Welcome to Boostly Podcast Episode 315. This is a recap of my Facebook live where I talked about how Tokeet is losing you bookings.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
00:00 Start
01:30 Boostly API
05:30 If you are a Tokeet user
Whilst you’re here
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Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
So for those that have been listening to this podcast, my rants over the past couple of years, you know that I'm not the biggest fan of Tokeet, the PMS provider, but they are one of the biggest PMS for the service accommodation market. I've got reasons why I think that is, but it's not for today. But I have always wanted to fix their booking engine. It's a big, big pain point of mine. And a big annoyance of mine and a pet peeve of mine when I see that the most important part I believe, of a PMS provider property management software is the online booking section is the section that where your future potential guest will go and make a booking with you.
And as a couple of PMS is out there to keep being the biggest one where they have never fixed it is always been not the best on mobile is always been clunky. And for us who do website design, we've created a website. And then as soon as a user goes to book now, it always takes them right back to the start of the booking process. And for me, I was always saying, Listen, a guest will come on to a Boostly website, they'll put the dates that they want to stay, they'll find a location that they want to stay in, they'll do all of the things. And then when they click on book now, it just takes them straight back to the process, and it confuses them.
And as we know, when you confuse you lose. And the stats that I've been touting for years is that 87 plus percent people, as soon as they have a bad user experience, they leave a website and never come back.
Boostly API
So with the introduction of Boostly API, with the ability for us to really delve in and communicate directly with the PMS Tokeet being one of them and fair play to Tokeet for opening up their API to as for this, we've been able to fix this problem. And I wanted to show you today a couple of examples. Now, the website I'm going to show you isn't a bad bad website is just the one that I could find. And I'm not saying that the website that I'm going to show is poor in any way shape or form, it's just I'm going to show you this is a very common problem that Tokeet users have if they want to increase their direct bookings.
So on the screen right now, we've got service live in Liverpool, they've got a WordPress website put together, okay, and you've got all of these properties, I've got 50 apartments in 15, Liverpool locations, all of this jazz. Now, the problem that they have is that they are assuming that number one, that their guest already knows which one of these locations they want to stay out. So there's no map, there's no help. Most of the time, when somebody lands on this page, they know a certain area or a specific region or Liverpool wherever they're going to go to the football and they need to be aware, unfilled days off, they want to be down by the docks for the entertainment for the night out, etc, you name it, they need to know the general area, because of how the Tokeet website is set up. And the booking engine is set up, they are very restricted that the only thing that they can do is have this little link here that takes them to the Tokeet booking page. And again, the Tokeet booking page isn't the best it looks backwards to say the very least.
Okay, so as soon as you hit the book, now, you have to go and start that search all over again. And this is one of the problems that we had for years, or Boostly is when we're working with PMS is the book in part always was the downfall. So with the API that we have created, and I'll show you an example now. So this is one of the newer Boostly websites, it's unique apartments, UK.
They've got hundreds of units all over the United Kingdom, as you can see here, very spread out. A guest will come on and they'll say right, I'm going to Merseyside I know my date roughly are going to be so it's my birthday and want to go stay for a couple of nights. It's going to be me and Laura. We're going to go and just kid-free nights a couple of places. This is the place that comes up. We've got the map, but we've got one in Liverpool. So that works out well. I can click on here. And now we're in.
Okay, now, the cool thing is with the API is that already the availability is there. Okay, already I know that I can book in now when I click on book now, instead of taking me right back to this very stage, what is going to happen on this site is that I can make a booking right there right now. And I can register an account just like I would do in an OTA, I can make a payment Veyron is all collected on the Boostly website. And it's fed directly into Tokeet which is great. It means it keeps it all on the Boostly site. Everything from live rates, live availability, live pitches, all of that jazz is passed straight through to Bostly and I can even complete the booking.
Now even if, like I mentioned a couple of episodes ago, even if for whatever reason I don't complete the booking but I Register, then the ability various to retarget send emails out to try and get them back onto the page to check out x, y and Zed. So this is how we are solving these problems.
There's other websites out there's of a PMS is out there but we're looking to do this for as well. And it is very exciting. The cool thing about all of this is that we're going to be able to for the first time ever, track revenue has come from a Boostly site which is really interesting to me.
If you are a Tokeet user
So again, if you have got a Tokeet website, and if you are frustrated with the amount of direct bookings that are coming through, then I encourage you to get in contact boostly.co.UK/WC and set up a call. We'll walk you through how we can do something similar for you like we've done for unique and other Tokeet clients. We get a lot of them coming to us now and they are wanting to upgrade and they are wanting to get a more direct booking website.
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