From aspiring police officer to successful hotel manager, Craig Webb's journey took an unexpected turn when he discovered the power of digital marketing. But what's even more surprising is how his experience in the hotel industry can revolutionise the short-term rental market. Are you ready to learn from his insightful strategies and take your business to the next level?

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Master dynamic pricing strategies to boost direct bookings.
• Discover enticing amenities that drive guests to book directly.
• Unveil intricate revenue management techniques for maximum savings and profit.
• Achieve the perfect balance between OTA and direct bookings for cost-effective customer acquisition.
• Cultivate loyal customers through thoughtful gestures and tailored offers.

With a remarkable 32-year career in hospitality, Craig Webb has seen it all. He spent 17 years managing two hotels in the picturesque Cotswolds, mastering every aspect of the industry from marketing to rate management. As someone who has successfully transitioned from traditional hotel management to digital marketing, Craig has a wealth of knowledge to offer short-term rental owners. He is passionate about helping others learn from his experiences and adapt their businesses to the ever-changing landscape of hospitality.

‘I was doing crazy things just to get eyes on my business and try to generate direct bookings, even back then.’ - Craig Webb

Connect with Craig: https://www.webbmarketing.info/

Free SEO guide for hospitality that you can do yourself: https://webb-marketing.lpages.co/seo-tips-for-hospitality/

The key moments in this episode are:

00:00:08 - Introduction,

00:02:27 - Craig's Journey,

00:08:03 - Blurring Lines,

00:10:03 - Rate Management,

00:14:48 - Hotels vs. Short Term Rentals,

00:17:22 - Reasons to Book Direct,

00:21:22 - Accounts and Cost Analysis,

00:23:57 - Direct Booking Success,

00:26:44 - SEO for Hospitality

Show notes are available at: https://directbookingsuccess.com/podcast/

Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/directbookingsuccess

Join the Marketing Hub Free Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/marketinghubforholidayrentals

Sign up to the Free Direct Booking Success Summit 2023: https://directbookingsuccesssummit.com/

I'm Jennn Boyles, your host, and today I have Craig Webb with me. Welcome, Craig. Hello, Jenn. Happy to be here. Thank you.

Great, great to see you. Let's start with you telling us a bit about who you are and what you do. So, primarily I was a hotelier. I was in hotels for 32 years. In hospitality, and the last 17 years I was a general manager of two.

Hotels in the Cotswolds for a group of hotels called Bespoke. They've had 100 hotels around the UK, so I was, like I said, a GM. And over the last probably ten years. I've learned digital marketing, and that started when I was running a hotel that was in administration. So the banks gave it to the.

Group, Bespoke Hotels, and gave them the keys and said, this is not doing very well. They're taking it back from the owner. And allowed us to run it and we need to get it sold, basically. So if I did a good job, I was going to lose my job. Right?

I did a good job. But at that point, there was no money. We're told there's no money to spend on anything, but you need to improve the figures, you need to get the sales up and you need to improve the bottom line, but you can't spend anything. So that's when I really started racking my brains and turning towards social media and that sort of thing, which wasn't really a thing at the time. So I was probably one of the.

First hotels in the UK to have a business Facebook page, even though there wasn't business pages at the time. It was just people back then, wasn't it? But I was running competitions on Facebook and Come and tell us a joke and you'll win a free room and all this sort of stuff. So I was doing crazy things just to get eyes on my business and try to generate direct bookings, even back then. So that's where it all started.

But, yeah, it just grew and grew, and then Instagram came along and then LinkedIn got bigger and then I started learning SEO and it just grew from there. Yeah. You get sucked into it, don't you? Yes. Yeah, good.

Well, let's get back to your sort of beginning. How did you get into hospitality in the hotels? How did I get into it? Well, I was always going to be a police officer and actually it's my sister that was the police officer. Now, I thought, well, I was a.

Bit young to be a police officer. So I'll go and get a job. Somewhere for a couple of years, get a bit of life experience so I. Can deal with the public. Started working in the hotel and as we know, it's a very transient industry.

People come and go very quickly, lots. Of students, and promotion is very easy. To come by in hospitality. So before I knew it, I was. A head receptionist, then I was an events manager and then a deputy general manager.

And actually then when I was probably ready to change career and become a police officer, I would then have to. Drop my salary and go all the. Way back down again. So I'd started building my career. So at that point, I didn't feel to leave.

Hospitality was the right move. So I also got diabetes, and that. Kind of put the stop on me. Becoming a police officer, so I could. Be having low blood sugars while I was arrested.

No, just wait a second. I've got to have a bite of sugar. Exactly. Yeah. Just hold on, I need a little snack.

Yeah. So, yeah, I just carried on hospitality and then became a GM and that was it. I never looked back. Really? Yeah.

That's great. My father I don't know if I've told you this, but my father is a retired GM general manager. Did you? Yeah. And so I grew up in hotels.

So this is all very familiar to me, this world, and I think that you're right about it being quite transient. People come and they'll work for a summer or work for a season, and then off they go. So if you stick around, you do a good job. Yes. You can move up, can't you?

Exactly. I don't need to say I did that good a job. I was just not best just arrest. I must have been. Okay.

I was with the same company 17 years. You must have been, you must have been. You must have been, yeah. Can you walk us through sort of a day in a life of a GM? Like, what were you responsible for?

Everything. So my last role, let's refer back to that. It's freshest in my mind. And I was there seven years. So I was running two hotels in the Cotswolds.

One was a four star hotel with a spa, and directly opposite over the high street was a three star hotel. Like a Cotswold inn? No, two days are the same. And that actually is what I enjoyed about it, because I don't like boring. I don't like repetition, but really, it was about ensuring the operation was running smoothly.

There are so many moving parts in a hotel and if you the short term rental owners that are listening, think they have moving parts with organizing the cleaners and the booking, they have no. Idea when you're tying in. Early arrivals, late checkouts, spa days, tickets to the local attraction, coupled with afternoon. Tea, a massage and dinner all happen to be served at the right time. In a seamless way.

And many different things going on in. A hotel at the same time. So you might have a restaurant running, you've got a wedding in the function. Room, you've got a whore arriving from. China on a bus, and they all need their bags moving, like I say, so many moving parts.

And I think most of it was about managing staff. So I had over 60 staff in the two hotels, and mostly it was about motivated men training, recruiting, and just constantly monitoring staff, really. But you have to be very disciplined in hotels to keep everything moving forward. Yeah, it's a big team, 60 people. Yeah.

Good. So we're going to talk today about our sector, the short term rentals, holy lands, vacation rentals, whatever you want to call them. We're going to talk about them and what they can learn from hotels and the experience that you've had. Let's start first with how did you sort of cross over from hotels into short term rentals? Okay, well, it started really just through the marketing.

So I started my marketing company in lockdown. I did go back to work after. Lockdown and was sort of hankering to go back. So January this year, January 23, I quit my job and went full time in the marketing. But in the sort of digital marketing.

Hospitality world, it tends to be the. SCR world that need or are looking for most help. Hotels tend to have their own marketing. Teams, and it just so happens to. Be that the people I'm hanging out.

With online, like yourself, are kind of. In that SDR world as well. And I'm sort of getting dragged into it, and I'm finding I'm occupying a unique space where I've got the experience from hotels, which I feel is slightly ahead of the STR world. And with my digital marketing and hospitality. Experience, I can help others achieve their goals.

Okay, so let's get into it. Let's start talking about what our sector can learn from hotels. Where do you want to start? Well, I think already the lines between. The sectors are blurry.

We've already got hotels opening apart hotels, hotels opening short term rentals branded as the lodge by Holiday Inn, whatever, for example. So the lines are really blurry and the STR industry is getting better at. Adding add ons and bolt ons to. The stays and sort of learning from hotels. I think it's important to say hotels have learned from the flight industry.

Certainly with pricing, hotels would have their. Rates in the past. It was like summer, winter, midweek weekend. And that was it. Yeah, that was your rate.

And then we started learning for the, for the airline industry, we say, well. The first ten seats are 40 pounds. And then the next ten seats are. 60 pounds, and as demand grows, the rates go up. And actually, hotels started learning that yielding and rate management.

And I think that sometimes property owners. Are not looking at all of their assets like a hotel, like individual units. And saying, well, actually, let's start a. Bit lower, and when we sell some and get some occupancy, well, then we've got money in the bank, then we can pay our way, and then we. Can start getting the cream and the.

Icing on top and adding to the rates and building up. So that's what hotels do. And they started much earlier on having more dynamic pricing. Minimum length of stays, two nights minimum on a Saturday. Or they would close further out, they.

Would close to OTAs. We were closing out every Saturday to the OTAs from May to September, but. We knew we would fill. Yeah, okay, we might fill later and we might panic a little bit that all the other hotels are full and. We'Re closed on Direct Booking Success.

What are we going to do? Should we open? We said, well, actually, we know the booking window is yet to come. The peak booking window we know for our property might be ten days out, right? So there's no point panicking until seven days out because we know the booking window is still to come.

And actually measuring those metrics, knowing when people book each property and each property. Type, or each room type in the. Case of hotels, helps you manage your rates. It's really drilling down and having that. Rate plan and structure in place for.

Your whole year, where you know your peaks and troughs. You plot your eight days a year in advance, you plot your quiet times a year in advance, and you build from there. So some of the other things obviously. Hotels can do, and it's not as. Easy in short term rental is that we have packages, so it's easier to.

Sell bed and breakfast, dinner, bed and breakfast, of course, the luxury package, the package with the spa included. Now obviously that's more difficult for a short term rental. You don't have those facilities on site, but you certainly can package up different rates. Advanced purchase is cheaper than or you can add a breakfast box to be. Added in, or you could have a romance package and get you cleaner to.

Leave some rose petals and some upsell, whatever it is, or team up with. Somebody else in the local area. Yeah, absolutely. And the local restaurant, there are so many short term rentals. The local restaurant, if they're teaming up with you, they'll easily give you a kickback, two pounds of COVID for each.

Booking or something like that. And if you can have an affiliate. Link on your site to the local. Restaurant, they'll happily pay you because they're already paying, what are they called? The reservation diaries.

They're already paying those people for per cover they get. It's almost like their own Ota.

Providing. Them a service there. I keep hearing this rental industry concerned. About the capability of the channel manager. And it can't work, the configuration of what they need.

So they've got a room that's a zip and link bed, it can be. A twin or a double, and it. Can have a sofa bed and it. Can take a cot. And sometimes the configurations don't work so.

That the customer can book and see those options. Right. Whereas in the hotel world, we've tackled that, we sorted it long ago and. It'S not an issue. So in a hotel, you can click.

On the single room, the double room, the superior room, the suites, the hot tub suites. So you've got five different room types, and you can say whether you want. It as a twin, a double, three. People in it, two people in it, an extra bed, no feather pillows. And you can map it to have.

It as an advanced purchase rate, a bed and breakfast rate, a dinner, bed. And breakfast rates, spa break rates or. A romance package rate. So that was such things different. There are many options which the hotel.

World has worked out how to map and feed all of those different rates. And packages to all the different OTAs. And it works seamlessly. So why are we struggling with that? I don't know.

I don't know whether it's the channel managers that are being used functionality. Exactly. It didn't need the functionality and now. It probably does to be able to open up those avenues and add ons that you could possibly sell that hotel. OTAs can integrate with.

Yeah. And bookings, because I know the hotels are ahead of us in quite a few ways. They sort of tackled the OTAs already, and the flight industry, which you've just mentioned, is even before them, they've already tackled the OTAs in their industry and then hotels, and now sort of asks, what about direct bookings in hotels? What have they learned that we're still trying to figure out? I think some of them have gone on their own.

Travel large, I think is one you can't book on the OTAs, you can only book Direct. So it's a bit like the insurance industry. You know, you've got direct line, isn't it? They hang their hat on that. You can only book direct.

Yes. So some have literally gone on their. Own, but they have the resources to do so. They've got a head office and everything else. And there are even people in the hotel world where they firmly sit in.

The camp of, well, I don't want to pay marketing staff, I don't want to pay for their office, to feed. Them, to give them uniform, to pay holiday pay and liabilities and everything else. I'll just give it to the OTAs, because actually, I think it's quite good value to pay 15%. So even the industry is a bit divided and I think it just depends how they've had it developed and how. They'Ve grown their own brand.

But most hotels obviously have a decent. Website with a decent booking engine and a good converting. When you book on a hotel website, you're not booking on that site, going through a booking map and going through a channel manager generally, like it does in the STR world, but it tends to work a little bit more seamlessly, like I say, different packages and upgrade. Options along the way. And of course when they book that way you've got the customer data, which.

You would if you booked on a short term rental. If they booked direct, you'd have their own data. Generally in a hotel you've got another opportunity to get customers email because they're. Doing a check in. Yes, physically wizardy.

So you can say we must have your name, telephone number and email address so you can get that a check in and put it into your property management system and then obviously you can export that later date. So there are a few more opportunities. To get people to give them your data in hotels. Yeah, because we sort of gone through, I think well, the Pandemic helped with it, that short term rentals. It's almost like we're almost afraid to meet people face to face these days.

And hotels, of course, you've got that built in because you're coming right in their front door. Do you have any opinions on that? I think it's all about the customer. Relationship and it always kind of bothered. Me that sort of Direct Booking Success would charge.

You 15% commission, which I think is. About 50% of your profit. They'd be asleep at night having left. Their corporate job at 05:00 p.m. And we'd still be there serving the customers at midnight and they're taking half the.

Profit, which was quite frustrating. So it kind of encouraged me to. Sort of have information on the website. To give customers a reason to book Direct. I think customers are quite savvy.

They will go on the Ota, then they will check out your own website. To get sort of verification and then. They'Ll often go back to the Ota. To book if they get their points or a perceived discount. But actually at that point when they go to your website looking for that.

Verification, I always had some information there. Of reasons to book Direct. So I'd say free parking, free first. In the queue for a free upgrade, free WiFi and breakfast included, whatever. Now actually, the truth was most they were all available on the Direct Booking Success anyway, but it played to the customers fear that it wouldn't get that if it didn't book Direct.

Certainly a lot of hotels now, the. Ota will say to them, you have to have rate parity, so the rate on Direct Booking Success has to be the same on your own site because they're looking to say, well, if we're going to. Market you, the price needs to be the same. So the get around for hotels is to say, okay, we'll make it the same. But if you book direct with us, breakfast is included.

Yeah. Or if you book on the Ota, it's a standard room, and if you. Book with us, you'll get a superior room. So there's a few more tips and tricks we could use to convert it. Yeah.

And I stayed at a hotel in I think it was February in the Lake District in England here, and I wanted to book direct. I found them if I found them on Direct Booking Success or if I found them on just on Google. I can't remember how I found them, but of course I went on their website and I saw that the price was way higher on their website. Right. And I was like, yeah, it shouldn't be.

Yes, I know they're really missing a trick. And I rang them because I had a question about something else. And so I asked the person who answered the phone, where is the best place to book? And she said, well, on our website. And I said, I'll get the best price there.

And she says, of course you will. So I went back and I looked and the price now we're talking, it was substantially higher. Direct Booking Success offered me free breakfast as well as the price. You couldn't compare it. We're talking 400 pounds.

Wow. And so, of course, I booked on Direct Booking Success. So I think we have a perception that all the hotels have learnt. No, they're not. No, they're still learning.

And like I said earlier, the industry is transient and then a new receptionist will come along and they won't get it. Right. Yeah, it should work. If they've got the revenue manager right. They'Re feeding in the rates into the.

Channel manager, and that's mapped correctly to. Feed the rates out to the OTAs in a certain way. So that shouldn't really happen. But I think that's a really good point of what you said is that we use sign posting on the Ota. Sorry.

Making sure that your branding is there, so that people will then check you out on your website and then giving them a reason to book while you're here. Yeah, while you're here, book. Free parking, a voucher for a breakfast box or a voucher to the local restaurant or something like that. Exactly, yeah. That extra value.

What else do you think we can learn from hotels? What else can we learn? I think that well, we've talked about packages and selling. I think we need to think about hotels drill down through their accounts far. More than I've seen people do in the short term rental industry.

I only talk about that anecdotally I've. Not heard people talk about their accounts. So I only hear people talk about their top line and maybe their bottom line. They're all the vanity metrics, but they're. Not talking about the middle of the account, which actually is where the information is, which sets you up for success or failure.

So hotels will obviously produce a set. Of profit and loss accounts every single month pertaining to that previous period and look at every single figure possible. Now, some won't obviously pertain to the short term rental industry, so we're talking food and beverage margins, that sort of thing, or spa costs, which you won't have. Linens. Absolutely.

Well, we start drilling down into cost of linen per room sold, housekeeping cost. Per occupied room, energy cost per occupied room, commission as a percentage of top line sales, or commission as a pound per room sold. And it depends how you want to. Dice up these figures. You only need to put them in.

Once into a spreadsheet and get it properly formatted by a professional. And actually, as long as you feed. Those figures in once a month, how much does it cost me for the coffee making facilities? How much does it cost me for soaps and disposables? Then the middle of the account will tell you where you're perhaps losing items.

You might have a bit of theft. You might have a bit of loss. And then you can start investigating. It's only over time you start building. A picture that you know where in the account to look at and tackle.

So in a hotel, I think a. Problem will only be a problem for maximum four to six weeks before the. Red flags start appearing in the profit and off account that you can go, okay, right, something's going on with laundry. The laundry company is charging us for. Next door hotel by mistake or sending.

Us the wrong invoice or whatever. It could be anything. I worked in a hotel once, they. Had a leak, had a water leak, but we didn't know. But we didn't see the leak.

It was on the ground. It was not until the water bill came in, there was this red line. On the account, so, well, we need. To look, where is this water going? So actually, we then did some more investigating and we found we had a leak and caused the meat of whirring.

Around and we're losing money. But if we didn't look at the accounts properly, that wouldn't have happened. So it's getting into the detail. Yes, definitely. I think everyone's so focused on cop.

Line and I made this money. No, you didn't. Let's look at the cost. So if there was one thing that you think that short term rentals could learn from hotels, what do you think is the biggest thing that people could take away with today? I think let's give you two.

I'd say let's look at how they can create more sort of dynamic packages and pricing for their property to give. Up sales, giving you more top line. And spend the time. Invest in a decent accountant that create a good piece of Excel tech that will record all of your costs properly. And do it religiously every month so you can track where your money is.

Going. Yeah. And I'm going to add the other point that you made, too, about when people come to your website, give them a reason to book direct. Not just say book direct. Give them a real reason.

100%. Great. So I can't let you leave without asking you, what does direct booking success mean to you? Okay. It's okay to have a customer booking on an Ota.

That is fine. It's not okay to have the same customer book time and time again. So let's call it cost of acquisition. And if we look at a company. Like Amazon, they have I think it's.

Like $50 per customer. Each employee is allowed to spend $50 to make sure a customer signs up to prime or signs up to be a regular customer. So let's call commit commission the first time, cost of acquisition. After that, it's down to you to get them in your own sales funnel. Own the data and remarket to them for the future.

So I'd say about 30% to 40%. That's quite okay to have through the OTAs and 60% direct, if you can work towards that. So 60% direct bookings is a big. Success, I would say. Yeah, that's great.

Well, thank you, Crank, for coming on today. So we can learn through your knowledge of hospitality from the hotel world. You have a gift to give listeners, don't you? Yes, I've got a little because my job really is SEO and digital marketing. I've got a PDF that you can.

Download, and it's at least 15 tips. That you can do yourself of SEO actionable tips that you can do yourself. So I feel people are a little bit afraid of SEO because it's a technical word. Well, I call SEO for hospitality, serving excellent opportunities. That's what SEO stands for me, and we're serving people.

So download those tips. I think you're going to put it in the show notes, aren't you, Jenn? And these are simple things you can do yourself to make your website work better, to align with your audience, and to attract the right audience that you want. So tell us again, what does SEO stand for with you? For me, it stands for serving excellent opportunities.

Serving excellent I love it. It sounds so much better than search engine optimization. Absolutely. Yeah. We're in hospitality, so that's what we.

Need to think about. That's it. We are. We're in hospitality. Well, thank you, Craig.

I'm going to put the link to your free SEO guide in the show notes. Where else can people connect with you? Well, I'm on Instagram, but I don't use it. That's web underscore marketing, underscore services. Don't use that one.

And I'm on LinkedIn all the time. That's my main thing. Just Craig Webb. You'll see me? Great.

I'll put a link to that and show us. Maybe I won't put your instagram that's really good for a digital marketer to be. Yes, it's like the tailor's suit. I don't look after my own social. I always doing it for other people.

Yeah, no, I always think of the cobbler and their cobbler shoes. Yeah, that's definitely me. Thank you, Craig, so much for coming on today. No problem. Pleasure.