[00:00:00] Liam: Welcome to the Boosty Podcast. This is the podcast that gives host the tools, the tactics, the training, and most importantly, the confidence. You can go out there and get more direct bookings. We're doing something slightly different on this episode, and I'm gonna call this behind the PMS. Uh, we've been asked by many, many of our clients, and I see it often in the Facebook groups saying, what PMS should I go for?
[00:00:21] Liam: And here at Boly we, uh. One of the most connected, uh, website partners with many PMSs. So there's not one that we favor over others, but ultimately we figured that if we get people on who use different PMSs and they can then talk through what is good about the PMS, what they'd like to see more from the pmms and just give you a bit of an insight.
[00:00:42] Liam: So today we are diving into free to book and to help us with that, we've got Harrow. He is the owner of the Hive at 52, which is an amazing. Uh, bed and breakfast, and we're gonna dive into a little bit about his business and then we're gonna dive into free to book so you can find out more. Welcome along Harrow.
[00:01:00] Liam: Thank you for joining me.
[00:01:01] Harro: Thank you, Liam. Thank you for having me on, uh, on the podcast again.
[00:01:04] Liam: So Harrow, you're very welcome. And I know it's been been a little while since we last saw you. Um, I think you guys have just won an award, am I right?
[00:01:12] Harro: Uh, yeah, that's, uh, absolutely right. Uh, we became the winner of the small accommodation or surface accommodation provider.
[00:01:21] Harro: For marketing Cheshire, uh, it's the second year we, we, um, actually entered the, the award. Last year we came, highly recommend it. And this year we came out as a winner. So, yeah, that's quite exciting actually.
[00:01:34] Liam: That's, that's always good to hear. I like to see people, uh, get these awards in hospitality and especially good people like yourself.
[00:01:41] Liam: So, uh, I know we're gonna be talking about free to book today, which the pm MS that you use. But before we do, can you give an introduction to your business so people have an understanding of where you're coming from, hospitality wise. And, um, before we dive into your software.
[00:01:56] Harro: Yeah. Um, so, uh, as you say, my name is Har and I run the hive of two two band and breakfast.
[00:02:01] Harro: It's a small band and breakfast in Cheshire in the northwest of England. Uh, we in our 10th year this year, so we opened 10 years ago in November. Uh, but prior to that I've been in the hotel business for, uh, 20 odd years. Um, and I've did all of everything from chef to reception, revenue manager, operations manager.
[00:02:22] Harro: Uh, and revenue sales as well. And then about 11, 12 years ago, I was in between jobs and we start thinking maybe we start something for our own and 10 years on, we are still going.
[00:02:32] Liam: Nice, nice. And, um, so. You mentioned this, it's bed and breakfast. I know a lot of people listening to this will be in hospitality.
[00:02:40] Liam: Um, some will have short term rental, but, uh, bed and breakfast for people who, uh, aren't familiar. What, what is the entire setup? And I know it sounds obvious, but just for, for everybody to, so it's really clear.
[00:02:53] Harro: It's funny you asked that question because I've been talking to a few other people in ly about it, and I put on the, on the group last week as well about asking if there was anyone still doing bed and breakfast or guest house.
[00:03:04] Harro: Mm-hmm. Um, I mean, some people call us the design dinosaurs of the industry. You know, we, we do the old fashioned welcoming people cooking breakfast for them, uh, and looking after them. We're on property, a lot of us. Um, so the setup we have, we actually live in the house as well. So it's a big detached house, uh, with three guest rooms.
[00:03:25] Harro: Front of the house is the bed and breakfast, and the back of the house of our is our property for my family. Um, and as I said, I'll do everything really, so I. Uh, do the marketing. I do the social media. I check people in. I check people out. I cook the breakfast. I serve the breakfast. And then once the guests have gone, I actually service the rooms, clean the rooms, do the ironing and everything.
[00:03:46] Harro: So it's really just me, uh, doing, uh, the whole dinner, breakfast. Uh, I do get help from my wife and when my elst daughter is back from university, she will help as well. But 99% of the time it's me. Um, just looking after the guest really. It's a bit like a. Kind of hotel, but not as many facilities.
[00:04:06] Liam: Yeah, that's cool.
[00:04:07] Liam: And, and ultimately you're doing a fantastic job. Hence, hence the award. And just before we move on to, to free to book, who tends to come and stay in the property?
[00:04:17] Harro: Um, it's, it re well it's been quite a mixture actually. I've been really lucky. Um. That for the last year and, uh, two, three months, I've had two, um, corporate guys stay with me Tuesday to Thursday or Monday to Friday.
[00:04:33] Harro: Mm-hmm. Um, but generally speaking, my clientele is, uh, people who visit their friends and family, uh, locally who can't stay with family or don't wanna stay with family. Um, a little bit of business. And then during the summer we get the weddings. People attending weddings and also, uh, visiting some of the local, uh, gardens, um, in Cheshire.
[00:04:56] Harro: Um, so I would say 80%. Usually it's 80% lesser and 20% corporate. Uh, but as I said for the last year and a bit, it's probably more 40% corporate and 60% lesser. Um, and with be being busy in the week sometimes, or most of the times, I actually can close out the weekends, so it's getting a little bit less. But yeah, so about 80 20, uh, and as I said, the last few years, it's more 40 60.
[00:05:25] Liam: That's cool. And the reason I wanted to, to. Let everybody know the background, uh, because obviously when we choose software, sometimes we are looking at different softwares for different reasons, but ultimately it's good to get an understanding of, uh, what the person who's using the software is, is using it for and how it's helping them.
[00:05:44] Liam: So let, let's dive into free to book. What made you choose free to book? Uh, given that there's so many different softwares out there.
[00:05:52] Harro: Um. Well, it was really an old friend of mine who, uh, well, let me just go back a little bit. So, in my, my, a lot of my roles, I was a revenue sales manager, uh, in, in large chain hotels.
[00:06:05] Harro: And the large chain hotels have, have PMS systems, but they're big ones because they've got everything filtering into it. So the spa, the food and beverage outlets and things like that. So when I started doing it then and breakfast, I didn't want to have a paper diary. I wanted to have it automated. Um, automated because it avoids double booking or errors with it and things like that.
[00:06:26] Harro: So when I, then I opened the BB, a friend of mine was running a bed and breakfast in, or a guest house in the lake district and, um, he just started to use free to book. He used another PMS before, but he was very, very unhappy with that. So he could actually tell me the bad and the good of both. PMSs and then I had a, a call with free to book, and they're explaining what they're doing and I thought, yeah, it's a, it's a nice system.
[00:06:50] Harro: It was relatively, uh, cheap to set up. Um, and then with all the add-ons, you can make it more expensive. Um, so I just liked the, the simplicity of it really. Um, so I was recommended by it.
[00:07:02] Liam: That's cool. And, um, as, as you say, there's a, there's a whole history you've got before doing the bed and breakfast, and for anybody who hasn't heard Harrows episode, he came on behind the host, which was, uh, a little while ago now.
[00:07:16] Liam: But you can go and check out his behind the host episode and hear about his hospitality journey and some of the lessons that, that you learned along the way, which, um. We're very cool, and I know we haven't got time to dive into now, but for anybody who wants to go and check those out, go and have a search on our ly.
[00:07:32] Liam: Um, either on the podcast or on YouTube. You'll be able to find Harrows full episode there. So let's talk about the features of Free to book. You were recommended this by a friend, uh, to go with this one. What features do you like the most? Um, what ones really stand out?
[00:07:51] Harro: Um. I like the simplicity of it. You know, the calendar view gives you an easy overview of what you've got in house the next few days arrivals or the next month arrivals.
[00:08:02] Harro: Um, personally I also think that the customer communication is very good as well. You get a response quite quickly. Uh, I don't tend to phone because most of the stuff I have is not urgent, but when you then submit it through their help desk, it actually, you get quite a, a very good response on that. Um.
[00:08:18] Harro: What I remember it obviously it's about 10, 11 years ago now. It was easy to set up. Uh, it's easy to use and they seem to still be developing as well, although not as quick as probably some of the bigger ones, but they continuous looking at improvements. So then I think about a year and a half ago, they in, uh, introduced something called Bloom.
[00:08:39] Harro: And it's actually their part of the, of the booking engine. So I know you've probably seen it as well, and many people have that when you are on your website, you've got your, all your, your lovely pictures and your, your brand colors and things like that. And then when you go to the booking engine, it is very clunky.
[00:08:56] Harro: It's not in your colors and things like that. And they've changed it. So now when you go from. My website on the book now button, it actually almost looks like he's still on my website. So they intro, I think it's about two years ago now, or a year and a half ago, and I'd really like that as well. It just made it a bit more professional.
[00:09:13] Harro: Um, also then last it introduced, uh. Uh, improvements on their channel management as well. So it's now easy to close out or restrict OTA channels or one OTA channel two, so the whole system is a little bit easier. Um, and then also as a small, uh, PMS, they introduce Room Price Genie, which is the dynamic pricing tool.
[00:09:37] Harro: Uh, again, in the past, in my past experience, I've worked with dynamic pricing tools or yield management tools or revenue management tools, quite a lot. And I wasn't sure how it would work for, for me as a small business, but I still use it now and I love it. And I also, it was affordable for me. Uh, I don't really know the prices for, uh, the likes of, um, what they call price.
[00:09:58] Harro: Um, what's the other, um, price Labs? That's Price Labs, you know, I don't really know. But for me as a small bed and breakfast, I think I pay 30 pounds a month plus VAT for my, uh, dynamic pricing, which I think, you know, is, it's actually pretty, pretty affordable. Um, and the other good thing I think as well about uh, uh, Frito book is that you can make it as cheap.
[00:10:21] Harro: Expensive as possible. So you can use it as, as your PMS not having any connections with channels. Uh, you can use their, uh, reputation, uh, product where they send out message, emails, uh, trying to get reviews. Uh, you can have the automated messaging system where you can also not have that. So you have to do it yourself.
[00:10:41] Harro: Set it up yourself. So there's a wide variety of, of things you can actually add on. Obviously it makes it more expensive, but if you don't want to do that or you don't have a need for it, you can just have it as a, as your PMS and that's about it.
[00:10:54] Liam: Nice. Build your own type of, uh, you know, you can, you can pick the bits you want and leave the bits you don't.
[00:11:01] Harro: Exactly. So I used to use reputation suites and I think it was something like 99 pound a month, a year, but it wasn't doing anything for me. I wasn't getting any more reviews, so I just knocked on that was saving me a hundred pounds.
[00:11:14] Liam: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:14] Harro: Um, so yeah, so you could, you know, and even with dynamic pricing, I, I was on it for about six months, two years ago, and I was like.
[00:11:22] Harro: It's not really doing anything for me. So I switched it off. There's no contracts with it or anything like that, but then I'm back on it now for a year and you know, I'm, I like it. So there's quite a bit of flexibility there as well. If you don't wanna use anymore, you just turn it off. Um, so yeah. And then during Covid, obviously Covid was a little bit different, but the introduction, digital registration form as well, it's still on there.
[00:11:44] Harro: That sort of helps me collating email addresses of guests because I just have to do a tick box on there saying, would you like to receive news from us? And you know, and then I upload 'em once a month or once, once, once a quarter, and I upload 'em to, um, to my, uh, CRM. So it's, it's quite simple system, but you can make it as difficult or complex as you like It really, and that's what I really liked about it.
[00:12:08] Liam: Nice. And I know in the industry, and certainly I, we mentioned this just before we hit recording, it's my, I've never used free to book, so it's my kind of preconception that it is, uh, one of the ones which a very good price point is, is that right in saying that it's, it's, it's super affordable?
[00:12:26] Harro: Yes, it is.
[00:12:26] Harro: Although I have to. I have to sort of say a little bit that they have now increased that, or from the 1st of April, they have put a minimum charge on per month, which costs a little bit of a stir. But I still think even beside that, I think it's still an avoidable option, uh, to use. Again, I've looked at some other ones.
[00:12:45] Harro: They're sort of comparable, but you know, you just, when you read through it, there's always some something hidden there. So personally, I think even with these price increases, I think there's still a very affordable option. Yeah,
[00:12:56] Liam: that's really cool. And one thing that's really important, particularly in your case obviously is you've got one address, but multiple rooms there.
[00:13:03] Liam: And I know certain pmms can struggle with. With that, whereas it sounds like Frees book does that absolutely fine and, um, you know, can, can manage different rooms at the same address. Is that correct? Yeah,
[00:13:14] Harro: yeah. So I mean, my mate had, I think he had nine rooms and he was fine. He coach with that, so, so I don't really know how it would work for short-term rental, um, accommodation because I don't really know how, how the setup is for that.
[00:13:27] Harro: But. Looking at it. I'm sure you can, they can set it up that way as well. It, and it works and, and as I said, it's not just small hotels BS using it. I know there's, um, SDRs and holiday lats using it as well, so
[00:13:40] Liam: that's cool. That's cool. Well, thank you for, for giving us the, the overview of features. Is there any features that you'd like to see come to that PMS in the future?
[00:13:49] Liam: So, uh, what, what would you like to see as additional features come into it?
[00:13:53] Harro: Um. For me, I think it is not really used. I mean I think it'd be handy if it links in with my website. So is it the API I, I'm not very technical on that side, but the link, the API links in in with three, two work. That'd be good because then I linked into my, my LY website.
[00:14:11] Harro: Mm-hmm. Um, and the other thing, I think some of the reporting with room Tobra Jeanie, I quite like to know where they get my. Competitor's rate from. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that's quite restricted with room price gen, and that's probably because it's the price, you know, for a low price, they, they can't really gimme that sort of information.
[00:14:28] Harro: But I quite like to know where they get my rates from because then it gives you a bit of an, uh, a better idea that if my rates are going to 150 pounds. There's nothing going on in my area, but maybe they're looking at the likes of Liverpool or Chester and there's something going on in the city, which, but, well, Chester is about 12 miles from me and Liverpool is about 20 miles from me.
[00:14:49] Harro: So that would help. But otherwise, no, I think, I think they're listening to their customers and they're developing, um, areas they've been asked to develop. So to be honest, no, I don't really have. Anything except those two really.
[00:15:03] Liam: That's cool. And when there's, uh, when you're in need of some service from them, is, is it, um, uh, what, what is their support like, uh.
[00:15:13] Harro: I don't think it's 24 hours. Again, I dunno. 'cause I've never had the, the, the, the need to use it. They do have coverage in the weekend, but it's very minimal. Um, but otherwise, you know, you can call them or you can just message 'em through the system. And as I said, the response time, normally it's very good, you know, I.
[00:15:34] Harro: I've, I've had responses within 10 minutes, and probably the longest response I waited for is probably a couple hours. So, um, but as I said, I, I really can't remember if it's 24 hours, but definitely it's seven days a week.
[00:15:46] Liam: That's cool. Well, Harry, thank you for, for coming on and sharing the, uh, the features, what you like about them and, uh, all the things to do with, with free to book.
[00:15:54] Liam: If somebody's listening to this episode now, considering free to book, um, can you share how it's impacted your business since you started using them and any advice you'd like to share with them?
[00:16:04] Harro: Um, well, for me it has made the process easier, you know, and I think that would've been with any, any PMSI probably used, you know, it's like.
[00:16:12] Harro: Why still use a paper diary even if you have one, two, or three properties, you know, it's so much easy. You can, you, you know, I'm linked in with uh, booking.com. At the time I was linked in with late rooms. I've got Airbnb, but it doesn't really do much through the channel manager. So then the exposure. You know, I've got a, a much wider exposure.
[00:16:32] Harro: When somebody makes a booking on booking com, it goes straight into my PMS. I don't have to worry about it. I get an email, the booking comes through. So it's made the process easy. It's easy to work. I would say there's less stress as well, so you don't have to say, oh, I need to close out booking com because I've taken a booking on my PMS or in my paper diary and things like that.
[00:16:49] Harro: So it alleviates a lot of stress, I think, and a lot of work. Um. As I said, I do really think that the communication is very good, um, and the response times are very good. And, uh, in regards to the, the, you know, the, the dynamic pricing tool, it has actually grown my rate, um, not by huge amount, but three pound 50 in 20 23, 20 24 compared to the year before.
[00:17:13] Harro: And it's almost four pounds a year to date. So it's a considerate, considerate demand for me as a small business. So that helped as well. Um, and again. I haven't really had much contact with Room Price Genie, but again, it's a relatively small company. Um, and the response from, from them as well has been quite good.
[00:17:32] Harro: So. Um, I think it's always worth having a look at different ones. Uh, and I think sometimes free to book falls a little bit, uh, on the wayside because they don't advertise or they, you know, they shout about themselves, but it's not a very well known, uh, PMS although I know a lot of people using it. So, um, yeah, I, you know.
[00:17:54] Harro: Give them a ring and um, ask them to, to, to show what they can do. And if anyone has got any questions, I'm more than happy to help as well, and, and sort of show them, uh, around free to book really. So
[00:18:04] Liam: thanks, Harrow. So how do people, uh, find out more about free to book, but also how do they find out more about your business as well?
[00:18:12] Liam: Feel free to, uh, with free
[00:18:12] Harro: to book. I think if you just Google free to book. So it's, uh, FREE. To and then book, uh, and I think it's free to book.com. Uh, and then you just can, uh, book in a call with them or, uh, for them to show you, um, what they can do for you and to get in contact with me. I'm on all the socials, the 52.
[00:18:34] Harro: B on Instagram, or you can email me at, um, at Harrow, at the hive@fiftytwo.com. Um, or just put a comment in, uh, in, with this podcast and, or put in the Ley podcast, ley group, sorry, or the hospitality group, and I'm more than happy to to contact you. So.
[00:18:53] Liam: Thank you so much again, Harrow and uh, yeah, really enjoyed hearing about Free to book Seeing You again on the Brucely Podcast.
[00:18:59] Liam: So if you are looking to find out more about a particular PMS or you've got questions you wanna carry on this chat, all you need to do is go onto Facebook. I. Go onto groups and search the hospitality community. You can tag in me, you can tag in Harrow who's also one of the admins of the hospitality group, and we are happy to answer any of these questions.
[00:19:19] Liam: If there's a PMS you'd like me to get more information on and go and find somebody who is using that PMS, so we can do an episode exactly like this. All you need to do is come and join us in that group and we'll be happy to accommodate that. Thanks for watching this episode of the Brucely Podcast.
[00:19:35] Liam: We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Very much.
