Meet Mark Simpson, Founder of Boostly

Quick Summary

Mark Simpson, founder of Boostly, shares insights on empowering short-term rental hosts to achieve direct bookings, reducing reliance on online travel agencies (OTAs) like Airbnb and Vrbo. He discusses how direct bookings improve profitability, control, and long-term business sustainability for property owners. His journey from a family-run guesthouse to creating a globally recognized brand highlights his expertise in marketing, direct booking strategies, and host empowerment.

Key Points

1. Direct bookings provide control over customer relationships, reduce dependency on OTAs, and save on high commission fees.
2. Building a direct booking strategy ensures hosts aren’t vulnerable to algorithm changes or sudden listing suspensions by OTAs.
3. Data Collection: Use tools like Google Forms and StayFi to collect guest data, including emails, for building a customer database.
4. Multi-Channel Approach: Use property management software (PMS) to list properties on multiple OTAs while maintaining a direct booking website.
5. Use email campaigns, customer relationship management (CRM) software, and tailored marketing messages to re-engage past guests.
6. Simpson encourages hosts to build sustainable businesses through automation, data-driven insights, and strategic marketing.

Full Transcript

Check on the full podcast on:

1. YouTube
2. Spotify
3. Apple Podcasts

Jeremy: All right, we are live with the Short-Term Rental Pro Podcast. I'm very excited this week to be joined by Mark Simpson, the founder and CEO of Boostly, a company that's all about direct bookings—about helping hosts make more money off their properties and keeping them off Airbnb and some of these OTAs.

So, Mark, how did you get into short-term rentals, and what is Boostly?

Mark: Yeah, so thanks for me. So, how did I get into it? I was one of these rare breeds—I was actually born into this industry. I grew up in hospitality. I was born on a farm, which is a 200-acre farm in the northeast of England. Obviously, with the accent, I'm not from the States; I'm across the pond. Basically, I grew up in a 14-bedroom guest house and small hotel and had three holiday cottages on the back.

Jeremy: I didn't know any of this about you! Wow, geez, this is exciting. And guys, for context, Mark and I hung out in person a few months ago in Nashville. Yeah, this is actually my first opportunity to hear about his upbringing, so I'll shut up and let him…

Mark: Yeah, about podcasts, you get to sort of chat, but you don't get to when we meet at conferences. You only get like a quick chance to have a chat with someone, so it's good about podcasts—you just get a little time to have that little bit extra.

Jeremy: So guys, so you guys know, Mark is cool. I met him—he's really cool, just a cool guy. I mean, obviously, he has the accent, that helps, but just a really cool dude. But I digress. So you're at a 14-unit boutique hotel, where you were?

Mark: Yeah, 100%. So, 200-acre farm, 14-bedroom guest house. My parents—that's a sixth-generation farm, right? And so, in the 90s, in the very early 90s, there was a foot-and-mouth crisis that was going through all of the farms in the UK. That basically meant that farms were going out of business.

And my parents had this sort of crossroads decision: either sell, or they pivot and try to do something else. And what they did is, they knocked down a barn, they put on four rooms, and it worked really well. This was before social media, before Airbnb, the OTAs—this was literally back in the early 90s.

And so, the way that they marketed their business was through newspaper ads, magazine ads, and word of mouth. That's literally it. And this is—right now, you can go to any farm in the UK, maybe even America as well, any farm, and there'll be some form of accommodation business. Whether it's glamping, whether it's a barn that's been converted into a cottage. But back then, it was one of the first of its kind, definitely in the area that we were at.

So, they sort of led the way. And that's why it was really important.

Jeremy: You guys were pioneers.

Mark: Pioneers of it. Now, the foresight that was there, which is amazing—like, credibility to them and credit to them. And, like, I grew up in this world. I was just so used to that, always being strangers in my kitchen, to the point where I'd go play at a friend's house, and I was just looking for people. I was like, "Where is everybody? You know, where is everybody?"

And so, I was like, got into my early teens, and I wanted to do one thing and one thing only, and that was escape. I wanted to escape this little village. I wanted to be a soccer player, but I'm crappy at playing soccer. So, I fell into soccer coaching, and then I came over to America. I had an amazing opportunity to coach soccer in America, did that for six, seven years, came back to England, moved to London to try and find my pot of gold.

Jeremy: Where did you live in the States?

Mark: Uh, well, I was all over. So, my role basically would be a team—let's just say in Atlanta, right?

Jeremy: Yeah, I played UK Elite when I was a really little kid. Oh yeah, we had a bunch of British trainers and coaches who'd come over.

Mark: That's exactly it. So, basically, what we would do.

Jeremy: I was wondering if you were one of them.

Mark: I wasn't UK Elite, but we'd basically come in, and there'd be like a club, right? And the club would be needing some training for two, three weeks. So, we'd go and train the coaches, but we'd also train the kids at the same time. And then, three weeks would pass, and we'd go somewhere else.

And because of that, I'd come for six months. So, I'd get my H1 visa. So, you'd come for six months, and you'd have to go back to England. And in that, I got to travel to pretty much every state in the US. I had an amazing time. I spent a lot of time in California, a lot of time up in Seattle, but also got a lot of time over on the East.

It got to late 2008, and I was like, "This is never going to become a full-time thing. I could never get my proper green card. I could never get my proper visa." So, I went back to London, back to the UK, and moved to London. And that's when I discovered sales and marketing.

I started working for a company that was bought out by Yelp, the big review site. And it was there that I learned the art of sales, the social media marketing, SEO, Google—the whole shebang. And it got to 2011, and my parents had been running the business for 25 years at this point. They asked me to come back into the family business.

I'm the oldest of four. I had just met my now wife, and we were just about to have our first child. And they're like, "Well, do you want to move back to the family business and help us run it?" Because they wanted to retire. They wanted to do it for a couple more years. They wanted us to come into the business—they wanted young blood in the business—to help sort of put a couple of zeros on the end of the sale price and help sell it.

So, that's what we did. We came in 2011, 2012, all the way to 2016. And all I did is, I put that stuff that I learned in London into the family business. So, it was all offline at that point. It was paper, pens, it was Tippex—it was all of that. That's how the whole business was run.

There was no property management software at all. There was no Tyson. There was no nothing. There wasn't even Airbnb. And we just took it all online. We took 25 years of offline word of mouth, plugged it online, and it just went like gangbusters. We were very popular. We jumped to the top three of TripAdvisor really quickly, which was like a powerful marketing tool back in 2014.

And it just kept on going from there. Then, in 2016, I started to go to tourism meetings. So, we had local tourism meetings in our area, and it was full of hosts—so people who did hotels, guest houses, Airbnb. And it was at these meetings that I started chatting to hosts, and I realized that they struggle with marketing their businesses, struggle with direct bookings, struggle with how to make sure that they're not reliant on Airbnb, Booking.com.

And it was at these meetings I had the idea for Boostly, and that was seven years ago. So, I created a Facebook group called The Hospitality Community. It's still going to this day, so come and join it. And it was through being in that group that I realized that people needed somebody to help them when it came to direct bookings.

And that is literally why I started the podcast—the Boostly Podcast. It is why I started Boostly. And, yeah, to this day, now, 2023, we've got 1,600 clients. We predominantly do website design, but we do training as well. So, we show people the tools, the tactics, and the training on how to generate bookings. And, yeah, it's going on strong. We've got 40 members of staff behind the scenes doing all things Boostly, and, yeah, loving it. So, thanks for having me.

Jeremy: Mark, I'm very happy that you're here. And tell me—for those, I know—so, in Nashville, at the conference where Mark actually spoke, there was a big, big push for getting off the OTAs, not relying on Airbnb. I mean, it seems like you and your family business obviously didn't rely on OTAs because when you started, there was no Airbnb, there was no Vrbo. So, I feel like most people, it's like getting off the OTAs, whereas you were like, "We weren't on the OTAs to begin with."

Mark: Yeah.

Jeremy: So, what have you seen, kind of like, that shift in the last couple of years and, really, like that momentum towards being in control of your email list, being in control of your customer base, and taking some of those fees and revenue back from the channels?

Mark: So, I noticed it really starting to kick in probably in the early 2010s. And what happened was, before the rise of Booking.com—so, Booking.com and the Expedia Group really pushed this on—before that, everything was inquiry-only. In fact, if you go back and look at the early days of Airbnb, that was inquiry-only.

And at some point, instant book became a thing. But I think one of the reasons is that the old-age way of booking—a guest finds a property, a guest emails the property owner, has to wait for a response before they can actually have a transaction—was replaced. With the likes of Amazon Prime and everything, all of that came in, where literally people want to click, book, buy, and pay for something right there and then.

That sped this process up. So, Booking.com brought in instant book, and, obviously, then Expedia Group followed suit. And, obviously, Airbnb did as well, probably around 2016, when they brought this in. Because of that, more and more people were able to go to a website and just click and instant book.

At the same time, the traditional host was still operating on the inquiry-only mode. And this is one of the reasons why the OTAs really took off. The prediction is, by 2030, that 80% of all bookings in our industry will come via an online travel agent. And that's a bit of a thing that we have to definitely circle back to and prevent.

The reason why is that the OTAs have mastered the user experience. So, if you want to book a place to stay—say you want to go to Myrtle Beach—you find a place to stay, and you can book within three clicks. That suits the user experience perfectly. And that's one of the reasons why they have taken over.

Jeremy: And for a host, you can just check your phone and see, "Wow, they have booked, and they have good reviews." And, yeah, you can see their profile picture and all that jazz.

Mark: Exactly. So, from a host's point of view, especially for a new host, this is, I feel, why over the seven years I've been doing this, there's been a trajectory of the different types of hosts I've been mostly speaking to. So, obviously, I started in the UK, and then I've branched out to America over the last couple of years.

But with a new host, when you're starting this business, if this is going to be like a side hobby, or if this is going to be your all-in—what you're going to do to create income for you and your family—there are so many plates to spin. There are so many moving parts. It doesn't matter whether you're doing the owner-led acquisition model, you're doing management, or arbitrage, or whatever you're doing, there are so many spinning parts.

And so, when it comes to marketing and when it comes to that plate, if there's a website where you can take a couple of pictures of your property, upload those pictures to it, and be guaranteed to get revenue in—obviously, the context depends on where you are in the world, depends on what time of year it is, X, Y, and Z—but if there's a website that guarantees you revenue, you just start spinning the plate. You're just going to put it on autopilot because it's so easy to get those bookings.

And that is Airbnb, that is Booking.com, that is Vrbo. And that is a blessing, but it's also a curse. It's a curse because it is so easy. You just go, "It's sound; this plate is being taken care of by Airbnb. I'll just leave it there." And then, when you become over-reliant, you become lazy, and you never pay attention to it until there's a problem.

And this is what has sort of brought it full circle these last, I'd say, two, three years. The problems are:

• Airbnb could shut down your listing.
• They could close your whole account.
• You may go dark—so, ghost mode.

Basically, the algorithm may change. Your listing may get one or two crappy reviews, and you just all of a sudden are nowhere to be seen. And if you're a host who is 80%-plus reliant on Airbnb to bring in your bookings, then you are building your whole business on somebody else's land. All they need to do is click their fingers, and you're fcked. That's pretty much what it boils down to.

I was in Nashville this year—obviously, an amazing time—but I was in Nashville last year, in 2022. And I closed it out on day two. I got up on stage, and I got everybody to stand up. There were a thousand people in the room, and I said, "Stay standing if 80% or more of your bookings are coming from Airbnb." And a lot of the people in the room stayed standing.

And I said, "Congratulations. You don't have a business. You have a job, and Brian Chesky's your boss."

That little clip got clipped, and it went quite viral, got quite shared around.

Jeremy: Shoutout Brian Chesky, if you saw that, he probably wasn't too happy.

Mark: But it got a lot of attention in the right way because it got people to think, "Ah, well, what happened?"

Over the last year, with the changes that are happening—not just with Airbnb, I'm not just calling them out; there's Vrbo and Booking.com—there's a lot of things going on where it's no longer a human making a decision. It's robots, algorithms.

Jeremy: Yeah, it's all algorithms.

Mark: And the problem is, when a guest complains—let's just say one of the examples we had in the community a couple of weeks ago—a host had a Ring camera, one of those ones that sits outside the property, which is totally allowed. The guest complained that there was a camera in the property.

So, without contacting the host, without trying to get their version of events, they just suspended the listing.

Jeremy: Indefinitely?

Mark: Yeah, and when you've got it suspended, you've got to go through the appeal process. And again, that host was off the platform for four weeks. That host has got bills to pay, staff to pay, etc. And if you can't get revenue coming in, then that's a massive struggle.

The reason why I say that is that, over the last couple of years, I've really noticed it come full circle to where now people are actually coming to us and going, "Right, I know now I need to build my own business on my own land. I know I need to be multi-platform."

So, just in case that Airbnb example happens, and I know I need to have my own direct booking website, I need to be branding my business, which is amazing because it just means that we can crack on with the mission of helping a million hosts cut down on our over-reliance on the OTAs.

Jeremy: Got it. So, getting a business like building your own business—I mean, you said being multi-channel, not only being on Airbnb, being on Vrbo, being on Booking—in case you have an issue with one of them. What other things can they do? And then, like logistically, walk through—I know in Nashville we talked a lot about getting emails via the Wi-Fi. But if you're going to explain to someone, how do you make it your business? Like, how do you build your own direct booking? How do you do your own direct marketing? Like, in two minutes, what does that actually look like?

Mark: Yeah, so first things first—multi-channel is definitely the way. You need to be having as many revenue streams into your businesses as possible. And one of the simplest things that everybody can do right now is make sure that you're listed on more than one OTA.

So, when I instantly say that, people go, "Well, how do I do that? Like, logistically, that's a nightmare. How do I make sure that it's all connected?"

What you need is a property management software tool, otherwise known as a PMS. There's even a free solution now in Jurny—J-U-R-N-Y. Journey is free to use, so go and tap into that if you're just getting started. If you've got a little bit of funds, then there's a ton of other solutions available.

Jeremy: How do they do it for free? Oh, first I've heard about this Jurny.

Mark: It's brand new. Yeah, brand new solution. So, yeah, go check them out.

Jeremy: What's in it for them?

Mark: Well, obviously, as you grow your business, as you grow maybe more properties, maybe you go to…

Jeremy: They start adding price when you get to three, four listings?

Mark: Yeah, I'm not sure of the full mechanics of it.

Jeremy: Sure. But yeah, no excuse for not having a PMS at this point.

Mark: Exactly. Even if you're at property one, just getting started, there's no excuse. And so, you start off with that—the property management software tool. Because when you've got that, then what you can do is the property management software tool will become the central hub of your business. So, no longer are you just an Airbnb business. You've got your own property management software, and that calendar connects into Airbnb, that calendar connects into Vrbo, that calendar connects into Booking.

And there's a ton of other OTAs that you can connect to as well. So, you've got multiple different channels where people can see your business. Because, believe it or not, not everybody in the world uses Airbnb. There are other different types of people, niches, and whatnot, who will use other sites and other booking channels. So, by being listed everywhere, that's the perfect way to start. Having a property management software to control it—that's a perfect start.

Because when you have a PMS, you can then connect it to Stripe, for example. You can connect it to dynamic pricing software, and also, as well, you can have your own direct booking website.

Jeremy: Okay, very cool. So, you've got this hub, and that just allows you—essentially, think of it like your core. So, it allows your arms and your legs to communicate with each other.

Mark: Yeah, that's actually it.

Jeremy: Okay. And actually, I do want to say—so, I mean, I personally like Airbnb. They're for specific listings I have, namely, like I have an Airstream camper that I have up. Where I do that, they provide liability insurance as well as the AirCover for something like very unique, where I just don't think—I mean, I have insurance for it, but it's just such a unique situation. And Airbnb's AirCover is like pretty broad in my experience. Like, they don't ask too many questions, as well as their liability.

But for the house—like a normal house, a normal apartment. There's no reason, there's no reason you shouldn't be multi-channel. Because I did have an incident—I've had a couple incidents—where, like, neighbors have called Airbnb and said that we have a party house, which is totally— we have rules, we've had our guests—yeah. But Airbnb has done its research or done its reporting, and we were offline for two weeks while Airbnb…

And to be frank, I scale with Airbnb at this point. Like, I have an account manager. They're not supposed to be involved in these processes. You're supposed—but you know what? I'm in a pretty good—I have a good relationship with Airbnb, and I think, generally speaking, they do the best they can. Like, given, Mark, you have a business, and you know, you've got to make decisions that are sometimes not perfect for everybody—decisions—but that's kind of...

I do think they are somewhat balanced. And I think it's great that hosts come together and say, "Hey, we need a voice too. Your business isn't only guest booking; it's us putting ourselves out there."

Yeah, and having that voice. And the more people who talk, tweet at Brian Chesky or whatever, the more impact. Yeah, but that being said, the caveat being—even still for me—I just had a listing the other week that... I don't even know—I had two bad reviews in a row where I don't even need to get into it. But essentially, the listing was deactivated effective immediately, and it took a few weeks to get back online. That was even separate from this whole party thing.

So, it does happen. Especially when you get scale, like, it just hits you out of nowhere. And it's AI. Like Mark said, they just have some program somewhere that says, "Hey, if you get—if—if you get issues reported, like two times in a row, then automatically..."

Listen, then you've got to call in, you've got to keep calling in, you've got to call in again. You've got to play the whole call center game. I'm talking—it's really freaking annoying. So, I digress.

So, for someone listening who, obviously, multi-channel is the first thing. But now direct—let's talk direct. I know that's your specialty. How does someone who, you know, wants to add that direct channel—how do they do it? How do they do it effectively?

Mark: So, how to do it? How to do it effectively? Well, the first thing is to just start. And this is something that I see a lot of the times is that people get really overwhelmed with it. They feel like, "Oh, I've got to start running ads, I've got to start doing X or Y, and I've got to do SEO, and I've got to spend all this time doing it."

And, yeah, look, I get it. This industry—and as much as we say, boohoo, Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com—they do provide an amazing service for when you're getting started. There is no other industry that I can think of where you can start a business, go and list your property or business on this website, and be pretty much guaranteed revenue.

Like, when we do websites, there's no place that I can go and list my services and be pretty much guaranteed to get revenue. So, when we're saying that, it is a fantastic tool. But, like you said, like, you are literally running your business just there with somebody else overseeing everything that you do—all the decisions that you make.

Now, if a guest—if it was, like, a pure direct booking, right, and the neighbors complained to you about a potential party, then you could solve it yourself. Because they complained to Airbnb, you've got somebody else that is, like, looking in over on your business.

Jeremy: Like, they can go to cops, and the cops can have to write a report and say it was actually a party. They could just complain. They could just—they don't like you for whatever reason, and they just make something up.

Yeah, you know, it has to be investigated. And while it's being investigated, your listing has to be suspended.

Mark: Yeah. So, how do we go effectively about building a direct booking strategy? Well, the first thing—and it's the simplest thing—is to start to build a list. Start to build a database.

There's so many cool little tools that you could use. The one that I like is Google Forms. Google Forms is a free tool. So just type "Google F-O-R-M-S," and you just create this little survey, this little form. And it'll be: first name, last name, email address, cell phone number, mailing address, and then a couple of questions.

So: why did you decide to book with us? And: what are you coming to the area for? A couple of open-ended questions. And the reason why this is important is, this is going to be the part of your booking process that you send this out in, right after the booking.

So, let's just imagine, Jeremy, you've booked to stay with me, and I've got the purple house, and you're going to come and stay with me in the summer. So, you'll make the reservation.

Jeremy: I'm so excited.

Mark: This reservation, it doesn't matter whether it's happened on Airbnb or if you book direct with us. There's an automated message that instantly goes out from my property management software into your inbox. And again, it doesn't matter whether you've booked on Airbnb, direct, or wherever. The first thing that you need to do is to start to collect that guest data. So, you grab your Google Form link, right, and you drop it into this automated email that goes out.

And it'll just say, "Hey Jeremy, thank you so much for your booking. We're looking forward to seeing you. Very important that you read this email."

And then what you do is, you go, "Click this link to fill in our guest registration form. This will make sure that your check-in is as smooth as possible." Now, between me and you.

Jeremy: That form doesn't matter. Yeah. Just good ole’ Google Sheets.

Mark: Yeah. This reader doesn't know that. They're just thinking, "Oh, I want my check-in to be as smooth as possible. I'm going to fill in this form."

And so, they open up the form. Again, answering a couple of questions—pretty straightforward and standard. But for me, it means everything because instantly, I've got an email address.

As we all know, if a guest books from Airbnb, then you don't get their email. I'm getting their name. I'm getting their cell number, which is great. But I'm also getting their mailing address, which is important.

And market research—number one, why did you choose to book with us? So, there's loads of other listings, there's loads of possibilities. What was it about us?

And then the other one is: what are you coming to the area for? Why are you coming? Right?

And on a singular occurrence, for just you, it won't tell me everything. But if you do this on a compound effect—so after 10 bookings and 20 bookings—you know, the truth is in the data, right? All of the things that you need to know is in the data.

So, if you're trying to think, who's my avatar? Who's my niche? Why do people book with me? The truth is in the numbers. The truth is in the data.

So, over 10, 20 people, if you can look at that list and say, after 10 bookings, you go, "All right, well, the reason why they're booking—eight people are talking about the same thing. That is where my marketing is going to start to slowly change to."

Why did they book, for example? What are they coming to the area for? And again, if seven out of 10 people are saying, "I'm coming to the area for work," or, "It's a vacation," or, "I'm reconnecting," or, "I'm celebrating a party," etc., or whatever it could be—let's just say five people are talking about conferences and events—then your little niche is starting to appear here, right?

And so, this is one of the easiest things to do, to start collecting the data. It takes five minutes to do. It's totally free, and you can just add it into a message that's going out already.

So, that's the first thing that everybody needs to start doing to start building that direct booking strategy.

Jeremy: Okay. So, get the email. I know there's another mechanism—grabbing from Wi-Fi. So, we can do the Google Form, send that out through your PMS, automate it. You don't have to actually manually send a form each time—you just automatically do it.

And then you can just check every few weeks—it looks like the form is being filled out, looks like it's not being filled out.

Yeah. Second step: guests arrive at the property. How do you get their email?

Mark: So, there's a cool tool called StayFi. And the Google Form is great, but you're only going to collect the data from the booker.

Okay, so let's just say you've got a property that can sleep six to ten, whatever people, and you want to get more than just the booker. Because obviously, if there's like a group of ten and you've got a selection of friends that are coming, the booker may never come back to your town or city again. But somebody who is in the party may also want to come back or may want to find out more about the other properties that you have.

So, StayFi is S-T-A-Y-F-I, and StayFi.com. And all it is, is this little box that sits in your property. When the guest wants to use your Wi-Fi, they have to give up their email address to use it. It's just like any other situation where you've been into Starbucks or airport lounges to use Wi-Fi.

Jeremy: They're already doing it to you. They're doing the same thing.

Mark: Yeah, we're already doing the same thing. And it just now…

Jeremy: Yeah, Mariott

Mark: Yeah, everybody. Now this technology is available to short-term rental hosts, which is cool. And it's a really cool product. It not only collects the data, but you can also use it to send SMS messages and emails out as well.

So, this is the thing—we're not just collecting data for the data's sake. I know a lot of people that have got an email list of a couple of hundred, and I ask them, "When was the last time that you sent an email out to that list?" And they go, "Oh, never. I've never done it."

And it's sort of to go on to the first thing that we talked about—collect the data and then use it actively. Look to be emailing your previous guests. Actively look to be communicating with them. And actively look to try and see, number one, do they know anybody? So, do they know anybody who's looking to come to your area? Right, that's a fantastic question to ask.

Number two, are they looking to come back to the area? Or, number three, is there any way that they can share you or share your information on social media to, like, their friends online and stuff? So, there's loads of cool things that you could do once you've got the data. What to do with it?

Jeremy: Got it. So, you've got the emails, you know why they're coming. So, I'm assuming that's why you put it in the subject line. If people are coming—"Hey, I'm coming because of the Halloween scary whatever cornfield thing"—and your email subject is "Halloween Cornfields Season is Here."

Yeah, totally random. I just pulled that completely out of my butt. But I did—I was looking at a property. I was underwriting a property where I was looking at reviews, and that's why people went to that area in October, November, was because there was some cornfield.

Mark: Yeah.

Jeremy: I digress. But is that what you mean by—you know why they're coming, so your marketing can be geared towards that?

Mark: Yes.

Jeremy: Or is that like—also your listing can change to look like that?

Mark: Yeah, so it's not just your email, but your whole marketing will change. So, when you find out why people come into your area and what they're coming for, and why they're booking with you.

So, for example, I'm working this year with a chap who's based in Orlando. His property sleeps 14 people, and he's—obviously, his property is decked out in murals with Avengers and Disney. Cool stuff, right? He's got this game room.

Jeremy: Classic Disney, classic Kissimmee, Florida.

Mark: Absolutely, right. And so, the games room is the thing that everybody talks about when they've made the booking. So again, we set this whole system up with him because we're recording a YouTube documentary this year.

Basically, what we're doing is we're running tips from the playbooks—my first book, The Book Direct Playbook, and my second book, The Book Direct Blueprint—and we're putting them into this YouTube documentary. We're working with this kid who's in Orlando.

When we implemented the Google Form idea, we realized very quickly that the games room is the thing that caught the attention. So, when we asked the question, "Why did you book with us?" the response was, "Perfect for families," and they kept mentioning the games room.

What that meant to us was that the games room needs to be our lead image. So, we decked it out with projectors, arcade games, Disney murals, etc. That became the lead image on Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and our website. It's the first image that people see, and it's what we talk about on social media because that is what's grabbing the attention.

It helped shape our marketing, shaped our listings, and shaped what we talk about because of that.

Secondly, "Why are you coming to the area?" Obviously, people are coming for Disney and all those cool things.

Jeremy: That’s why you're going to Orlando, too.

Mark: I'm going to Orlando too—it was clear. We know where the property is and what it's suited for. But people were saying, "Actually, we were looking on Google Maps, and it's ideal because it's only 15–20 minutes from Disney, 18 minutes from Universal, and it's not on the main I-5."

We were getting all of this amazing information, so we put that into our marketing. We added it to the bullet points of the listings and the FAQ section of our website. As a result, more of the guests we wanted to attract were seeing our listing, and we were answering the right questions.

It all began by asking questions to the guests who had already booked with us. It's all synergy—it all links, it all connects. But you've got to start collecting that data first and foremost.

Jeremy: Got it. Okay, so you know why people are coming. They've self-provided their justification—they’re paying top dollar to come and stay with you, and they're having an emotional attachment to a specific thing in your listing.

So, you're figuring out what that is and bringing it to the forefront. Now you've got their emails—they filled out the form, they used StayFi, and they gave you their email. They gave you their kids' email. They gave you their cousin's email who came with them. So, you've got their whole family's email.

Yeah. What do you do then?

Mark: Well, then you've got to use it. So again, so many people that I know have hundreds of emails and never actually use them.

You can set it to automate—this is the cool thing now with tools like StayFi and MailChimp, which is a CRM that can do this. You can set up email automations. So, say the check-in date is the 1st of August, and the check-out date is the 7th of August. You can have an email automation where six months after check-out, they get an email. Or, a month after check-out, they get an email.

You can basically pop everybody into these little buckets. Then, at different times throughout the year, they will get emails about other properties that you may have. Anybody who's looking to come back to the property, X, Y, and Z. But you've got to actually send it. There's no point collecting this data if you don't do anything with it.

And there's a PMS, Guesty for Host, they do this really well. Hospitable does this really well, where they can just add them into funnels, and they can consistently keep getting emails from you, talking about you and the properties, which is really helpful.

Jeremy: So, wait, Hospitable—the PMSs do email funnels?

Mark: They will send out messages for you, yeah.

Jeremy: Oh, messages. You'll send a message to a previous guest through the OTA. But if you want to take them off the OTA and direct email them.

Mark: Yeah, that's going to be for your CRM: MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, MailerLite, whatever your CMS of choice is. And the final little tool that I will give to everybody—we've given quite a few—but the last one is Zapier. So, Z-A-P-I-E-R. What this is, is a connector. So, when you're collecting this Google Form, it takes it to a Google Sheet. Now, you want to seamlessly take that from Google Sheet and send it to MailChimp.

So, Zapier will make the connection. Whenever there's a new email address being submitted, it will automatically pop it into your MailChimp. And again, you can then pop it into any automations that you want as well.

So, what we're trying to get at here is that every tool that I've given so far is not time-consuming. In fact, once you've set it up, you can pretty much forget about it because it's set and plays.

And so, when wanting to increase our direct bookings—and the biggest sort of comeback is, "I haven't got the time"—it's these little things that you can do. Break it down every single day, little new tactics that you can implement in your business that will set you up for automation in the long run. So, that's how we do it.

Jeremy: Got it. So, just to— And then, so, we got the email to them.

Yeah. So, I think there's one final leg here. That's when you've sent them an email, and you're saying, "Hey, enjoyed hosting you. Thanks so much. I hope your family had a great time. Are you guys looking to come back anytime soon? If so, you can save some money by doing what?

Mark: Booking direct.

And then, what is the mechanism for this direct booking?

Mark: Yeah, well, obviously, you need to have a direct booking website. This is where you need to send people.

Jeremy: This is where Mark plugs. Just letting you guys know, he's done the full circle. It's been great, but that's—he's incredible. Because when I met Mark initially, yeah, we talked. He didn’t—at once—he wasn’t like, "Hey, we can help you build a website." Like, he didn’t. He never—he's just trying to add value and help people, and he can help.

But this is—let's hear about Boostly now.

Mark: Thank you for the ultimate softball. You’ll just give me a lovely softball so I can hit it out.

But yeah, basically, the website is where you’ve got to send people to. And again, I say this a lot: imagine somebody walking into your property for the first time. That first impression is everything.

Your website is that digital first impression of you, your business, your brand, and your properties. And so many websites that we see—PMSs provide free websites, for example, and it's an amazing part of their sales process that they can give you a free website.

Well, these free websites are crap. And they are—they say it themselves—they are not meant to be anything more than just a free landing page. They don't want it to be anything fancy or anything like that. But the problem with that is that the user experience is poor. You can't do anything on them—it's very limited in what you can do.

So, that's why we started to build websites on WordPress, which gives you full functionality. You can do all the cool things. When we first got started, we offered a DIY solution where we said, "Hey, here's a template that we created. Go nuts, go crazy, edit as much as you want." But what we realized is, number one, hosts don't have the time to do it or don't have the confidence to. Even though it's very heavily templated, they can't finish it off.

So, we decided this year actually to bring it all in-house. Now, all of our websites are done for you, and we actually strike up partnerships with the property management software tools that we're talking about. So, we've got all of their data that we can scrape and sync in.

But we can also, as well, make all bookings on your own direct booking website. Because a lot of what we see is, if it's on WordPress, as soon as you hit "Book Now," you have to leave that domain—you have to leave that website to create the actual booking.

Jeremy: It goes to one of the iframes or widgets they populate?

Mark: And it instantly breaks the trust there, right? So, if you're a booker for the first time and you don't know anything about direct bookings or anything like that, but if you're booking something and all of a sudden, you have to go to a totally separate domain and it takes you right back to the booking process, you instantly lose that trust.

So, that's why we started to build those connections and those partnerships up, so we can keep the booking process on-site. This has been key to our growth—it's really been because of that. Because we're the only free website designers in the whole industry who do that, and we're lucky to be one of those three.

Jeremy: What are the PMSs that you do integrate with?

Mark: Well, we've teamed up with the top 20. So, most of the ones that I've mentioned today, plus HostAway, who have just had a $175 million funding round, which is a big uplift. There's a load in Australia, loads in the UK. Avantio—we're kind of going to build out that very soon. Journey—we're going to build in a connection with them very soon.

But we're always looking to add in more and more PMS partners because we get more and more people booking calls with us, and we ask, "Who's your PMS?" And we're always getting new ones.

Jeremy: There are new ones that come out the wazoo.

Mark: All the time. We know that by building that connection... Again, we know if you've got one property to ten properties, you've got no real allegiance to one set PMS. When you get further down the line—say you're probably at 100 or wherever—you’re going to stay where you are just because the thought of moving 100 properties from one to the other is a daunting task.

Jeremy: I’m at that 25—and I'm there, honestly—I'm locked in.

Mark: Yeah, exactly, because you think that the process of moving is going to be tough. But to be honest, our main people that we predominantly work with are in that one-to-20 mark. And in that one-to-20 mark, there's not that sort of allegiance.

So, what we say to everybody is, "Listen, it doesn't matter where you are—if you're with Guesty, HostAway, IGMS, or wherever. If you decide to move from one to the other, we'll just move you over for free."

The problem with having a free website with one of these PMSs is that if you decide to leave, you lose everything, including what was on your direct booking website.

So again, this is one of the reasons why we look at the market, we look at what's going on, and we just adjust accordingly. And we've started to do websites, and it's one of the best things that we do.

Because it's where the impact has been. So, our goal—my mission—is to get a foot at the table, to get a seat at the table of these Airbnbs, Vrbos, and Booking.coms, to actually try and see if we can get more power back to the host.

Because my worry is that the way we're moving, by 2030, 80% of all bookings are coming from the OTAs. This industry is going to turn into what Amazon has done to e-commerce in the book world, where Amazon calls the shots. You're either playing by their rules or not at all.

That book I told you about, The Book Direct Playbook—for every book I sell, I have to give up 66% commission to Amazon for that, and that's crazy. But if you think about Airbnb, if they're going to dominate this space, there's nothing to stop them from saying, "Three percent? Let's cut that out. Let's change—everybody pays 15%." Or, "Hang on a second. Let's change that to 20%, 30%, 40%."

Because they're going to dominate the market, and they can just basically call the shots. So, I want to make sure that all of the OTAs know the hosts know about direct bookings, and we want to be able to get lesser commission rates, more power, etc. But the only way we're going to do that is to come together in force under this Book Direct umbrella and go to them and say, "We know what we're doing here."

So far, Boostly has generated £17 million—so about $20 million—in direct bookings for our clients over the last year. That's only on 361 live integrated websites. We're trying to get that 361 to a thousand. If we can get that to a thousand, we're going to get that £17 million to close to £100 million.

And when we start to get these sorts of numbers, that's when we get the attention of Brian Chesky, Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo. So, that's the mission that we're on at the moment.

Jeremy: Wow, so really holding the OTAs accountable is really—it's not like we're doing away with OTAs. They're valuable. They spend a lot of marketing money to get people to feel comfortable staying in someone else's home. We're appreciative of them, but they can't take us for granted. That’s what's key.

So, I'm just—so, I'm curious now. And I have a little bit of a technical background, so I don't want to nerd out. Are you guys doing the payment processing? So, you say you either integrate with the PMSs, and you can put the booking widget or whatever there, but then, you know, the user experience gets bad. Is the way you do it the bookings through you, but it still goes through the PMSs' payment processing?

Mark: Yes, that's exactly it. Yeah. So, basically, with the API integration, we've just got tons of endpoints. So, it's like looking at a very cool electrical box, and everything is connected from A to B. All we're doing is connecting A to B so that the payment processing—everything—still has to go through the PMS because that power…

Jeremy: So, you have to get, I'm just curious—so these PMSs, do they all have APIs for third-party app developers?

Mark: Every single PMS is different, and we're realizing that.

Jeremy: That's what I'd assume. I was like, "I didn't realize they all had these APIs."

Mark: In an ideal world, they would all have open-source APIs. It would make life so much easier. But every PMS that we work with has different systems and structures.

And this is one of the main reasons why people don't do this—it's one of the main reasons why website designers don't create these endpoints—because it is so complicated with every single one that we work with. So, we've just got this massive black book behind the scenes, and this document of all the people that we work with, and all these systems and structures in place.

So, yeah, I'd love to say "Yeah," but no. It just depends on who we're working with.

Jeremy: Got it. Because I would assume so. And it's kind of funny—yes, I was talking to Michael Chang, who was—yeah, he was in Nashville as well. But I actually had him on earlier today. I'm not sure which one's going to get posted first. We'll add hospitality and them, I guess, we'll select one that goes first.

But I was joking with him—he's kind of really built his business to alleviate as much stress as possible. He's having a second kid. He's just—he's very risk-averse and wants to stay away from things that could cause unnecessary stress. And I was joking with him—that's why he has a full black head of hair on his head.

I guess for you, Mark, what is the reason—for those of you watching—what is the reason? Is it all these APIs you have to keep up with, the reason why you don't have the full hair on your head?

Mark: Well, partly that, but partly—I've got four kids. So, they definitely keep me up at night. As you can see by the very tired eyes, I've got an eight-month-old baby, and I've got a seven-, a four-, and a 10-year-old as well. So, yeah, that's why there's no hair.

Jeremy: Yeah, we're appreciative of Mark. Why? Because he is in the UK, and what is it, 10 p.m. local time right now?

Mark: 10 p.m., and I've got to jump onto another final podcast of the day.

Jeremy: Oh my goodness.

Mark: I've got to get the kids to sleep, and then I do my work and do podcasts with my friends over in America and Canada. So, thank you very much for having me.

Jeremy: Yeah, I know you've got to jump here, but what I like to do is, just for those listening—what's your quick pro tip for anyone starting, anyone growing their business? What can they do to help them succeed?

Mark: Right now. The main thing that everybody needs to do: number one, go and get a PMS, right? That's the first thing that everybody needs to do. Number two, start to build your list. And number three, go and grab the book The Book Direct Playbook. There's 101 marketing tactics and techniques in there, so go and grab that.

Then, go get the book—seven years of work, all in there. So, thank you for having me.

Jeremy: Mark, thanks so much for coming. And yeah, guys, I hope you enjoyed. Stay tuned for next time. All right, Mark. Howdy.