understand the asset class that you are getting into. Mark, I think our audience would really benefit from any specific examples like the one you gave of the Surfer Home. where someone approached it thinking just like an investor like oh on a spreadsheet this is what it should bring in and this is my occupancy and it's all science there's no art and then you seeing hey here's some tweaks somebody made on the art side they added surf racks they advertise it was very close to the beach that it actually impacted the the numbers that the property brought in yeah well there's another

great story as well and when we talk about sort of hospitality and and how you can really make sure that your business will thrive on the other end. We had a lady that was part of the Boosley community. And she had a lakeside property. And this is what I'm talking about, like old school market and how it can really help your business. She had a person book at her lakeside property. And on the note, and they booked via, they book direct.

And on the note, it said, we're really looking forward to come and stay at your lakeside property. little Timmy's ninth birthday he's wanting to learn how to fish and what the host did is what most people would do and the most problematic thing that people would do is they would just look at that note and go oh that's nice little Timmy's birthday well that's fantastic but what this lady did was on the day of arrival she went to the to the fish and bait and tackle shop and she bought a fishing rod and just a couple of her things like some bait tackle etc and went five to ten minutes out of her way. So she did a meet and greet with with the family. And before the family arrived,

she put the, the little gift with a little card on the dock just as a people parking up and going up to the property. The family arrives and they see, they see that note. And they open it and they go, dear to me, have an amazing ninth birthday. Here's a little gift from us, the property manager, just to get you on your way in your fishing journey. And instantly, that was a little tweak that they had made to their business, a little gift that cost no more than $30,40. And it impacted massively because what happened was that guest instantly pictures, Instagram, social media. So they had the social proof right there.

And then when they went home, they were talking about it to their friends and the family members. And then it was that same guest repeat book for the next five years, brought their friends with them and told all of their coworkers, et cetera. So a little gift like that, a little shift, a little look at the property, a little, okay, what can I do to make this guest experience even better? And it resulted in, you know, thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of direct bookings. And it's all because of one little tweak that they made. And that's just like one little, little example.

I think one thing that every host should be doing right now, everybody that has got a short-term rental business, whether it's one property, five properties or 10 properties or more, you should all be looking right now and just sort of look at the property, look at the area and go, well, what can I do to make sure that I can make sure that the ideal guest that I want to walk through this door, make sure that it's as easy as bookable as possible and making it,

making it stand out. One of the easiest things you can do right now is to get a little floor plan, a little, a little, a carton floor plan drawn. You can get someone on Fiverr, cost about $20,30.

And what it does is it lays out your property instantly from an Airbnb listing or a verbal listing or even a social media because there's so many people that book with you first time without properly knowing the layout of your property. So little tweaks like that that you can do that will really, make sure that your property stands out and, you know, it really will help getting those heads on beds.

Yeah. So, Mark, we covered that. We covered the idea of the, what hosts are kind of neglecting as they move from real estate into the hospitality side of things. We've also covered why relying on one platform is bad. I mean, I think one of the big reasons there, obviously, is guests have a lot of leverage. And, you know, if you have all your eggs in one basket and you get shut down or hacked or whatever your business is effectively over until you're able to restore your account. So for people that are going into the direct booking option, and even to clarify this for people at home that may not know what we mean, we mean if you were to buy a domain like rawbuilthomes.com, I should have brought that before I said this, but rawbuilthomes.com

and you can go and actually book your stay through my personal website, and I'm the one that controls basically all the customer service and everything like that. For people that are going that route and just for people that are still even using OTAs, do you feel that hosts are neglecting the security and the guest screening that comes along with guests that are booking stays at their home? And what are some tips here for people that are still booking on those sites and even through a direct booking website? Yeah, this is definitely something that is a big pain point. And so many people are saying, you know, a guest has booked and they've shown up with X amount of people. it started really during the lockdowns where especially over here in the UK, all of the nightclubs were closed. You couldn't really go on a proper night out. So what was happening was people were

booking a stay. They were booking a stay in their town or their city. They say, yeah, two people are turning up. And then before you know it, there's 16 people and there's a party going on in your short-term rental business. So there's a big problem with security and guest screening. Luckily now, like compared to when I first got started in 2011 properly in short-term rentals. There's so many providers and software and service tools that are available to short-term rental hosts, people who have won, two, three, four, five properties that wasn't there before. So one of the best things that everybody can be doing is looking to getting guest screening software set up as soon as possible. There's one over here in the UK that is a worldwide brand that's called Superhog, S-U-P-E-R-H-O-G. That's a really good one. And what it

basically does when I guest books, what happens is they get a little notification. They have to verify who they say they are. So it has that guest screen and element. And when it comes to it, even if a guest books via a platform or if they book direct, you've got to make sure that you are protecting your investment at the end of the day. And, you know, a lot of people talk about making sure that you've got exterior cameras set up. Obviously, don't do the interior cameras. That gets into a lot of trouble. But the exterior cameras, making sure you've got relevant grass guest screening. But again, it's still something that so many people don't do. And it's those guests that don't put those simple blueprint in place, the foundations in place to have a very

successful short-term rental business, are the ones that you see that come on to Reddit, that come into the Facebook groups and complain about X, Y, Z guest. All right. That's a great point, Mark. I like that you highlight that guests like screening and protecting your investing is another part of the hospitality business that you don't have to think about with typical real estate investing. When it comes to what hosts are putting on their profile, what are some things that are commonly missed? Yeah. So one of the big things that I show hosts how to do is how you can sort of take someone from an OTA into a direct booking. And one of the best ways and the best places to start is your listing, you're literally your profile on Airbnb.

And everybody has the ability to make your listing on Airbnb look super professional, but at the same time showcasing your business and your brand. And so what it will end up doing is it will take a guest from Airbnb to a Google search where hopefully they will then click on your Dyerbooking website. So one of the main things that people can do is go on to your Airbnb listing right now and you've got your first six pictures, which are obviously your most important pictures. We call them your hero images or your unique selling pictures. And what you can do on there is you can watermark them with your business and your brands. So say that you've got the Rob House and the David house, but the overall brand is, let's just say, the marked business brand.

Then what you can do is on these individual listings, you can put your logo of your business on there. So instantly to the user, because as a user, as a, as a generation of people that are using these, we skim read at best. So you're looking at the images and instantly every single one of them is watermarked. So the user knows that, okay, so this is a proper business. This isn't somebody who is just listing there, you know, a house for a hobby. this is somebody that's properly doing this as a business.

And then the next hack that you can do is in your profile. So everybody on Airbnb, and this is really cool, you don't get this on Verbo and you don't get this on booking.com, but everybody on Airbnb has a profile. And you'd be amazed at how many people, when the guest is going for you, so your future potential guest is going through the booking process,

they actually go and check out your profile. And you can actually put a little bio in. This is one of the most under-tapped resources that I see on the platform from host that we do marketing reviews. for is you've got that first little bit of the bio and the first line in particular, you can introduce yourself as, hey, my name is Mark. I'm part of Boosley, B&B. Please check out our online reviews. They're really good. Now, we're not directly saying on our Airbnb profile to go check out Boosley.com.com. We're not directing people to a domain because Airbnb will obviously

shut that down. But what we're saying is we're introducing ourselves as being a business, being ourselves as a property management company or just a professional business on Airbnb, but to go and check out our online reviews, they're rather good. So instantly what happens there is that the guests will see that. They'll go to Google. They'll type in your business name in the location where you're at. And obviously then your website will pop up any social media that you have and obviously your Google business listing.

So those are two things that everybody can do right now. It will take a couple of minutes, but it instantly will separate you from everybody else. When everyone's ziggin, you've got a zag in this industry. And so that's one of the two core things that every Airbnb host should be doing. Yeah. Oh, man. As an educator in this space, it does kill me whenever someone has a listing that they'll ask for feedback on it, for example. We'll be like, what do you think?

And then they have like one sentence for the whole entire listing. And then photos that were taking on a cell phone. And I'm like, dude, you got to spend like an hour just writing what this place is, a write up about it. And then spend like 250 to 500 bucks. on professional photos, and if you do that, you'll increase your booking significantly. When I bought my first rental, I thought collecting rent would be the hard part.

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comfy bed to sleep on. So, for example, one of the most important, things that Airbnb is going to be focusing on in 2020. And this is based on all of the searches that they get and all of the data that they have is Wi-Fi. Your Wi-Fi speed is going to be crucial, even more so that it's only a matter of time before in the filter of your Airbnb listing, will a future potential guests be able to filter the internet speed depending on what properties show. So right now, you can go into your into your property, you can open up your Airbnb app and you can do a speed test. and you can submit that speed test to Airbnb, and they'll say if it's poor, good, or excellent. So if you have really good Wi-Fi,

you should be definitely tapping into that and taking full advantage of it because, again, it just makes your property stand out so much more. And not only just talk about it on Airbnb and your listing sites, but talk about it on social, talk about it on your website as well. Talk about that because the digital nomad or the slow-mad, which is going to be a new phrase in 2003,

this is going to get even more popular. Brian Chesky even said in an interview that he believes that it's only a matter of time before 50% of the US workforce is working from home or working from a short-term rental property. So amenities is massive. Also as well, the other massive thing is the kitchen. Go into the utensils that you provide, whether it's an air fryer or whatever it may be, a decent coffee machine, a decent coffee bar. Make sure that you put in a little bit of time and an extra bit of budget into the amenities as much as it is that real comfy pillow and that real comfy bed. 100% agree. I think,

probably over the years the number one. I won't say complaint, but I guess feedback that people give me, and it's less now because I've addressed it. But it's usually people that are like, hey, loved your place, would love for your kitchen to have been stocked a little bit more. And so now when I'm teaching people how to do this, I'm like, look, just go to TJ Max or I don't, I don't know if you guys have TJ Max over there. But, you know, like Ross, Michaels, wherever, some of these more bargain places, they have a whole section that's just kitchen stuff. Like, you know, can openers and wine openers and all that kind of stuff. And just spend like a hundred bucks on all the little knickknacks and the lemon squeezers and all that kind of stuff because

people are always super excited when it's there and really bummed when it's not. And even to that point these days, when a guest says, hey, do you have this item in the kitchen? I'm usually the first person to say, hey, I don't, but tell you what, go buy it. I'm sure I could use it in the listing and I'll reimburse you for it. People are like, oh my God, that's amazing. Most of the time they don't, but I'm always willing to, right? If it's like a $10, you know, lemon squeeze or whatever, but other guests will probably use it. So I think that the kitchen is so important these days because a lot of people tend to book Airbnb so that they can actually cook there. Yeah. And also as well, with the coffee buy, if you go and do something a little bit unique

by getting local coffee beans and whatnot, it instantly makes your property Instagramable. And the more you can make your property Instagramable, the more that your guests will take a picture and they'll upload it to their socials. Because the number one time when your guests are taking pictures is when they're on holiday, is when they can show off to their friends back home that they're on vacation, staycation, workation. So the more of it you can make your property Instagramable and they can tag you in, then that's how you get that social media word of mouth and that virality just thriving. Yeah, so effectively, let's juice up the amenities, right? Let's make sure that the kitchen is great, the internet is fast. I'm curious, is there any tactical advice

there on increasing internet speeds? Is there, is it like a special router, like a mesh system or anything like that or is it just going with the fastest package that your internet provider provides? It all depends on, you know, what you're, what you have available. So at the end of the day, you could put all of the cool little cool mesh things and all that jazz. But if you've only got a certain amount of speed coming into your house, then you screwed. Luckily, now, it doesn't matter where you are in the world, Starlink and these other solutions, these satellite solutions are making more people rural or wherever. You've got more options available. So, but it's only going to come a matter of time where having Wi-Fi and

having quick Wi-Fi, especially for the Gen Z generation. And people think Gen Z is like teenagers. Gen Z now in 2022 is 25. These are people that are going to be paying money to stay at your property. So you've got to make sure that a generation that are literally born with with one of these cell phones, literally in their hand 24-7, you've got to make sure that you've got Wi-Fi and you've got good Wi-Fi. Don't just have like, say, I've got Wi-Fi and it's like two megabyte speed. You know, it's got to be decent. It's got to be double digits. Yeah, for sure. I've got a couple of listings that don't have Wi-Fi and we make it as a well known as possible. It's like, hey, it does not have Wi-Fi. And then sure enough, they check in and

they're like, what's the password? I don't see it. I'm like, I told you, there's no Wi-Fi. We would offer it if we could. But that's something I'm always happy to spend 100 bucks a month on simply because, yeah, it's super important. Okay, I have to ask you, Rob, is the location not offer Wi-Fi? Is that why you don't have it? It's like, yeah, it's too secluded. The, like, we can't even get HughesNet out there, which is like eight megabytes per second. Wow. So there's just, is not internet. Well, what about the thing Elon Musk is doing. What's that going to be called? Starlink, there's a waitlist for that everywhere. I mean, it is possible. Finally, one of the properties, my Gatlinberg property, I got the email from Starlink to set it up. And I was like, oh, it actually happened. But it's not always readily

available. Do you think that Starlink will change all the emails that old people use that have SBCglobal.net as their email domain name? Are they all going to change the starlight? Are you sweating over there because you still have the SBC global.comnet and your Hotmail, David Green at Hotmail.com. That's right, Rob. I've got a hotmail account. Back when email was created. So, Mark, we've talked about having a great experience, amenities, everything that leads up to this moment. But there comes a time where a guest leaves, right? And that's the end of the stay. So what aren't hosts doing to follow up with their guests? And do you feel like this is a crucial aspect for marketing your business in the future to those guests? Yeah. And this is where you can get those juicy direct bookings.

It's so easy and simple. And this is the cool thing is that it doesn't cost any money. It just takes a couple of minutes of your time, but you just got to reach out to your guests. We are very lucky that Airbnb, for example, they give you the phone number. They don't give you the email address, but they give you the phone number of the guest. And this is where, you know, for a lot of people, it may be a little uncomfortable, but it's all about, you know, becoming comfortable about feeling uncomfortable. Pick up your phone and call your guest.

Just when they check out. If it's not you, if you're super busy, get a member of your team to do it and just say, hey Rob, I really appreciate you supporting a local business and, you know, come in to stay of us. Can I just ask, you know, why did you book with us? You know, ask a load of who, where, why, what, Quinn, questions? What did you do when you were here? Why did you

go and do that X, Y, and Z? And then at the end of the conversation, if it's gone well, just say, hey, Rob, we really appreciate you. We really loved you as a guest. You know, thank you very much for that five-star review. Hint, hint. By the way, do you know anyone? So really important four words that so many people don't use, but it will be everything in your business. business in in terms of marketing and getting more bookings is do you know anyone so do you know

anyone who's coming to the area do you know anyone who's coming here for work it's a really good one to ask anybody who stayed for like a business day uh do you know anyone that needs to come to x y or z and at that moment that person will say a couple of things number one no or yes or maybe i'm not sure so if they say no just say listen no worries uh by the way if if you ever do know anybody that's coming to who needs a place to stay please bearers in mind recommend us and if they book will give you a X in return like Amazon vouchers or whatever it may be, bottle of beer, burrito, whatever, whatever floats your boat. But in the other time, if they say yes and say, actually I do as a friend David who's

coming to town, they say, brilliant. Do you mind sharing his contact information or setting up a group chat on Messenger or, you know, or whatever it may be on email? And if they book and they mention you, then, you know, I'm more than happy to give you a, you know, X in return. X could be $50 Amazon voucher or whatever it may be. because when you ask that question and you want somebody to do something,

you've got to dangle the carrot. By dangling the carrot, they're more likely to take action. And that's the most crucial thing. But if you do that consistently, if you can do that for, say out of every five guests that check out, if you can call one out of five,

I guarantee that what will start to happen is you will build up a pool of referrals. And if you can do that successfully, like I said at the start, you will never have to properly market, pay money for Google Ads, Facebook ads again, because you'll have a referral network

of your guests who will be your super fans who will just keep referring. you and referring you to their friends, family and coworkers for months and years to come. And I know it works because that's exactly what we did, our business to granary and Howard the farm state business. Yeah, this is a really great approach in my mind, simply because screening is such a big deal, right? And so if you have a guess that comes, you've screened them, they're staying with you, let's say, through Airbnb and they leave your place in decent condition, then we can probably make the assumption, obviously you don't want to always assume, but if

they go, if you reach out to them and they book through your direct booking website, for a second time the next year, they'll probably leave your place in good condition again, right? And then if they're referring you to all their different friends in the network, then again, those people know good people tend to know good people. And hopefully you kind of build up this referral network of people that treat your house, you know, pretty well, right? So it kind of alleviates the concern of like having strangers in your house. And 93% of purchases are made on the back of social proof. So if it's you as a friend, is Rob recommending David, and David is much more likely to book than if it's just me

straight messaging David saying, hey, come and stay at that place. You know what I mean? So with that, with that social proof is everything. So yeah, it goes a long way. For sure. Yeah. I mean, even on my end, I'm looking at the social proof. I guess that are trying to book my place. And, you know, if they have no reviews, I'm definitely going to be a little bit more, I don't know, apprehensive about accepting that booking over someone that has, you know, 25, our reviews on Airbnb. And then if I see someone that has a 4.5, as a guess, I'm always like, well, why is that? You know, I'll go in and I'll read all the reviews. And if most of the reviews are good, usually it's nine good reviews and one like so-so review, then I kind of go forward with

that, right? Because it's nice to know the proof, right? The reviews of the people that are staying at your place and vice versa, people that are staying at your place probably want to know, right? And so that's why you say in your listing, hey, go read our online reviews and then they can read about it and then feel share there. All right, so we're going to move on to the next segment of our show. It is going to be a modified version of the deal deep dive called the direct deep dive. Mark, in this segment of the show, Rob and I are going to take turns asking you questions about your direct booking system. Question number one, where can you set up a direct booking? Is there a specific portal to use? So the main important thing that you need is a property management software. Otherwise,

as a PMS. The unfortunate thing is there is 1,400 plus property management software tools. The good news is that there's about 10 to 12 top ones and those are the ones just focus on. You may have heard of a couple of them, guesty, host away hostfully, etc. If you want a blog post about this, I've literally done one on Boosley. So boostle.com.com.com. That is where you get started because when you've got a property management software tool, it helps you create everything that you need to put in place to build a direct booking business. So the guest screening that we spoke about, it will link into that. If you want to be on more than one platform, for example, booking.com, Verbo and an Airbnb,

it's all programmed via the PMS and it all directly speaks to it. And the best thing is you can then create a Stripe account to take direct payments and you can also create your own direct booking website. So this is the most important thing to get started with is that getting a property management software tool. Question number two, how do you build out the communication with the potential customer? My old school favorite is picking up the phone and giving them a call. And I like to do it at the end of the stay, but also the start of the booking process as well. So when a reservation comes in, the best thing to do to sort of not have any cancellations, to make sure that there's no miscommunication, pick up the phone, give them a call, have a chat with them, to figure out why

they booked, what can you do to make that stay even better? That's one of the best things. that everybody can be looking to do, taking this old school in a new school world. Awesome. All right. If somebody wants to do this, what does it cost to set up a direct booking website? So the cool thing is, as you are getting started in this game, so let's just say one property, it's actually free. You can go to so many free providers to have a direct booking website, but just like with

anything in the world, as you level up your business, you need to level up your tech stack. And as you get to maybe free, four or five properties, then you'll have to pay a little bit and money to actually do so. There's many providers out there. There's many ones that do it. Boothley, obviously, the elephant in the room, we offer a service that we can help with that. Just go to Boothel.com.

But you can start off by anywhere, sort of a couple of hundred bucks. And then the more you grow, let's say you get past 10 properties and 15 properties, then you want to look for a pro solution where guests can book directly on your site. You can have things like live chat, retargeting and all those cool stuff. And that's going to cost you a couple of grand. But when you get to that level of 10 plus properties, the money that you, will spend on a website, hails and significant with what you'll be paying to commission costs to Airbnb and all these other online searches. So the best thing to do at that moment in time, invest the money

as you level up your business and you'll be set for years to come. Awesome. Question number four, how do you measure your success? Are there any KPIs or key performance indicators for for measuring success in this world? The best one for me. And not only what do I look at this, but investors or potential buyers of your short term rental business will be looking at a very high ratio of direct bookings coming into your business. So if you are looking to sell your business and say you are 90% relying on one platform for your industry, if your reservations coming in, they won't look as you as well as if you've got 65% direct and then 35% relying on other people. The way that I like to describe this is you've got to look at Airbnb as your banker. Now, the banker basically is when I was, I'm a

happily married man now. But when I was single and I would go on a night out, I would be basically looking to take a lady home to do some horizontal dancing with at some point in during the evening. But as the night go on, it got to two o'clock in the morning, I would always have my banker on hand that I could call if I wanted to do so. And this is exactly how we need to look at Airbnb. They need to be your banker. So Airbnb is your banker. Dyer at Buckings is the one that you marry. And so this is the main thing that what you need to do to measure your success. 65% direct, 35% OTA. Is banker like backup plan? Like you got one in the bank? That's the bank. That's the backup plan. That's my, that's the 2 a.m. call. And it worked both ways. You know, I was the, I was the

banker. But this is where you got to look at Airbnb. Airbnb need to be your banker. You go marry the direct bookings. That's, there's a lot of business principles that work that same way. You've got the home run pitch you're looking for. And then you've got, well, if I don't get what I want, here's my backup plan. At least I could get on base. And so I think that's very wise and also a very funny analogy. All right, last question of the direct booking deep dive. Let's say you want to convert an OTA like an Airbnb or a VRBO listing into a direct booking. What can you do? So the two things that we spoke about are very handy in a reactive way, but a proactive way could be when a booking comes in. So the premise is that you've already knocked off number one where

you've got your PMS portal. So when a booking comes in from Airbnb or Vibo or booking.com, if your PMS is set up right, an email notification will go out to the guest. And a real proactive way of converting an OTA booking into a direct booking is in that email template, you basically say to the guest, and this is something you can set up once and you can set and forget. And the terminology, terminology should go, hey, Rob, thank you very much for your booking a stay at Boosley B&B. Just to confirm, the date of arrival is the 1st of December.

you're checking out on the fourth. Please make sure you read the rest of this email because your checking information is really important. And the way it should go is if you have booked with us directly, i.e. email, phone call or website, your checking time is 1pm. If you have booked via an OTA, i.e. Airbnb, Verbo or booking.com, your checking time is 5pm. So what you are doing right there psychologically, you are punishing somebody from booking via a third party.

And they will see that and they will go, well, hang on a second. If I had a book direct, my checking time is one. But because I've booked via Airbnb, the checking time is 5pm. The next line of text is important. But if you want to amend anything about your stay, here's my personal cell phone number and email, call me at any point and we can rectify that for you. We would do this for our emails that we went out to everybody. And we had about a 60 to 70% success rate of them calling us.

And they would go, hey, Mark, I've got your email about the checking time. If I had a book direct, I would have obviously got an earlier checking at 1 o'clock. And the main thing to realize here is that when somebody comes and stays with you, they're going to be traveling from a couple of hours flying in maybe, maybe it's for an event or maybe it's for X, Y or Z. And they don't want to be hanging around before they can check in with you. So they're much more likely to take action and book of you direct. So the conversation would go, can I flip it to a direct booking?

How do I do that? And it's super simple. This is where you just take over with a little bit of Nouse. And you say, yeah, sure thing, Rob, no problem. So all I need, just for security reasons, can you just confirm what your email address is? Again, you don't get that email from the OTA, so you get that email. You just confirm your card details, brilliant, and you've got everything that you need. Just say, just do me a favor.

Can you just open up the Airbnb app or the booking.com app? Can you cancel that stay for me because I can't do it for you? Fantastic. As soon as you've done that, I will book it you in and you'll get a confirmation directly for us and you'll get that new checking time. And it works in so many levels because, number one, the major. you kick back. I get to that. People say, well, hang on a second, you're canceling an Airbnb list. And why would you do that? I'm not canceling the reservation. The guest is canceling it.

One in three, OTA reservations results on a cancellation. So because it's them doing it and not you doing it, it doesn't flag up on any radar on any, any, any OTAs. And it's totally within the T's and Cs as well. And by doing that, again, you've, you've basically canceled an OTA reservation. You've got a direct one in the bag. And I say we had about 60 to 70 percent success rate on that. just from having one little email template that went out after a booking. All right. Thank you for that, Mark. That is going to move us into the last segment of our show.

This is the world famous. Famous for... In this segment of the show, Robin, I ask every guest the same four questions, and we will fire them off at you. Question number one, Mark, what is your favorite real estate book? So I'm going to keep it bigger pockets. Avery Cowles, short-term rental, long-term wealth. Love the book, and I've got to know Avery quite well.

And I think that's a really good one for everybody in real estate is looking to get into short term rentals. Cool. Number two, favorite business book. I've always got it to hand. I've got it with me now. It's Tools of Titan by Tim Ferriss. And I'm a massive Tim Ferriss fanboy.

I've been listening to him and watching him since 2016. That book is amazing because it took 200 of his best episodes, all of his interviews with his guests. There we go, David. It's right there. And he put it into a book. It is a huge book. And it's one that you don't have to read it from page one to page, you know, 500 or whatever it is.

You can just dip into different chapters as you go. And as far as business, it's got a section on health. It's got a section on wealth. And it's by far the one that I always come back to is tools of Titans. All right. I thought I thought you were going to say, who not, who not how, since you, fun story here, Mark, mailed me a copy of Who Not How with a name. note that said this book is going to change your life, I think. Funny you mentioned that because I was,

you know, there's so many books that you could give. And I remember when you interviewed Alex Hall-Mosey, his answer was it depends on where you are in your journey. Now, me personally right now, I'm on a massive hiring spree. And who not how is like top of mind, clockwork, who not how, and a message, I sent it to Rob because there was a lot of things that he said that resonated. But the one that I always come back to is tools of Titans, a massive fan. And I feel it doesn't matter where you are in your journey, tools of Titans is one that you can come to at a lot of it. different stages. All right. I've got that noted. I have a, um, a notepad here whenever guests say their books that they recommend. I always write down the ones that sound intriguing for the day that I

possibly read a book again. I'm still, I'm still working through Burr right now, but honestly, like, you know, I'm looking, this is going to be my year. I'm going to get two books in. I do the same thing with interesting hairstyles that I see guests come in. And the odds of me actually acting on that are about the same as Rob reading a book. Oh, it's probably accurate. It's probably accurate. Three, when you're not busy creating direct booking websites and just totally shaking up the short-term rental world, Mark, what are some of your favorite hobbies? Well, at the moment, it's sleep. I've mentioned at the start. I've just had a baby girl three weeks ago.

So whenever I can have sleep, that's a big part. And the other thing is, basically, my main passion is soccer, football, Liverpool Football. I'm actually going to go after this episode and watch them probably lose tonight, which is a shame because they're a very good soccer team. But yeah, let's say Liverpool, and if we've got any Liverpool fans watching, please send me a message on Instagram. Come and say hi at Boosley, UK. And yeah, that's my big passion is Liverpool and creating children, it looks like. You don't sound like you're from Liverpool. Are you from that area?

I am not from that area. It's the other area of the Pennines. But my granddad got me on to Liverpool when he was alive. My first ever game, my granddad took me to me and my cousin. and he was a he was a big fan back in the day. And I will never ever forget that, forget that experience. But I've just, I've had it ever since the age of 10 or 11. But yeah, good, good scouse knowledge there, David.

Well, which part of the UK are you from? I've been trying this whole time to peg it. It sounds like you've got a British accent with a hint of Irish that just keeps showing up. And I can't place it. So I'm a, I'm a little bit of a rogue because I've traveled so. much America and Australia and everywhere. I've sort of lost my my proper accent. But I'm like one of these chameleons way, if I hang around somebody for so long, I will just tap into their accent. So if I go and stay in Liverpool for a week, I'll come out sounding like I'm from Liverpool.

If, you know, if I hang around in Australia, I'll stick around. You say. Kind of cold. So basically, yeah. That's how I sound with this cold. That sounds like I'm from Liverpool there. They've got like that Middle Easter hach with everything they're saying. So here, I want to do this before I ask you the next question. Rob, speak in your English accent, and Mark, you're going to tell us where Rob's accent would be placed if he lived in the UK. Not really my bag. See, the movie, forgetting Sarah Marshall, when Russell Brand gets, like, has a surfing accident, and then Paul Rudd's character goes and comes over and goes, you sound like you're from Landon. That is basically... So I'm Paul Rudd in that. You are Paul Rudd in that.

Russell Brand, didn't it? You sound like someone trying to sound like they're from London. that's what he's telling you. Not really. All right, now we're going to do mine, Mark. It's not going to be necessarily British, but it will be from somewhere in the UK. If you had to say, what do you think I'm talking from? What does this accent sound like, Marker?

That's two hours north of me. That's good old Scotland. Aye, that's the right. My grandparents are from Glasgow. They've spoken like this in the entire life. Good, good. As a little kid, I thought everybody's grandparents sounded like they were Scottish. I just thought that's like a grandparent thing.

I didn't know that that was my grandparent. So the first time I met like someone else's grandparents and they didn't sound that way, my five-year-old brain was like, what? Like, why do they sound like your mom and your dad? They're supposed to sound different. That's how I thought that it worked. All right, next question.

In your opinion, Mark, swimmingly and pun, worked together pretty well, didn't that? I didn't even expect that pun to have a pun. It's a pun within a pun. It's punception happening on the podcast. In your opinion, Mark, what sets apart successful investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started?

procrastination is the killer of all good ideas, plans and businesses. And somebody once said to me when I first got going in this is the key to success is imperfect action applied at speed. So I always stand by that. Just done is better than perfect. Just go and get it done. That's beautiful. Strikingly similar to Rob's dancing style. That's true. I'm more of a vertical dancer. I'm still mastering the chat, ha, ha, slide. Well, I'm a horizontal dancer. That's why I've got four kids. And what was the strategy there? Imperfect action done? What was it? So, imperfect action applied at speed. Applied at speed. Yes. That describes Rob perfectly. All right. Rob. That's right. Hey, don't trample on my. This is my question. This is the one question I get all podcast, Dave.

Number five, that's actually more of a statement. Mark, tell us where people can find out more about you on the internet. So one place, one place only. Just head over to Amazon and go grab this. Book direct playbook. Go grab that copy. Please. And in there is my Instagram. where you can come and find me on the Instagram. Thank you very much, chaps. Much appreciated. It's right. It's not a freeway. There we go.

Lovely. Really appreciate it. It's on my goals to read this as my second book. You are one of the hundred books competing to be the second book that Rob has ever read. We will see how the book Hunger Games works out in Rob's life. May the odds ever be in your favor. All right. Before we get out of here, Rob, where can people find out more about you?

Oh, you can find me on the old YouTube where I put it all out. there. I put everything, my emotions, my trauma, my successes, my victories, my how to win playbook. And yeah, soon enough, you'll probably see Mark on the channel too. So you can find me over at Rob Built on YouTube at, sorry, on Instagram over at Rob Built. And then if you want to see me dance and do funny little trends on TikTok, you can find me at Rob Bilto with an O. What about you, David? You can find me at David Green 24 on just about all social media. And then on YouTube at David Green real estate. I've also been going live on YouTube on Friday night. So join us there. I'm going to start bringing in guests. Maybe Mark himself will join us one to answer all your questions about

OTAs and avoiding corporate travel crazy lunacy that we're starting to see within those industries. And if you would be so kind, please go to your favorite podcast app, be it Stitcher, Spotify, Apple Music, whatever that's called now, Apple Podcasts. And leave us a review. Those help a ton. We want to get the message out there that Bigger Pongas is preaching to more people. We want to get more people exposed to messages like Marks and Rob's and the other BP influencer. So please, if you would go leave us a review, we would love you for it as well as following us on our YouTube channel, which is growing as well. This has been a fantastic show, Rob. I want to give you any last words before we get out of here. I just want to say, you call me an influencer, which is,

that's like the nicest thing you've ever said to me. I really appreciate it. You're such a millennial, that that would be the best compliment anyone could ever give you. I hope so. I don't know. It depends on who you talk to. You are the millennial. That's right. Are you old enough to remember that movie, Weird Science? Oh, where those nerds create this, like, really hot girl in a lab and they, like, fall in love with her? What year was that? I mean, I'm an 80s, baby, you know? I was born in 89. Yeah, it's this movie where these two, like, really nerdy guys create a woman in a lab and she's beautiful and she falls in love with them, I think. Well, that's like, Rob. If two people created a millennial, it would be him. He is the personification

of how that looks. Well, Mark, I want to appreciate you for being here. And Rob, thank you for recommending Mark for the podcast. This was a fantastic show full of very practical, tactical, advice that we don't always get. So I want to thank you for that, Mark, and I will let you get out of here. This is David Green for Rob Imperfect Action, Dunnett Speed Abas Solo. Signing on. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform, or Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer.

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