Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 11 Episode 41. This is a recap of my Facebook live video about my reaction to Brian Chesky's interview.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
00:00 Start
02:00 My reaction to Brian Chesky's interview
03:15 Brian's reaction on book direct movements
04:30 What hosts can do
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Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
In today's episode, I'm going to be reacting to a recent podcast interview with Mr. Brian Chesky where he was asked about the book direct movement. Now the podcast that we are talking about is the podcast in Sway and the episode was called Airbnb Has a Hate Group Problem, Too. When I was talking about the riots, the terrorist action in Washington DC, the start of January 2021 where these hooligans stormed the Capitol and did all sorts of things. And obviously they were travelling from all over America. And they were staying in Airbnb. That is what the episode started off as. The interview was really good really pinned Brian Chesky on a couple of points.
Brian's reaction to book direct movements
But one thing that really caught my eye was when he was specifically asked about the book direct movements. Let me just play this to you.
We don't think it's happening very frequently. And the way to combat that primarily is to make a service so good that they don't have a reason to take it offline. For example, you take it on Craigslist, your home gets trashed, you might not be insured. You do an Airbnb, you have a million dollars coverage.
That is a very good marketing spiel that Airbnb, Booking, Vrbo and all these companies have used from day one. So the question that she asked us, obviously guests are taking it off platforms and going to things like Craigslist, she didn't mention specifically about websites, or a PMS, but there are fantastic tools out there. So this doesn't happen now. What he's doing here is that he is just playing the rhetoric that so many OTAs have done over the years is that book with us because then your property is safe.
What hosts can do
Guests book with those because then you know that your booking is genuine. Now this is the trust issue. This is why it's so important that you utilize services like i-Prac behind the scenes that do the guest verification and have good insurance, you got to use these tools out there. And then you got to talk about on your website, in your social medias on your emails, you've got to lay into the hosts. So I explained to the guests that when they book direct, they are secure. And are you protecting you and you're protecting them.
This is the marketing material that Airbnb are pushing out all day long. booking.com are pushing out all day long. And this is why they're saying book via their platform. So this is really key insight when it comes to marketing. And this gives you everything that you need to know and what you need to talk about the safety aspect, the trust aspect. So look at your website, what can you be doing today to portray the act of confidence and trust in your business? If you get that right, your direct bookings will grow and grow and grow. And as always, I will be there to give you more help, tip and advice.
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