Podcasts
VRS338 - Book Direct Basics with the Vacation Rental Formula Team
Back in the day before HomeAway and Airbnb came on the scene, we booked our homes directly with the consumer. We used fax machines for booking forms, cheques or cash for payment, and spreadsheets to ensure we didn’t double book. Now we have platforms and apps and plenty of resources to make it so much more streamlined, but along the way we lost control to the mega online companies. It’s time to take that control back.
While we agree that it’s not as simple as the ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ style of listing most people know and tolerate, regaining those relationships with guests via the direct booking process can be rewarding and profitable in many ways.
But we know it’s not easy.
In this episode I’m joined by my business partners and digital marketing experts, Mike Bayer and Jason Beaton, to talk about the basics of getting a book direct strategy underway.
We discuss some of the objections we hear from clients and how to overcome them, as well as the importance of gaining the trust and confidence of guests – something that has been eroded by the OTAs claiming their expertise in the business. Because, while WE know who really does the work to make a vacation truly perfect, they would have travelers believe otherwise.
In this episode, you’ll hear
- Why the time has never been better to start your BD project
- Why you need to define your avatar
- That you can start your branding right now while still using the OTAs
- The implications of building a BD strategy
- How your website doesn’t need to be complicated
- The importance of one-step booking from your website
- What Google Analytics can tell you that you might miss otherwise
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