Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 11 Episode 9. This is a recap of my Facebook live video where I talked about how #BookDirect grew in 2020.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
01:00 Direct bookings are on the rise
02:15 Get a website
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Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
This is Mark Simpson and I give hosts all over the world just like you the tools, the tactics, the training, but most importantly the confidence to go and increase your direct bookings, and not having to rely on the OTAs.
I've got some good news. Direct bookings are on the rise. This is a fantastic new stat that has come out. 40% of 2020 bookings can be attributed to the direct channel. This represents a 25% increase over the previous year and a share of bookings that is larger than VRBO, Expedia and Booking.com combined, which is fantastic.
What does this mean
Now, what this means is it is so important now moving forward that you need to have your own website, people learning about direct bookings, thanks to the IPO and, and all the investigations into the OTAs and BBC panorama, etc. bringing attention to this, the public now know that the marketing spiel that the OTAs spin where they get the best rates. And all of that is not true, they do not get that they can actually get the same benefits cancellation policies when they book direct. And this is why we have to keep spreading the message and it all begins and ends with your website.
Get a website
But it is it's so important. If you haven't got a website, please, please, please make it one of your 2021 goals to do it doesn't have to even be with Boostly, even though we do website design just go and get one done. Because the power of direct bookings is on the rise.
There are people like Damien Sheridan who the book direct network who is bringing together trainers all over the world to talk about and how to spread the word myself, my big goal is to help 1 million hosts in 25 years, because by doing that, if I can train 1 million hosts to increase their direct bookings, and then they educate their guests on why they should book direct, then we're going to do some serious damage to the OTAs here because people will start to realize they will start to contact us more.
In fact, 2020 in the pandemic has shown one thing, the more that the OTAs disabled the ability to book via their platforms. Well guess what, this is why they started here because they then go on to Google, the guest goes on to Google and runs a Google search. And that's why they're coming to us directly. And if you hadn't had your own website, if you just relied on one channel to bring in your bookings, that when they run that search, they were going in a loop, go in a loop and they couldn't find you so they went to somebody else.
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