Mike Bayer
You're listening to the SSTIR Crazy Month limited series as part of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This first annual month-long event through the month of February focuses on the key short-term rental business pillars of Safety, Sustainability, Trust, Insurance, and Regulations. This event could not happen without the support of our sponsors, and we need to give a special thank you to Proper Insurance for putting their full support behind this online event. Proper Insurance know that short-term vacation rentals don't fit into one insurance category, so Proper developed a speciality insurance policy that covers both commercial and personal use for your vacation rental. The question is, are you covered? Contact Proper Insurance today to get your questions answered. Click the link in the description of this episode to connect with the team at Proper for a no obligation chat.

Mike Bayer
Let's get to the good stuff. Here is the ring master behind SSTIR Crazy Month and your host, Heather Bayer.

Heather Bayer
This is week 2 of our SSTIR Crazy Month event, and the topic of trust is at the forefront of everything we're doing this week. Chris Maughan of I-PRAC is at the leading edge of the campaign to encourage owners and property managers to earn the trust of their guests, particularly when asking them to make a direct booking. In this episode, you'll hear exactly what you need to do to get them to trust you and your business.

Heather Bayer
This is the Vacation Rental Success Podcast, keeping you up-to-date with news, views, information, and resources on this rapidly changing short-term rental business. I'm your host, Heather Bayer, and with 25 years of experience in this industry, I'm making sure you know what's hot, what's not, what's new, and what will help make your business a success.

Heather Bayer
Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer, and I'm super excited to be back with you once again in Week 2 of our SSTIR Crazy Month. And today's episode is part of Trust Week, the second week of the month. And in this month, we're highlighting the parts of our business that are pivotal to success and sustainability, whether you're a single homeowner or a property management company of any size.

Heather Bayer
So these pillars of safety, trust, insurance, regulations, and sustainability are the foundation of every short-term rental or vacation rental company. And without attention being paid to them, you're at the risk of business collapse at any time. True, these are not the bright, shiny aspects of being a short-term rental operator. It's like that beautiful new home with the gorgeous landscaping, the extensive decking, and very expensive front door. The listing and photos are fabulous. They make the place desirable for any guest. But if the place has been built without sufficient attention paid to the foundations of the building, it is at risk of falling down.

Heather Bayer
So earlier in January of this year, a tornado ravaged parts of Panama City Beach, and a widely published photo showed a beachfront vacation rental property that had been toppled off its foundations. And it got me thinking about an experience I had years ago when we contracted for an extension to our own home in Ontario. And I watched in fascination as the foundation was built with rebar and the concrete being poured. It took quite a while. While I was watching, I was pondering on the cost of something that would be unseen. You don't look at it and say, Oh, that's a gorgeous foundation. Does anybody do that? Anyhow, the building inspector then came along and said it wasn't deep enough. The foundations had to go down through the bedrock. He was adamant that the work was necessary, even though the contractor was arguing that what he'd done was sufficient to meet code. So of course, we went ahead and did the work required, and in the end, I sucked it up. We were happy. We had a strong building that would save us from any issues in the future. And businesses are just the same. They need that strength that good foundations give.

Heather Bayer
So this week, our pillar is trust. And I'm joined by Chris Maughan of I-PRAC to talk about why it's such a critical component in our industry from the perspective of both owners and guests. So without further ado, let's go straight on over to my great discussion with Chris.

Heather Bayer
I am super happy to have with me, once again, Chris Maughan of I-PRAC. It's an absolute pleasure to have you back, Chris. I think it was two years ago that you were last on. We've had your managing director, Neely Khan, on about a year ago. So we wanted to bring you on as part of this Trust Week to share with us your thoughts on the whole topic of trust. As you've just said to me in our discussion beforehand, you've been studying trust for over a decade, so it's going to be really interesting to chat to you. But I wanted to kick off by asking you just to share what your businesses are at the moment. I saw a great LinkedIn post the other day where you're talking about having five businesses, two of which have failed, one you sold, and two of which are still running. Can you just share that with us?

Chris Maughan
Yeah, sure. Well, my first business was AES Events Group. So that's my property management and events company, which is based in the south of France. So that's the one that's been running close to 24 years. And I'm still the CEO of that business. We manage 250 properties, but we're in the corporate world of the luxury market. So we serve clients like Google, Twitter, Spotify, some big brands who come to Cannes for the big events, and we provide them with all of their accommodation and logistics and everything. So we've been doing that for 24 years. And halfway through that, I started a company called RPN, which stood for Riviera Property Network. And I launched that because of the trouble I had trying to find my own house in to buy in 2006. So it was really struggling. There was properties listed on portals that we'd go to visit that weren't matching the actual description of the property. There was people trying to sell you things that you didn't really want. So I decided that I would build a niche portal that would solve that problem. So I built that and we sold that for 24 million in 2012 to a big portal in France.

Chris Maughan
So I got out of that quite easily because they were approaching me. I started a marquee rental business, which failed because there was just not a big enough market for it. And then I decided to start I-PRAC. I-PRAC was basically part of a solution to the short-term rental industry, because fraud was just such a big problem that I didn't realize, to be honest, at the time. But when I witnessed fraud for the first time, when that family arrived in Cannes and had spent £15,000 on a villa that basically didn't exist, they arrived in Cannes and just didn't have anywhere to stay. They called our office because they found us on Google. Told us the problem. We got them down to our office. We helped them out and different things. But it was at that point I was thinking, How did this happen? I didn't understand it, £15,000 lost.

Chris Maughan
So I started investigating that and realized that there was a big problem in the short-term rental industry. So I thought, Let me try and solve that. So I invested £500,000 of my own money at the start. I mean, that's increased now. But yes, to build the certification platform, which is ongoing now. And we've built that to just over 15,000 members across 28 countries. And I'm still the CEO of that, but I've taken a step back as Neely starts to nourish and do her thing, and she's going to take it to the next level.

Heather Bayer
That is so interesting. We've just been talking about trust and how this business has changed over the years. Give me a helicopter view of how you feel the business has changed in respect of trust in the past few years. What's happened since COVID?

Chris Maughan
I think even before COVID, the growth of the industry has happened massively, because of the fact that there's no barrier to entry. So when there's no barrier to entry to any industry, it's like the Wild West. So it's really, really difficult to pinpoint who's legitimate, who does what they say they're going to do, who backs it up what they say they're going to do. And what this has done is this has caused a ripple effect across the industry for guests and consumers to think, I just don't know. Now, a lot of people talk about, Oh, they go to the OTAs because they trust the OTAs. That's not always the case. They just trust the OTAs a little bit more than booking direct. It doesn't mean that they're 100% trusting in the OTAs because they hear of the fact that OTAs have problems. And again, when you're on an OTA, you just feel that there's more security, if something goes wrong. But there's still a lot of uncertainty that goes on in the consumer mindset, so that's where the problem is. It's the level of uncertainty that's gone into our industry, because of the multiple players in the industry now.

Chris Maughan
So there's more inventory, there's more operators, there's more management companies, there's more companies making it easier for property management companies to enter the space, no barrier to entry. So all of a sudden, the growth of the short-term rental industry over the last five years, and even after COVID, has just gone through the roof. But I don't believe that it's good growth. I don't think it's positive growth. That's the difference. So I think the industry has got a lot of problems that we need to try and solve through trust, through differentiation of professionals, so that we can steer the ship towards not making it easy for just anybody just to enter the space and say, I'm now a property manager, because as we know, you need to have experience to be a property manager, a professional one at least.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. We've had this discussion. We've both had decades of experience, and there's many property management companies out there that have had these decades of experience. And I listened to a podcast, probably about six months ago, where one of these new people into this industry, and he's making quite a name for himself, but basically called us, not the old guard, which I agree, perhaps traditional property managers, but he was very derogatory to the traditional property managers and said, They're outdated. They need to get out of this business, because we're coming in. I listened to it. I was pretty shocked by it. What are your thoughts on that? Because it does seem there is this big divide between, maybe us as 'the old guard', the people who have spent years amassing experience and those who have.....

Chris Maughan
The business has changed. When we started, the OT years didn't exist. So there was no other way but to book direct, and to build trust, and to build reputation, and to build that business on the value of any other business. So OTAs came in and streamlined the marketing platform so that it made people a lot easier to operate within the space. So I think if you turn around to these new people who are operating now, maybe they have a point. I'm not saying that they're wrong, but I think you learn a lot more about property management and hospitality and running a company like a service accommodation company or a property management company when you've done the hard knocks. Because I think if you're running a business that's pretty much 85-90% reliant on your OTA, you don't have a business. You're a provider, you're a service provider to a bigger business. And that meaning the OTA, because if the OTA decided to pull you the next day, the lack of control that you have when you're reliant on an OTA is crazy. Absolutely crazy. And I mean, if you have a business conversation with these people, maybe they're turning over money because it's okay. They've got property, the OTAs are sending them money.

Chris Maughan
But if they look at it from a business point of view, I would say that you don't have any control when you are blocking a calendar, blocking your calendar for, let's say, one of your best properties for two weeks in August, and you're not getting a Euro, a dollar or a pound. The client, the customer, the guest is paying, the OTA hold it, and the OTA is holding that money because that's their trust policy. So they'll release it to the operator once the guest arrives and they're in the apartment or the villa and everything's okay, okay, now you can have your money. I've heard that's not even the case. Now, I think it's even after they check out, you might get the money.

Chris Maughan
So what business model are you running if you're allowing that to happen? Because cash flow, as you know, what are you supposed to do with that? You can't block one of your top properties in January for two weeks in August without any money. Now, I don't say that you do that at the start, but anybody who's got any business sense would be looking at that thinking, I'm going to use this model to build a direct booking model, because it's hard to build a direct booking model. But the OTA can help you with that. If you are using the OTA, converting and using your marketing strategy to be able to bring them [the guests] back as direct bookings, that's possible. Not easy, but it's possible. But if you just keep relying on the OTAs, then tomorrow you couldn't have a business. So how do people think that's a good strategy when you don't have any control? If you ask any business person, going back to Warren Buffett, to a Microsoft founder, anybody who's got any business sense would look at it and go, That's a bad strategy.

Heather Bayer
But we've been told all along that this is... Since what, 2014, 2015, when Airbnb came along, that this was the business model, because we'll look after it all and we'll just send you the money. But let's go back to the beginning a bit and let's go back to trust, because the OTAs are saying all along, you can trust us. Don't do direct booking because you can't trust these cowboys out there who are offering their properties to you without all our protection. So let's be practical. Independent owners, small property managers have to instill the similar levels of trust in their guests if they're going to encourage direct bookings. How can they do this? What's the starting point to say, I want you to book through me. You can trust me. And they go, well, where's your guarantee? Where's your promise?

Chris Maughan
Well, a lot of the time, this is the problem that a lot of direct booking companies have, because it's not always the promise can be there, okay? But most people are looking at.... It's like, okay, so what happens if something goes wrong? Are you going to fulfill your promise? See, trust is something where you can talk about it, you can say that you're trustworthy, but at the same time, a guest is really looking for a third-party to monitor what's going on. And that's why the OTA is a better option for a lot of guests, because they feel that if something goes wrong, they've got a company, a brand that they can contact. Now, whether that's a great service that the OTA is offering I don't know. I don't know how to do it. But a guest is always looking for..... That's selfish... Because a guest is selfish. They're looking for all the protection in the world. And if you can't provide them with it, a structured cancelation solution policy, payment guarantees, a professional certification, then they're just not going to book directly with you because it's just too risky. And the level of uncertainty is just too high. And that's the problem that people trying to get direct bookings have. They think that just having a quality website is enough, but it isn't. And I'll say something, there's two ways for this trust factor that's to work, because when a guest arrives on your direct booking website, the first trust factor that comes into play is, does that guest trust themselves? Trust themselves, not the operator, does that guest trust themselves to know they're on the right website? Is this website the solution to what I'm trying to find?

Chris Maughan
Now, if you look on booking direct websites today, you could go on there and you think, Is this New York? I don't know. So they're not trusting themselves first, so they could leave. So you've got to make sure that when somebody arrives on your direct booking website, that they know straight away that they're in the right place for what they need to solve their accommodation problem in New York, in Las Vegas, in London, wherever it is. So it's got to be very clear that they're on the right site. Then they start the subconscious due diligence.

Chris Maughan
That's when they start looking at your website, and subconsciously, there's going to be a lot of alarm bells going on. If they see spelling mistakes, if they see a website that doesn't look good, If they don't see any... If the photos don't look very good, if the reviews aren't displayed very well. And trust has been ingrained into all of us through our parents, TV, just life in general. So we all have 80% of the same traits when it comes down to trust. So if you see a really bad website, I know for a fact you're not going to book on there. 80% of people are just going to go, No. So there's so much work that a direct booking operator, a property manager, to get direct booking has got to do, because he must, must attract the trust through professionalism, through reputation, through the trust signals. And I believe that a lot of the property managers out there today, they don't build their website with trust at the forefront of the booking process. What we call the subconscious due diligence.

Heather Bayer
I love that. I like subconscious due diligence.

Chris Maughan
Yeah. And it's something that we understood very quickly when we did some research on how people go about doing their own, looking for an apartment to rent. And it's actually quite... And there's actually a lot of stress involved from a guest point of view. Arriving on a website, they don't know how to navigate it. They don't know whether they can trust it. They don't know whether their payments are going, so they click off and they don't come back. But a lot of this is subconscious, because they're not looking specifically to think, Oh, I don't trust them. It's a subconscious thought that comes into the conscious. So you're battling against the tide, trying to get somebody's attention to think, I like what I see. That's the first part. I like what I see. And then they go on the journey of looking at the properties. I still like what I see. Then they go to the...., and I still like what I see. And this is why the journey of a website is so important. When you see something with a beautiful homepage, it's like they've invested £10,000 in a homepage and paid grandma to do the rest of the pages. Do you know what I mean? So there's no continuity.

Heather Bayer
I've seen many of them.

Chris Maughan
Absolutely. So you're never going to convince somebody. You might get the trust on the homepage, but as soon as they click onto About Us, or the trust page, or the booking process, and they see that's really limited, they're going to think, No, subconscious due diligence is telling me that I should not be booking here. Because we all know how the brain works in terms of the psychology of trust is the brain is looking to protect us from making crazy, silly decisions. So there's no way that somebody is going to make that decision to book if their brain is telling them, I just don't know. There's something that I'm not fully engaged in here. So you've got to make sure that your website is giving off the impression that they feel that they're where they want to be and they like what they see.

Chris Maughan
And a lot of the time operators build that website to their satisfaction, not what a guest is looking for. So it's like, I've just built this beautiful website. Yeah, but your trust signals are in the wrong place, your homepage is wrong, all the information is below the fold, your Contact Us page is wrong, all the information is below the fold. Your contact us page is really limited. You haven't got your company registration number. You've got a mobile number as the contact. It's a Gmail email, all these little things that just look that's in, and I'm going to pay you $5,000 of my money? It's not happening. So they leave.

Chris Maughan
And I know for a fact today, a lot of people talk about direct bookings, and they basically just lie about the percentage of direct bookings that they've got. It's clear. They're OTA-reliant, and that's it. And they don't know how to transfer that over to direct bookings because they've become so accustomed to the OTA way, they don't know how to start looking at how do you convert an OTA-reliant business to a direct booking business. Trust is the main factor. Reputation is key. But if you're not given the trust and the guarantees that anybody else would give, then people are just not going to book directly. So trust is the key factor, but you've got to display it all the way through your website, all the way through to everything, to the end, to the booking process, and have your trust signals in the right place.

Heather Bayer
I'm going to take a short break just now to hear about our sponsor. We're going to be right back with more from this great interview in just a few moments.

Heather Bayer
If something catastrophic happens to the property that makes it uninhabitable and you have to cancel rentals, this could be a really hard to swallow if the owner doesn't have the right insurance. Can you explain the difference between loss of rents cover and loss of business revenue?

Nick Massey
Yeah, so loss of rents and loss of business income, although similar conceptually, are vastly different in the insurance world. This again goes back to how much risk are you going to transfer onto the insurance company. Loss of rents is designed and written primarily for long-term rentals that have an average rental market in in your area, your zip code, your state, your province, wherever. Loss of rents pays at a fair market value capped at 12 months. For long-term rentals, maybe that fair market value is $2,000 a month. Your home gets shut down, they're paying you that average rent. Loss of business income is solely based on you, the business operator, and your business. My short-term rental operates at X, your short-term rental operates at Y. We both have the same claim and the same loss. I get paid X, you get paid Y. We are not getting paid a fair market average. So loss business income is a superior coverage. You will pay more for that. But it's going to pay you dollar for dollar based on what your business is generating, not what the fair market average is like the loss of rents would pay out on the insurance forms.

Heather Bayer
Okay, let's talk about these trust signals. I talk a lot about an About Us page, and I can get on my little soapbox about About Us page, because if I'm buying from any company, the first page I look at is About Us. I want to know who's behind this business. Are they real people? For me, it may not be the same for everybody, but for me, that is the biggest trust signal. If I can relate to this...., there's photographs of the people. There's a story of why they're doing it and why they love it so much. But I want to hear about that, About Us and the other trust signals that people should be incorporating.

Chris Maughan
I would say an About Us page is a very important page. I don't disagree with that. But I would say from a psychology point of view, in terms of trust, that if there was a trust page and an About Us page, the trust page would get clicked first.

Heather Bayer
So what's on the trust page?

Chris Maughan
Well, I'll get to that. So basically, if you're talking about trust as in why trust us, you can't just put 'Trust Page' because that means somebody's not going to understand it. So you've got to put Why trust us? Now, the word trust, when somebody's thinking about giving you their money, the word trust is.... You're homing in on that word, because you know what it means. You know that if you trust somebody, it's good. So the moment you see the word trust, your brain is going to home in on that. That's for sure. So when you're talking about a trust signal, you've got to start that off from the start as soon as somebody arrives on that website. Okay, so if you can imagine arriving on somebody's website, the first trust signal, I believe, is the best one, which is above the fold on the left, which would say 89% of our guests book direct because they trust us. Here's why. Now, if you read that, you're going to go, I want to know why, because 89% is a high number. So they're obviously thinking, well, if 89% of their guests are booking direct, it means they're doing something right. It means they're trustworthy because otherwise 89% wouldn't be booking. So as soon as they see that, they're going to click on it and go to your trust page.

Chris Maughan
Your trust page is all about sales to a degree. Because we all know that trust is what you've got to win first before you can sell. Before anybody's going to book an apartment with you, they're going to want to know that they can trust who you are. So the trust page, that's when you start. I would say it could probably interlink a little bit with an About Us page. But if you can imagine thinking that as soon as you arrive on this Trust page, it's like, Okay, trust is the pillar of our business. We find trust is the most important factor because we want our guests to be feel safe, secure, and that they can trust us. For us to enable that, we've invested in certification X. What is this? Why did we do this? What is it? What is our mission statement? Why are we in hospitality? What is our cancelation policy? What does our review say? Look at our last five reviews. So basically, you're building a page that people just look at and get confidence from.

Chris Maughan
So you're not trying to sell any product. You're not trying to show them a Seaview apartment, a hot tub, or anything, or a lovely living room, nothing like that. You're basically trying to showcase confidence, reputation, who we are, why we do what we do. For example, a lot of our members have 'Why we invested in I-PRAC'. What is I-PRAC? What benefits to you is I-PRAC? This is our community. This is what we do. We sponsor a local football team. They get a feeling that they're with with a company that they can trust. Mission statements are great because that shows where you're heading, who the founders are, why you got in there. For me, that's engaging. And also on that page, you should be inviting them for a video call. Call us on video. Let's go through what your requirements are. So you're inviting them to contact you. You're not hiding away. You're not hiding away from instant book. Leave the people the option to contact you if they want, because they'll feel that even if they don't contact you, they'll look at that and think they're open to that, which is good, because if anybody's open, give me a call.

Chris Maughan
Give me a call. We'll go through it. If you like a property, give us a call, we'll go through it. So you're building that rapport and reputation and comfort so people feel that they're in the right place. And then you can take them to, now you can trust us, let's have a look at our properties. And then you can take them to your services, property pages. And all the way along during that, things like on your photographs, things like the photographs of this property were last taken six months ago. Put the date. So that it shows that, this isn't photographs that were taken in 2006. After 7,000 rentals and now the sofa is not like that. So show people that you care by saying every six months, we redo the photos. These photos we took on the April 4th,, 2023. They will look at that and go, Well, they're good... So we're now in June. There can't be that much of a difference between April and June. So they feel comfortable with that. So that's a trust signal. Always have your certification following them down the road, following them down the page so that they could always see that we're certified as a professional short-term rental provider.

Chris Maughan
Visuals are really important because as people are navigating a website, they can lose trust instantly. Just something can just go; I don't like that, I'm gone. I didn't like that. So you've got to keep them on the trust hook. And that's why Amazon do it amazingly well. Amazon is not the best website in the world, but when you go on Amazon, the trust signals are pretty clear, and you get from search to check out within minutes, and it arrives sometimes the same day. You know what I mean? So their trust is like through the roof. But, as you're navigating that website, you must not let two or three pages pass on that booking journey without keeping the trust signals in place. And if you do, that's when you can lose the trust factor and people just might think, Oh!

Chris Maughan
Then when they get to the payment page, this is the big one because most of the people drop off your website when it's time to pay, because that's when the decision is coming. That's when it's like there's no going back-type thing. It's a little bit like when you're going a rollercoaster. You're okay when you're in the queue, aren't you? You're a little bit nervous, but then all of a sudden, when it's your turn to get in there, that's when you see so many people jumping over the railings and saying, No, I'm not doing it. Because it happens. Just the fear, the uncertainty, it's like, No; it's hit its peak. It's the same when  you have to pay on a website. So the fact when somebody has to pay, that's when you've got to outline to them that your payments are protected through our certification or through this particular insurance. Our cancelation policy is here. Click on it before you pay. Have a look. Any questions? Here's the frequently asked questions. So you're really just giving people that confidence, and you're not forcing the payment, but you're giving people the opportunity to feel that they're booking with trust, with confidence, and then that booking could go through.

Chris Maughan
And I think you've also got to outline that you're using platforms like Stripe or PayPal so that they know that it's their credit card and tell them on that page, We do not take your credit card. We don't see the numbers. Remember years and years and years ago? We used to take the number and put it in the machine and charge it. And that client would trust us to throw that in the bin or file it in our filing cabinet and hold it for 10 years. That doesn't happen anymore. So you've got to outline these things because, Oh, I'm going to give them a credit card number. No, we don't receive your credit card number. It's done through Stripe. We don't see it. You know what? Because these are all the questions of the uncertainty that people have. And if you're not answering the uncertainty, then that's where the booking fails. I always say to people that my trust equation is that uncertainty is the killer of conversion. Trust removes uncertainty.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, that is great. I just want to take you back a little bit. You mentioned about this top left, top right of the.......

Chris Maughan
Top left, because your eyes go from left to right when you're reading.

Heather Bayer
And this is where you put how many... the percentage of your direct bookings, how much percentage of your bookings are direct ones. What happens if you're starting out? You've said, okay, I am going to do this thing. I'm going to move to a direct book website. I'm going to set this up, and I'm going to work at earning the trust of people coming to the site. You don't have that percentage that you can put up there.

Chris Maughan
You just change the wording. You change the wording. Why should you trust us? Once again, it's 89%. Some people might say, But I don't have 89%. So then don't lie. There's one thing about trust is don't lie. And some people might call it clever marketing, but if you're lying, you're lying. That's just a basic fact. So it's better to use the wording that suits trust. People are attracted to that word. So if they're considering booking with you and you've got, Our guests trust us, here's why, then people are going to look at it and go, I want validation of that. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for trust. I'm looking for certainty. This is where I'm going to get it. So you've really got to transfer people from that homepage to that trust page. And that's where you've got... Because we have to understand, when you've got a website, that's your virtual real estate, isn't it? You could be sat, you could be asleep, you could be out for dinner with a family, you could be out with friends, whatever it is, whatever it is. But somebody, somewhere, could be sitting on your website and they could be going through it with their partner and looking at it going, What do you think of this property? And then you've got the husband saying, No, I prefer just to go with Airbnb. I don't trust this company. You've got all of this going on when you don't even know.

Chris Maughan
So once again, the subconscious due diligence, you've got to cover all of the angles in your website so that when somebody's sitting in the comfort of their own home, looking at your virtual real estate, they have the time. So they're not running through your website quickly. Once you've captured them, they're like going through the whole journey, and then they're going to look at your About Us page. They might do a Google search on your business. They might look at it and think, Let's just check this I-PRAC certification number. Or they are I-PRAC approved, and they're going They're going to do the due diligence. Don't think that they're not, because nobody's just going to throw $5,000 at you, or euros or pounds, without doing it. And they might even go on your website and then sleep on it. That's another thing. So you've got to validate through the website.

Chris Maughan
And it's not all about glossy photos and descriptions. It's about using trust content. And Neely talks about this a lot. It's like when people read... If you read a website today, Short-Term Rentals, you don't see the word 'trust' a lot. You just don't see the word trust. But if you use it often enough, if you use it seven times on one page, or between seven and twelve times on one page, that word resonates. Use it once. It's just like using Seaview. But if you use it seven times, so trust content is about using the right words to engage with potential guests, so that they feel drawn to who you are as a brand and that they think - because either way, it's a bit of a risk, isn't it? - until they've actually checked in really. So all you're trying to do is minimize the level of uncertainty that people think, You know what? Let's go with this one. Let's rent this one directly.

Heather Bayer
Let's talk about reviews, because I know when I was choosing a hotel to evacuate to the other day, when there was a tornado watch, I could only find a two-star hotel that would accept my 75-pound German Shepherd. So there's a level of expectation there. It's a two-star hotel, and I was not too comfortable with it. I wasn't too comfortable with the location. I read the reviews and the reviews swung it. The reviews swung my decision to go to this hotel rather than paying five times as much to go somewhere that was going to charge three times as much to house my dog for the night as it wants to charge me. So I find, personally, that reviews are really important in helping me to trust a company as a consumer. And I know you've been commenting recently on reviews and the whole review system in LinkedIn. So I'm interested to see how significant are guest reviews in building and maintaining trust?

Chris Maughan
Well, they are. They're very significant, and they work. They are a conversion tool, absolutely. But, 'Love this properly, bright and airy', that's not a review. You don't want that on your website. Because a review is somebody taking the time out to give you the review because; 1.You deserve it, and 2. They want to, and 3. They give a real understanding of the service they've just received.

Chris Maughan
Now, when I see people putting out five-star reviews and above, it's just got like that, 'Great place, great service, lovely view'. What's five-star about that? Nothing. So If you want to get good reviews, then for one, you've got to do the job, right? You can't be asking people for a five-star review. Give a review that you feel is relevant to the service that you've just received, right? But a real good technique to do this, because a lot of people think that writing a review is easy, and it's not always easy. So even though somebody might want to write a review, they don't know what to do. So a real good technique to get good reviews is to say, look what the last guest said, right?

Chris Maughan
And look at it and get ideas from the last guest, right? So what you want to do is, you want to type out that review. It's a little bit like a sponsorship form. When somebody comes and says, sponsor me £20, and then somebody gives you £5, and then underneath you make a false one and you put £50, the person coming next is thinking, I've got to put £50 because I don't feel comfortable not doing... You know what I mean? So it's the same with the review. You're giving them an idea of what a good review is. So they'll go, Oh, I like that. We'll get some ideas from that. But a good review is detailed. And it mentions the name of the business and the name of the people who made the service exceptional. Then it becomes a review that you believe, because I could put out 10 reviews on a table and say to you, Heather, which reviews here are authentic? And I bet you any money, you could choose them out. Because you'd see the detail, the devil's in the detail.

Chris Maughan
You'd be able to say, Oh, we arrived, we were met by Heather, they were amazing. We went into the apartment, the living room was spotless. They tell a story. We had dinner in the apartment. It was beautiful. The kitchen was magnificent. This is what a review should sound like. Not 'bright and airy would stay again'. That's not going to get somebody else thinking, I want to stay here. So you've got to get people to give you the right review. And if you get the right reviews, they will 100% use for trust and conversion. But if the reviews are wrong and they're not authentic and the person hasn't given any detail, they're not going to work just because there's a five star next to it. Because most guests, they're not stupid. So they need a little bit more than three lines to decide whether or not. I mean, we'll go back to what you were just saying there with the hotel. What were the reviews like you were reading on the hotel?

Heather Bayer
They used words like It's safe. I felt safe here. It was newly renovated and it was clean. And these are some practical things for me. There was hard flooring and no carpets for the dog. But certainly safety, welcoming. We were welcomed at the front desk by Tracy.

Chris Maughan
Yeah, that's it. It's authentic.

Heather Bayer
Yes. And in fact, that is the review that I then wrote. I wrote almost... I don't think I looked at the others, but I did an almost identical review. It was safety from the storm. That's what I was looking for. I got safety. It exceeded my expectations.

Chris Maughan
And your review is going to be the reason somebody else books that hotel, right? Because you didn't just say, Solved a problem, probably would stay again, five stars. The star rating in the actual context of the review don't match. So you've got to indicate to your guests that, give us a review. But if you're just saying, Give us a review, maybe that person has no idea how to write a review. So you can just say, Look what the last guest said, and I'll guarantee, they'll read it and they'll go, I agree with that. The sea view was amazing. The kitchen was large and spacious. The bedrooms were comfortable. So they're going to go and write a similar review that will work. So I agree, reviews are really strong if they're done right. And as a property manager, you must be trying to get the right review back and help in guiding the guests to do the right review that's going to work for your business in the future. And you must be replying to reviews, positives, negative reviews, positive reviews. If you're just going to say thanks, then that's like, Oh, don't really appreciate that.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, really important, those replies.

Chris Maughan
Yeah, the reply is just as important as the review, because it shows that you as a brand, and you as a company, have took time out to reply to that guest and thank them for their review, but also validate the fact that you're really excited and you're happy that they enjoyed their stay. And one of the ways that I built my business was because I've always looked at my business thinking, I'm not interested in where we're going right so much. I really want to know where we're going wrong. And where we can improve. So when you can turn around to a guest and say, We're a service-based company. We always want to improve, and we know we can. But with your help, we can improve for your next stay, where would you advise us where we could improve? And a lot of people don't like to get negative feedback, but it isn't negative. It's positive because you can turn it into a positive. But don't be just be like, frightened to get negative review. Where can we improve? Because if you can get that information, you will improve. Your trajectory to growth will be so much quicker with that feedback than it would be if you don't ask them questions.

Chris Maughan
And then you can really get into a conversation in that review, how can we do better? And they come back. And there's a little bit of a conversation going there which has built that trust. And I think that's important for somebody on the outside looking at that review, then look at it and go, I like that conversation. It's not just like a terrible review. Thank you. End of. That's not hospitality.

Heather Bayer
You made some great points, Chris, and brilliant. Our time, unfortunately, is running out now, and I want to hear a little bit more about I-PRAC before we wrap up. I had a whole load of questions that I just haven't got around to asking, but I think you've done such a great job of delivering the tips that people actually need to go back to their sites and say, okay, do I have my trust signals in there? And do I have a page that talks about why you should trust us? And do I have this right in the front of my homepage? So I'm encouraging everybody that's listening to this to do that, to look at your site in terms of what Chris has been talking about. Does it meet all these criteria?

Heather Bayer
But you've dropped in on a number of occasions about the certification. I love this idea. The trust signal on a site was always, BBB, Better Business Bureau. Are you a member? Are you a member of your local rental alliance? Is there a network that you belong to? These are some of the trust signals. But having a certificate on there that says, I have been, what do you do? Monitored, or I have been inspected, or certified, and what that means is important. So share with us now what the I-PRAC certification brings to an owner operator.

Chris Maughan
Yeah. Well, the first thing to understand with what I-PRAC does is when we built it is that there's accountability to it. So if the guest is booking through an I-PRAC member, their booking is guaranteed. Their payments are guaranteed through our underwriter. So like against fraud. So one of the biggest problems that people have is that you can put a logo on your website, or we're part of the business bureau, we're all this, we're all that. But what happens? I want to know what happens if something goes wrong. What does the business bureau do if something goes wrong? What does this alliance company do if something goes wrong? Because it's all right having the logo, but what happens if something goes wrong? Do they just say, Oh, you got to speak to them, or you got to speak to them? It's like, no. That's not building a guarantee into the certification.

Chris Maughan
So one of the reasons when we built I-PRAC was that it could not just be a logo. There's no point, right? ABTA [The Travel Association [UK-based] and formerly known as the Association of British Travel Agents]have it. It's just a logo that can be copied. It's easy. It's like there's no certification in terms of how they can check a member is literally certified. So when we built I-PRAC, we made sure that each individual logo is unique so that you have their membership number in the logo.

Chris Maughan
On the I-PRAC website, you can actually type in that logo and see the profile of the member. So it shows the phone number of the member, the last five digits of the bank account that's registered on I-PRAC, so that they can pay to that bank account safely, the email addresses, the address of the the business, the directors, the name, the founder, so much information. That gives you that opportunity to check it out. But from a guest point of view, you can register your booking for free and get a booking certificate, and that's the guarantee. So you're not just saying that we're in a certification, we're guaranteeing that the guests are protected. And if something happens, when the guest registers their booking, they receive a certificate. They receive information on what to do if something goes wrong with the rental. They know exactly what to do if they arrive and something goes wrong. And in seven years, we've never had it. So that shows that all of the members who have come through the doors are the people who want to operate at a high level.

Chris Maughan
So we are differentiating that way. And that's the key. It's having the accountability. So if you can show the I-PRAC certification on your website, it's not just a logo, but you've got to educate your guests about it. You've got to show them why it became I-PRAC certified and what the benefits are. Because if you don't, they won't understand it. So that's why the trust page comes in. But for me, it's the only way, because it's third-party managed. So even though the guest is dealing directly with the operator, the guest knows that if something goes wrong, they can call I-PRAC. So we deal with it.

Heather Bayer
So if somebody is interested in this certification, what do they have to do?

Chris Maughan
They just need to go to the I-PRAC website, which is www.i-prac.com, and all the information is on there. And I would highlight the resource hub that we have on the I-PRAC website, because we've put... I mean, there must be 200 articles on there all about why trust is important, how to do trust signals. We did the Trust Trilogy series, which was three massive articles about how to build trust. So I mean, sometimes when I'm on a podcast, I think, I don't even know where to start, but we've documented everything so that if you really are interested in understanding more about trust, then I would suggest not just to go and book and get I-PRAC certified, it's to go into the Resource Hub and start educating yourself about the importance of it and why it is important. And then if you feel that I-PRAC is suitable to what you're trying to achieve, then you can go and... Because that's what we do. We don't try to sell I-PRAC. We try to educate people around it, around trust, and I-PRAC comes into that play. So it's part of a trust strategy, not only, but trust strategy does include I-PRAC for sure.

Heather Bayer
That is great. I will put information on I-PRAC on the Show Notes. And of course, this being Trust Week, there is a lot more information out there. Some of the articles we are syndicating this week. So if you're listening to this on the week of publication, then definitely go to vacationrentalformula.com/trust and you will see a list of all the articles and other materials and resources that we are producing for this particular week. But it's not just a week. It is something that goes on through the course of your business. And I just wanted to thank Chris for being with us. He is a mine of amazing information on the whole topic of trust. And I know we'll have you back on the podcast at sometime in the future, Chris. Follow Chris on LinkedIn. There is so much. He's... Prolific, I think is the word. You're prolific on LinkedIn.

Chris Maughan
Because that's the only one I do. You don't find me on TikTok, you don't find me on Instagram. I just don't have the time for all that. But I do like to show up on LinkedIn and share my knowledge of what I've done over the last 25 years with building my own business. So it's all knowledge that I want to share. You take what you want from it or not.

Heather Bayer
It's certainly worthwhile following.  So Chris, thank you so much for joining me. It's been an absolute pleasure talking with you.

Chris Maughan
Thank you.

Heather Bayer
Well, thank you, Chris Maughan from I-PRAC for a great discussion. My goodness, there were some great nuggets in there and some really good quotes. I'm going to have to go back over the entire transcript and pull out some of those little nuggets. Things like, 'subconscious due diligence', which I'd never thought about. And another one is, 'keeping them on the trust hook'. So I will go through the transcript and pull out some of those quotes, and I'll be using them. And particularly in this Trust Week, I think it's really important that we do that. We take out these gems that these experts are coming up with, and we use them, and I'll be using them in blog posts and social media posts and other things in the weeks to come. Because this may be just one Trust Week that we're in, but the essentials of trust, either with guests or with owners, are the basis of a really successful and impactful company. So you've got to get this part right. If you don't get this part and you don't have the trust of your guests or your owners, if you're a property management company, then you are missing out, and you're certainly failing at some levels. So keep that in mind. Look at your website, look at all your materials, whether they're online or offline, and make sure that that word trust is appearing consistently.

Heather Bayer
Okay, that's it for this episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast in this Trust Week of the SSTIR Crazy Month. And I hope that you will listen to all the other podcasts this month on the topics of safety, insurance, regulations, and sustainability. And remember that these are the pillars of your business. Thanks for listening, guys. I'll see you next week.

Mike Bayer
That was some amazing information, and we hope you'll take the chance to implement some of these ideas in your short-term rental business in 2024. Don't forget to connect and give our thanks to our platinum sponsor for SSTIR Crazy Month, Proper Insurance. Click the link in the description of this episode to connect with the team at Proper for a no obligation chat.

Heather Bayer
It's been a pleasure as ever being with you. If there's anything you'd like to comment on, then join the conversation on the Show Notes for the episode at vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you, and I look forward to being with you again next week.

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