Building a short-term rental business is surprisingly simple. You buy a property, furnish it, then throw up some pictures of it onto booking sites like Airbnb and VRBO. After a few weeks, a booking comes in, and from there you’re in the game! This is all great until a poor review comes in, sending your listing to the bottom of the pile and your profit with it. Through no fault of your own, your income stream just got cut off, and now you have a mortgage to pay without a calendar full of bookings.
For many hosts, this type of scenario seems like game over for investing. But for Mark Simpson, it’s the start of something even better. Mark grew up in hospitality, marketing his family’s bed and breakfast nestled in the British countryside. His family was frantically cleaning, cooking, and booking with spreadsheets and no system to streamline their business. This ongoing problem led Mark to build Boostly, the software allowing hosts to take their bookings into their own hands.
Mark has helped numerous short-term rentals bring in millions in direct bookings, helping hosts and guests minimize the amount spent on fees while maximizing their experience. So how do vacation rental hosts start doing direct bookings? What benefits come from leaving the big booking sites behind? And how can hosts regain autonomy so their business is never forced to stop? Mark answers these questions and more in today’s episode!
Ashley :
This is Real Estate Rookie episode 243.
Mark :
So the first thing that I feel like everybody should be doing on the Airbnb profile, that first line, and this is general copy talk. Everybody talks about the hook in copyright. And the hook is just basically getting someone’s attention so they take action, right? The first line is you should be saying, “Hey, I’m Mark, founder of X.” You can’t put a direct web link in there. Airbnb will spot that. The bots will spot that, but you can get creative. So I always used to put, “Hey, I’m Mark, founder…