Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 11 Episode 163. This is a recap of my Facebook live where I tune-up Sean from Airbnb Automated Direct Bookings for his hospitality business.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
00:00 Start
00:40 Boostly tune-up for Sean
03:00 What we are going to do
Whilst you’re here
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Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
Welcome back to another episode of the Boostly podcast and we are doing another episode of Boostly tune-up now if you were listening or watching the series where we worked with the fantastic Casa4U in Javier, you'll know that I said that I was looking for potential people who wanted to be involved in the next round of Boostly tuneup and I'm so happy to say that we've had 30 people getting contact. And I'll be reaching out to everybody individually.
Boostly tune-up for Sean
But what I wanted to do is I just wanted to show what we are doing for a company in America. Now you may know the founder, Mr. Sean rocky g of Airbnb automated for those of you who don't know, Sean's business is called pod suites. And Sean is doing all of the things the YouTubes, Tiktoks, whatever you name it, he's doing all of the things set up new units left, right and center. So I've been trying to show on probably on and off for the last year. And I've been saying, Listen, we need to talk about his direct bookings, talk about his direct bookings. And he said, I know, I know, I'm not the one to do this. Let me put you in contact with the people that do. And he's put me in contact with Haley, who runs the show, and Christina and Christina is my direct point of contact here. We jumped on a call. I didn't record the call, but I'll just give you a brief update. So they've got over 110 listings all over four states. And what they are wanting to do is they're wanting to cut down on the overreliance on one platform, which obviously Airbnb, they were wanting to get direct bookings. But they are yet to put certain systems and structures in place, a website, a PMS all of that they are working on.
But I said, well, let's go for the short term win here, because they must have lots of guests come through our doors on a weekly basis. So I asked, Are you collecting email addresses? And they said, No. So what we've done and what we're doing right now is we have created a MailChimp account. And what we're going to do in the month of August is we're going to try and increase this number from one to over 100. The short and easy way, is that, within MailChimp, you can actually create a survey, as you can see here, and what we're going to do is we are going to create a survey that collects the guest data after the point of booking. So we're going to send this, we're still drafting it up. So I want to make sure that we get all the right information. It's going to ask for email address as a little tick box here, which MailChimp give you same as to subscribe, and we're saying, Would you like to receive emails before your stay with useful information of things to do in the area filled, get first name, surname, country or city or town that they're based in, which obviously helps us for marking? And is what is the reason for your visit, and is there anything special we can assist you for your stay.
What we are going to do
So what we're gonna do is we're going to finish that off in the next couple of days. And we're going to add that to smart b&b. So pad suites, Kristin and a team, they use smart b&b as their direct point of communication, because they are linked up on vrbo and Airbnb. And at the point of booking, the message that goes out is going to include a little link to this MailChimp survey, they will create it and then on the back of that as long as they tick to subscribe, we will start to build that list. So that's the short and easy way.
What we're also doing as well is I've recommended to him and I've put them into contact with stay fi said, Listen, let's just test it. Because if you add this to 110 listings, this is going to be a pretty big investment. So let's look at look doing four to six, maybe in one unit that you have. And we will see if we can do, Kristen had to get a sign off from Haley and Sean would say have a stroke of luck as they took on three or four units that actually had a stay fi set up there. So we're gonna get them going, I put them in touch with our for it stay fi and we will get that going though don't forget stay fi is a fantastic tool.
And what it does is it installs a little box in your property. And if anybody wants to use the Wi Fi, they have to sign up for your emails. It's beautiful. It's just like when you go into Starbucks, or you go to any Premier Inn or hotel around the world. And if you want to use a Wi Fi you got to go for a splash page. This is it and the beauty of it and why it's so good is that not only are you going to get the Booker's email, but you're also going to get all of the guests' email and data as well.
So that is the information that is going to be filtering in and it links up to MailChimp, which is great. So we're gonna have a short and medium-term when and hopefully we can get stay fi all set up in the month of August. So I can report back in September and show you this screen and instead of it being one, it's going to be 100 200 or maybe 1000. And then once we've done that Then we are going to put some templates in place and we are going to start to use them to reach out to their guests that know like and love them to get referrals and stay top of mind. So super quick.
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