Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 11 Episode 8. This is a recap of my Facebook live video where I talked about vacation rental marketing.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
00:55 Relationships are key
01:50 Best example
02:30 What you can do to your guests
03:00 How to build relationships
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Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
Today, I want to give you a little bit of a vacation rental market one on one. And the most important thing, and this is true for any business is that relationships are key. Your network is your network, you'll have heard this time and time again. And it can't be more true than in hospitality and vacation rentals.
So what you need to do is you need to be building relationships. And those relationships can be a number of things. Number one, you can be building relationships with local businesses in and around you that will impact and make your guest experience better. So if there's any really good takeaway places, if we're any good days out, if there's any good places that you recommend to go eat, or drink, or anything that's around your customer, avatar, build relationships with these businesses and add them to your digital guidebook, Hostfully, so do that, add it to them. And you can work out a bit of a discount.
Best example
One of the best places that I've ever stayed, they presented with us a map, a map that they hand-drawn, and then distributed replicated loads and loads. But what they had on the map was their local area. And they had highlighted the specific places that they had special discounts and offers and rates. It was fantastic. We loved it, we used it, we recommended it and I still remember it to the day.
What you can do to your guests
So what can you do along those lines, building relationships with your guests, your guests will be your biggest word of mouth marketing. What you have to do though, is you got to stop treating them like a number and actually treat them like a human being. So how can you keep in touch, you know, social media, WhatsApp, you know, how can you make their guest experience so fantastic that they want to stay in touch with you?
You know, the stereotypical hospitality line is, you know, commerce guests and leavers, friends? Well, let's start doing that. You know, some of our best guests are the ones that we still keep in touch with today. There are guests that have come to us every year. Yeah. And they went to mine and my wife's wedding.
How to build relationships
So again, how can you build relationships? How can you make your guests feel like superfans, and you know, whatever that may be, whether that is sending them something in the post every now and again, whether that is handwriting and a letter now and again, or when they do come and stay, you literally make them feel like $1 million.
And also as well, building relationships with your peers in this industry. So there will be other people in your town, your city, your area, that does something similar to you, you've got to stop treating them like the competition and reach out for collaboration, I really believe that 2021 and beyond is going to be the year of collaboration. So how can you utilize collaboration and work together? So the main way, join a little network, create a little network, maybe create a WhatsApp group between all of you.
And if somebody contacts you saying, I need a booking, say, I can help. Don't worry, I'll help give me an hour. And I'll call you back and we'll get you booked. And I'll take all the details and say, yeah, we'll get you booked. And then get into the whatsapp group and say, who can take this book in.
This is the way how you keep the bookings in your area in your local area. And in your collective. And you know, you can even start a workout, maybe a little commission rate, maybe one or 2% 5%, whatever it may be something that again, you can get the booking you can go out go and get it for you. I'll go and sort it out and you get those details. And you can go and find it.
Again, really, really effective way of building relationships, passing it around, and just sort of, again, building your network. Because the one thing that I attribute to the growth of Boostly and how we created the Grainary into being as big as what it was, was because of the relationships that we made and the relationships that I am making to this day.
People now recommend me all the time for website design for training for content creation, and it's because of the relationships that I am making and continue to make and it's because from the start, I didn't look at what the competition was. I looked at who I could collaborate with.
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