[00:00:00] Liam: Hi, welcome to the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives you the tools, the tactics, the training, and most importantly, the confidence. So you can go out there and get yourselves lots of direct bookends. On this podcast, we do a mini series called the Boostly Spotlight Series, and this is where we bring your attention as a host to services and cool tools and softwares.
[00:00:19] Liam: Things that you need to know about as a host, which is going to help you on your journey. Especially to get direct bookings. And that's exactly what we're diving into today. So I've got a special guest with me. So we've got Pierre, isn't it? Pierre Becerril. He is the CEO and he's the founder of Directo and it's an amazing app.
[00:00:38] Liam: He's, he's going to talk us through it. And, um, yeah, we'll be sharing his website at the end. So welcome along, Pierre. Thank you for joining me. So, Pierre, what do you want people to get from this episode, this spotlight episode?
[00:00:51] Pierre: I'd love to get folks to know what we do here at Directo. I think we created a platform from the industry for the industry to basically help get more direct business, which I think is kind of the holy grail and was something that, you know, aligns us all.
[00:01:07] Pierre: And, um, yeah, I'd love to get that. Get, you know, folks to be aware of what we're doing and give us feedback, test it out and, and keep us, uh, you know, busy in growing the platform.
[00:01:15] Liam: Excellent. And people are going to be eager to find out what it does, but just before we go into that, um, can you just give us a bit of background on Directo and, and who you guys are?
What is Directo?
[00:01:26] Pierre: Sure. So director is a new search platform that allows travelers to find direct deals. And the new bit of it, if you want the, the thing that makes it very different is that it's something that, um, travelers installing their computer and their browser, they do it once. And then every single time they search.
[00:01:44] Pierre: Anywhere in the web, we're going to try to help beat that search and find the direct deal. So let's say they're going to one of the OTAs and look for, you know, a property somewhere in a destination They're looking to book in Well on top of their search will overlay information to let them know if a property is bookable direct somewhere else so if you want it's a way for operators and Whether they are, you know, hotels or short term rentals, because we do everything to be promoted out there and find a way to drive attention to their, to their direct brands.
[00:02:17] Pierre: So that's in short what we do. It's called director. You can Google it straight away on Google and you find the first result or direct extension if you want to go straight to it. And you install it in one click in your browser, and then you've got it every single time you search on any of the major platforms, you'll have the direct links on top.
How Directo Works for Travelers
[00:02:35] Liam: Is this really designed for people who are wanting to travel, or is this designed more for us as hosts, or is it equally beneficial to both?
[00:02:43] Pierre: It's a little bit like a marketplace, right? So we need, you know, this is like the chicken and egg dynamics. If you want, we, we need travelers to install this and then we need suppliers to be present in there.
[00:02:53] Pierre: Otherwise, you know, there's nothing to search for, right? So we can solve for that. We've got already a lot of inventory listed. Uh, one way we solved it is we let travelers themselves. Post the direct website when they found it, right? So if, if you're a user and you're interested in helping the next guy, um, you know, that we'll use the platform and you find a direct deal, you can post it.
[00:03:13] Pierre: And then eventually our team validates it. And so that way we were able to list hundreds of thousands of properties around the world. And, um, eventually, you know, the more user we are, the better the data is. And then eventually. The more information about where are the direct deals and how good are they as available to everyone.
[00:03:32] Pierre: So it's, it's really good for the entire ecosystem.
[00:03:34] Liam: How long has this concept been born and what made you come up with it?
[00:03:39] Pierre: Yeah. So we basically three founders. I joined, I joined the team, uh, earlier this year, the idea has been, you know, sort of in the making for a few more months, but it's really. Still in its infancy, you know, we're in the, in the early days, uh, I have to say there's been attempt in the past, but really nobody managed to nail the product or the acquisition of user, right?
[00:03:58] Pierre: Cause this is only as good as the audience that you have, right? Like if nobody uses it, there's no point in being listed. And it really doesn't, it doesn't work. So there's been attempts in the past that haven't worked out. And we think we, you know, we wanted to take a crack at it because we thought we had some, Some good ideas of how distribution works in the space and how to connect to industry players and also how to acquire users.
[00:04:21] Pierre: And, um, and, you know, that's why we, we, we give it a try. And now it's been what? 14, 15 months since we, we launched, um, and it's looking pretty positive. We're, we're adding about 20, 000 new users, um, to the platform every single month where we just hit 200, 000 users. Um, so it's an exciting milestone for us.
[00:04:43] Pierre: It's still small, you know, in comparison to other big platforms, but to us, it feels like a great achievement and the best thing of all is that they use it a lot, like our users. Um, search for travel content a lot and book a lot. And this is very encouraging to us, right? That's probably one of the biggest learning we had.
[00:05:02] Pierre: So we'd expect people to travel less often than they do or search for less, you know, less often than they do. And looking at the data, about 17 percent of, of our user base, every single month we'll use Directo to find direct deals. And that's, that's a lot, you know, if you compare it to retail products, similar products in retail, utilization is actually lower than this.
[00:05:22] Pierre: So travel is nothing to be shy about in terms of, you know, of utilization and how frequent travelers book online.
[00:05:30] Liam: Can we dive into how that works? So what does that look like for a customer journey? Where do I start my search, basically?
[00:05:37] Pierre: Right. So in general customer here about us, you know, yeah, you know, either PR or, you know, social media or a number of different marketing channels that we use, uh, right now, for instance, we're running, uh, you know, campaign here in, in Spain and subway stations, for instance.
[00:05:51] Pierre: So, you know, we do a number of marketing actions just to get known the magic really with our platform is that we just need their attention once because once they install, um, the plugin in their browser from that moment on, basically. We're going to be with every single search that they do in the future.
[00:06:08] Pierre: So that's, you know, if you want the very appealing side of the extension plays that you need to just acquire user once, and then you're with them, stick with them all the time. Right. So that's, um, very important. Then the user is going to just do their search. They usually do, they can search on Google, on a meta search, on an OTA, wherever they search will be present on top because if you're on, we're in the passenger seat of their browser, we see what they see.
[00:06:32] Pierre: And every time we see something that's bookable direct, we'll let them know. We'll say, look, do you know, do you know that this is bookable direct? And in general, you get better, better deals. Uh, one cool thing there is, uh, when we take them to the direct website, we let them know, Um, now we let, we give them the opportunity to, to rank the deal.
[00:06:49] Pierre: I don't know if you use Waze, uh, you know, this app, um, to sort of like find your route, um, it's like a Google maps or like, uh, you know, one of these map system, they have a really cool feature where you can let people know when there's an accident or if there's still, you know, a car parked, blocking the road or whatever.
[00:07:05] Pierre: So it's kind of like user based, user generated content there. So we did something similar. And when we take you to a direct deal, you can let know, The next traveler, whether the site gives good deals on their, on their direct run. So that helps if you want on the next traveler, be aware that, you know, by clicking somewhere, they are likely to get a good deal if they book direct.
Benefits for Hosts and Travelers
[00:07:24] Pierre: So there's a whole ecosystem that we're creating around, around loyalty and, you know, booking direct and, and educating customers. Cause for a lot of travelers, you know, they just don't know that it's, it's better to book direct. It's just thing that, you know, Going on booking. com is the cheapest thing, right?
[00:07:42] Pierre: Or it's, it's the most economic and, and you hear that a lot, right? So educating is a big part of also what we're doing.
[00:07:47] Liam: What was obvious from the, the test that I've done, I've, I've signed up for it. So if you're listening to this thinking, well, you know, it's all good, well and good them talking about it, but, but would Liam, would Mark sign up to it?
[00:07:58] Liam: Well, I actually have, it's actually, um, it's amazing to see I've got the plugin on my extension and it's amazing to see the test that I'd done actually is for one of our Boostly. Uh, website purchases, uh, customers who purchased the website and you could easily, uh, we were using one of the well known O. T.
[00:08:14] Liam: A. S. And we were searching on there and you could easily see that as soon as it came up. That's you clicked the extension and it came up with this person's website. Click on the website takes them straight through. And this is the great thing from a host point of view. We don't know that they found us via, uh, director necessarily, do we?
[00:08:33] Liam: But ultimately, or would we know as a host?
[00:08:36] Pierre: You actually, you actually know. So first thing, thanks for, for subscribing and taking membership. I had no idea you, you were part. So that's great. Um, actually every time we send, um, a traveler from, you know, uh, uh, somewhere else, you know, whether it's an OTA or a Google search or whatever.
Tracking Bookings via Directo
[00:08:54] Pierre: To your site, we put a little UTM. So UTM is a little tag in your URL so that you can look easily for it in your Google analytics. If you use it, you can just search director and you will already see the traffic we send you. So that's a very easy way to track, uh, you know, actual traffic coming from us. Um, and then there's a number of ways we could do that as well.
[00:09:14] Pierre: We've, we could build reports for you cause we know obviously who we sent to your, um, to your platform or to your, to your booking engine. And in that case, we can report it to you as well.
[00:09:23] Liam: So. You know where to go. If you're listening to this, uh, you know, where to go getdirecto.com If you're listening to this on the audio and it's safe to do so, you can look at the show notes and you can click the link within the show notes.
[00:09:36] Liam: So that's, that's it for myself and Pierre, but before we go, as we usually finish Pierre, Can you give us a motto or a mantra which has helped you on your journey? Can you share it with the audience to, to take us out?
Pierre’s Fail Fast Motto
[00:09:48] Pierre: Sure. So, you know, there's, there's one thing we try to do always, and I've been trying ever since I started, you know, my entrepreneurship journey is to fail fast.
[00:09:56] Pierre: Right. So I say my motto is try to fail fast because there's nothing that hurts more than, you know, trying too hard, something doesn't work and spending too much energy on, on an ideas. Whereas a lot of time you just can, can cut straight to testing it and Getting it out fast. So there's probably a hundred things we test and there's maybe two or three that remains and our idea is just don't want to waste too much time on the 97 things that won't work.
[00:10:19] Pierre: And I think that's, um, one of our motto here is just to make sure that, you know, we can test and ship things fast so we can fail fast and discover what actually works and keep growing. So, uh, one of my, one of my motto.
[00:10:32] Liam: It resonates with me. 'cause I see so many hosts who are so, uh, they, they get stuck in analysis paralysis and, and they're, they're just analyzing different softwares and, and they never take the, the jump onto one.
[00:10:43] Liam: Whereas the minute you go forward and you try one, and if it doesn't work, it's not a problem. You can always switch, you can always go to a different one. You know, like, and failing forward fast makes sense to me. So thank you for, for sharing that, Pierre. That's it from the Boostly podcast. Thank you so much Pierre, for coming on and, uh, cheer.
[00:11:01] Liam: We'll come and find out more about your product and hopefully we'll have you back on in the future as the product. Thanks so much.
