Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 9 Episode 3. This is a recap of my interview with Chris Ballard and we talked about how he increased his direct bookings.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
03:00 About Chris
04:50 Chris' struggles
06:30 Chris' results
09:45 Chris' final words
Whilst you’re here
Follow Boostly on the following channels to get more tips, tactics and knowledge on how you can increase your direct bookings
Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
Chris Ballard is from the government of the state in Cardiff. They operate service departments around the city centre, mainly for leisure guests, corporate business travellers.
Before he joined Boostly, most of Chris' bookings were mainly Airbnb. And the quality of guests they had, they were not the best, there was a lot of last-minute bookings and parties and things getting destroyed, unfortunately, because that's what happens with OTAs. They just take your money and send you to get back to you quickly.
Chris' struggles
There's a lot of information out there, and probably too much. Chris was trying to do too many things too often in it, that kind of got on top of him. So since joining the academy, he had a lot more clarity, a lot more ability to find out what he needs to do, and exactly how to do it, which is a lot, which saves a lot of time, it really, really does help with your business when you know exactly what you need to do.
It's been done before. And the results you're expected to get at the end, look around and trying to find the correct information. And the correct way to do all the little bits you have to do when running your hospitality business is really, really difficult.
And if you don't get the basics, right, you're going to struggle, you're going to really, really struggle. And before joining, basically, and having everything explained to him, clearly and appropriately. he really didn't have the basics in place.
Chris wasn't doing the pricing structure, the messages he sends to the guests, they weren't as good as they should be. Since he joined some of the pieces of training, he just started to see results already.
Chris' results
Boostly stood out to Chris from everything else. There's lots of thought that goes into the training, there's lots of thought that goes into the group, the atmosphere is great. There are so many lovely people. And everybody contributed really helps up when they can. It's about the community feeling of everybody contributing and helping each other to get the best results. After taking a few pieces of training and seeing the results from the SEO training, the Google business training and seeing how his business and the amount of people that ring him for direct booking has risen.
Chris has removed his reliance on the OTAs. And got much, much, much, much more direct bookings. He has gone from 10%, to up to about 85 in the space of a month and a half of joining the Academy. That everything you need to get where you want to go and save that 15-20% from the OTAs is there. You just have to do the work.
Chris' final words
Chris feels like he's got much more control over his business and how he wants to operate. He's not racing to the bottom like everybody else's on the on Airbnb or booking.com. He's got returning guests, people that are recommending him to their friends and family, people coming down from business who were then recommending him to other people in their company.
So it produced a much more stable base for him to build from. He's looking to expand now in the next couple of months because even though this is in the middle of COVID-19, he is fully booked up until January. And that's down to the community and the training individually. It's given Chrisme much more confidence in what he does. It's given him the ability to see things a little differently and push forward and give the service and get the results.
Know more about Chris on his Facebook.
Before you leave
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