Boutique Hotel Secrets Podcast
This show is for the builders and backers of boutique hotels.
Hosted by operators who made the jump from short-term rentals to boutique hotels, this podcast documents the real journey of acquiring, renovating, and operating boutique hospitality assets.
We share lessons learned in real time and sit down with experienced operators, lenders, designers, and industry professionals who bring practical insight, hard-won advice, and unfiltered perspective. If you’re serious about boutique hotels, hospitality operations, or scaling beyond short-term rentals, this show is for you.
Boutique Hotel Secrets Podcast
20 - Stop Renting Your Guests: The Direct Booking Playbook with Mark Simpson
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In this conversation, Mark discusses the critical role of direct bookings in the hospitality industry, emphasizing that a significant percentage of these bookings begin with searches on online travel agencies (OTAs) like Airbnb and Booking.com. He highlights the necessity for property owners to be prepared to capture these leads effectively. Furthermore, Mark addresses the risks associated with over-reliance on a single platform, advocating for diversification of income sources to ensure a sustainable business model.
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He wants Airbnb to become the Amazon of travel. Instantly set off the bullshit alarm in my head. Oh, hang on a second. If we don't do anything about it right now, if we literally sit on our hands and just let them keep doing what they're doing, what is to stop them from going 20%?
SPEAKER_01Hey everybody, I'm Adam Wallace, and I'm here with my co-host Micah Thomas.
SPEAKER_02We're short-term rental operators who made the jump into boutique hotels.
SPEAKER_01And we're in it right now, raising capital, renovating a 50-room property. We're figuring it out as we go.
SPEAKER_02This is the Boutique Hotel Secrets Podcast, and these are secrets.
SPEAKER_01Welcome in, everyone, to another episode of the official Boutique Hotel Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Walls. Great to be here with you today. As you know, on this show, we're always trying to spill the sauce, share all the stories, the lessons, everything about making that critical jump from residential Airbnb short-term rentals into the world of commercial boutique hotel hospitality. Thankfully, it's 6 a.m. So it's not just me. We're gonna bring in my co-host, my mister from another sister, Micah Thomas. Micah, how are you doing today, man? Doing great.
SPEAKER_02I'm doing great. I'm really excited for today. We got a great guest on, and I really want to dive deep on something that I feel very strongly about, and that being direct booking. Just happy that you're up at 6 a.m. Thanks for making the sacrifice. It is not 6 a.m. in other parts of the world, but I'm glad you're here on this episode with us, and I'm ready to dive in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so let's do a little bit of intro here. So again, today we're joined by one of the most influential voices in direct booking movement. If you've Googled this, you've seen this man, you've seen this company. He's the founder of Boostly UK, an educator, an author, an operator. He's helped thousands of people across the hospitality businesses build their websites, their marketing systems that truly convert. So his work has generated tens of millions, and I'm sure we'll get into some of the numbers in direct bookings for independent properties. I believe that's where he started around the world. And he's pushing the industry forward with a clear message. Stop depending on OTAs and start owning your guest relationships. Mark Simpson, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00Lovely info. Thank you. Thank you very much. So that number is actually a billion now over 10 years. Billion with a B. A billion with a B. Over last year. Congratulations. All of our members. Yeah, I know it's a phenomenal achievement. Thank you for having me. Excited to get stuck in. Because yeah, the world of hotels is where I got started, the boutique hotel world. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01Wasn't it a 14 14 guest room house, something like that? I remember watching a live that you were doing, and I think you were taking people's listings, kind of giving some advice. And just happened to be like a couple miles from I think where you all started. Was that Manchester or just outside?
SPEAKER_00Or where was the little town is called Scarborough. So Scarborough with your accent. And it was a 200-acre farm. And in the 90s, my parents transformed one of the barns into a four-bedroom guest house. It was the first of its kind, right? Back in the 90s, there was no farm stay accommodation. They had amazing hindsight, and they had to. They were forced to because of there was a major farming crisis where animals and life livestock was having to get cold because of a disease that was being spread. So they used the opportunity to make life out of lemonades, get lemon getting, right? And so they turned into a four-stay farmstay bed and breakfast, and that took off. Four became 14, and then we added on holiday cottages. And yeah, it was the start of a crazy journey. So I got I was born into this industry. I'm a rare breed, if that like without retrospect, but I spent the first 20 years of my life trying to escape from hospitality. Traveled around America, traveled around the world, finally came home back into the business in 2011. Yeah, I'm very much in the world of boutique, hotels, accommodations.
SPEAKER_01It's amazing. Do you want to talk a little bit about just common mistakes, or maybe even a better place to start? Because I see you posting about this a lot lately is this changeover that Airbnb just did. It used to be the split fee to guests and hosts, and they bumped it up 15 to 15 and a half. So Airbnb's cut. If you own Airbnb stock, it's a good day for you. But I've seen you prognosticate, let's say, no one clearly knows the future, but you know, maybe that becomes 16, maybe that becomes 18, maybe that's 20%. Why don't we begin the story and conversation just by throwing it over to you to talk about why is direct booking matter? Why can't we just rely on OTAs? And of course, in the hotel world, it's not necessarily always Airbnb, although they're making plays, but booking.com, Expedia, et cetera. So just give us your stump speech. And again, where do you see the puck moving? Why do people need to pay attention to this today?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So for those who have been like putting their head under a rock, Airbnb recently, as of the end of October 2025, they're trying to move to a simplified pricing structure. Brian Chesky said this on stage that when Airbnb was created all these years ago, they had to get creative with their commission structure. And so they had many different levels. The one that's most people are aware of is where the guest would pay a service charge between whatever percentage that would be, and then the host would pay 3%. And then what happened over the journey of Airbnb? They added in a simplified pricing structure where for it was 14%. So basically 14% straight up fee. The guest doesn't pay anything, the host pays that 14%. And that's the two things that have been in place for time. Obviously, Airbnb announced this year they're going to slowly move any host or property manager who is connected to a third-party solution, otherwise known as a PMS. PMS is obviously Muse, guestie, et cetera. If you're connected via a third party, you are going to be moved to the simplified pricing structure. But that wasn't going to be 14%, wasn't even 15%. It's going to be put up to 15.5%. If you are not connected to a third party, so there's a lot of hobbyist hosts that are out there and they're not even bothered. They just put it on for the sake of putting it on. They're going to stay at 3% for the time being. But it was rumored that in December that was going to change. That is not the case. It was a typo in the PR announcement. And I hey, listen, it's my prediction that some point next year everybody's just going to get moved to the flat rate because Brian Chesky has said he just wants this to be simple because they are moving to an OTA model. Online travel agency, for those who aren't aware. The reason being is although Airbnb dominate the short-term rental market, 65% of all bookings in 2024 for a short-term rental came on Airbnb, they do not dominate the OTA space. Obviously, OTA Zen brings in the world of hotels, which is close to home. And in that world, when we come outside of America, you've got booking.com who are a huge player. You've got the Expedia group who own Verbo. And that's where they're trying to play catch-up. For every one night that is booked on Airbnb, nine nights are booked with a hotel. So they are massively moving into the hotel space. And it's showing right now, as we talk, Airbnb are piloting a hotel program in Los Angeles, in Madrid, and in New York, where hotels are baked into the map, right? It's only going to be a matter of time. If you go on the Airbnb home screen, it says homes experiences services, which we're going to 100% chat about later. But homes, I think, will get changed to stays, and stays will have a subcategory of homes and hotels. And that will come sooner rather than later. Long answer short, more competition, and they're charging more money for it for no improvement of service. And the thing to me, which was really interesting, there's a really cool chap called Jamie Lane. He is of Air DNA fame. He has got fantastic posts that he puts out on X and on LinkedIn. He just put one out last week and he was reporting on the numbers since the move of the fee. 450,000 listings in just the USA got moved from 3% to 15.5% in fees. And he said that of that, 40% of the whole listings that got moved did not amend their rates to suit. Now, every smart and savvy investor, every smart and savvy property manager has adjusted their rates accordingly to make sure that they're not getting caught out. Unfortunately, 40% of them have done nothing. And what's even more crazy, I did the maths. In this one little move from going from 15% to 15.5%, I'm not even including those that jumped from 3% to 15.5%. We talked about the shareholders, Airbnb made an extra $123 million in just that one. Good move. That's a good memo. It's a great move for them, it's a bad move for the people that get affected, the people who, you know, fill up their inventory versus you. And this is why it's so important. Now if you ask a service operator, private chef, masseuses, peer personal trainers that Airbnb are now pushing. And if you ask the experienced hosts, you know, the ones who are providing the private tours, the other on the world, they paid 20% commission fee to Airbnb, straight flat. It's my belief and my opinion, I think it's a matter of when, not if, that the host fee that it stays will move up to 20% and it'll be a flat rate. So now you've got to ask a question if that happens to you, what does that mean to your bottom line? Like they are eating out of your profits. And the big example that I give is Amazon. You mentioned about the books. This is one of the books that I brought out. It's called the Book Direct Playbook. I brought this out in 2022. Okay. It had to go on Amazon. I did not have any other choice. I do not have a printing press behind me. I've got a three-year-old bedroom, right? So I had to put this on uh on Amazon, right? For every book that I sell, for every dollar that I generate on Amazon, Amazon takes 66 cents. That's 66% commission off every book sale. And when I sell a book, I don't get a name, I don't get a last name, I don't get an email, I don't get a phone number, I get nothing. I just get money put into my bank every three months. And that is alarming to me because Amazon dictates and dominate the book industry. They do what they want, and because there's nothing that anybody can do. Instantly set off the bullshit alarm in my head. Whoa, hang on a second. If we don't do anything about it right now, if we literally sit on our hands and just let them keep doing what they're doing, what is to stop them from going 20%? What is to then stop them going, hey, 30%, 40%? Listen, we're providing 100% of your revenue. We think this is a 50-50 relationship. There's nothing. What's even more worrying is the lack of control that they are giving you. So right now in America, not a lot of people know this, they are testing temporary phone numbers. One of the big things that we get right now, and I've been talking about this for years, is that we are lucky to get the phone number because we don't get the email address when I guess books, but we get the phone number. They are taking that away, right? So it's only a matter of time before they take away the phone number, they take away the email, all you will literally have is a first name, last name, unless we start to do something about it now, which is why I come on podcasts, I do webinars, I travel around the world speaking. I show up every single day on our Instagram, we do the audits that you spoke about just then and try and educate. Because my mission and my goal is to help everybody get to 65% direct bookings. And the good news for those that are pivoting into this hotel model, this corporate model instead of dealing with multifamilies and short-term rentals is that it's so easy. It is so easy with hotels. So much easier than a short-term rental. And we'll we'll dig into why.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's such a great point. You pretty much just gave a masterclass on why you don't need to depend on an OTA, especially in this day and age, as they're pretty much gaining more control over the guest avatar and they're giving away less data from that guest. Something like a temporary phone number seems scary because there's no way to retarget these guests. There's no way to encourage rebooking. So I think now more than ever, it's very important to get guest preferences, emails, phone numbers, contact information so you can retarget and remarket these guests that basically enjoyed your stay the first time and come back and stay at your place. And here's the crazy thing, right?
SPEAKER_00Here's the crazy thing. I over the last 10 years, I've been very fortunate to be in the same room as Airbnb Booking.com Expedia. And Booking.com and Expedia are very aware of the fact that their job is to send you the guest the first time. They are fully aware, as soon as the guest walks into your hotel, all right, and as long as you give them an amazing experience, if they were to come back a year later, you should have done everything in your power to get in front of that guest to get their real data so that you can remark it to them. Airbnb don't think like that. I think they they may change. Hopefully they'll change, but Expedia are fully aware of it of that fact. But Expedia and Booking.com are banking on the fact that you haven't got a clue what you're doing. I heard this from them and it literally gave me fuel in my belly, fire in my belly to educate. And it literally is just an education play. Um, and again, for hotels, it is so much easier than it is for short-term rentals, which is why I'm excited for what you guys are doing and yeah, looking forward to digging in.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I want so I want to kind of piggyback right off of that. What for a new hotel owner, what would you recommend they do? How would you recommend their they shape their direct booking platform so they can maintain some of these guest pinpoints and retarget guests or initially target guests?
SPEAKER_00Okay, so the first thing you have to do is your name, right? You have to make sure that your hotel name is Googleable and Instagrammable, right? And I'll give you a prime example of how not to do this is our business. We called our business the granary, right? There are five different ways to spell on Google the Granary. And every single time people got it wrong. You want to make sure that your name is easy to remember, that nobody else has got that name, right? And you've got to make sure that it's easy to type in. Because again, with a hotel, what you want to happen is that when your guest goes home, all right, and when they go back to their school runs or they're at work or wherever, and they and somebody reaches over and goes, Hey, Adam, where did you stay? They go, Oh, I stayed at this amazing place. It's called Yada in here. The thing that you don't want them to do is go, I just stayed in an Airbnb in Arizona. You literally do not want them to do that. So again, for a hotel, super simple because what's going to happen, as soon as they mention the brand name, they will go and type it into Google or who knows in 2026, they'll go and type it into their AI of choice, right? But the main thing is they're going to Google it, right? And when they do, if you've got your ducks in order, if you've got a deep half decent website, then your website will come at the top of the search results. They'll click onto the website, go through the flow. The reason why it works is that 93% of all purchases are done on the back of social proof, right? It's why reviews are so important. But also offline social proof is so key. So when Joe Bloggs sat in the office, has heard somebody say, Oh, I went here and I enjoyed it, people buy from people that they are in their world, right? And if they go, Oh, Adam enjoyed it, I'm gonna enjoy it. So you'll go check it out. And they've already done half the work. So as long as you've got your website set up, as long as you've got your booking system set up correctly, then you know you will get those bookings time and time again. That's like the most one-on-one business. Give yourself a name that is Googleable and Instagrammable. Instagram is an interesting one because again, you gotta think of when is the time that you mostly post online, right? The time that you post online is when you're on vacation because you are showing off to your friends back home or are stuck in work, right? And where do they post it? They're posting it on their Instagram, depends on your target audience. That, you know, it's gonna be Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, right? And you just want to make sure that you are set up, and again, in your hotel rooms, it needs to have everything in place to show them. Listen, you're gonna be posting anyway, tag us in, right? Here's our Instagram handle, tag us in, and then what we used to love to do at our family business is we identified that there were two key points in our rooms. One key touch point was the back of the door where they enter in and out, and the other one was in the bathroom, right? And so what we did is we put some really nice, I'm gonna make it sound crap, but it was really nice laminated pieces of paper that basically said, Hey, we hope you have an amazing stay. If you take pictures, post them online, tag in at Granary. For everyone that does, we enter you into a monthly prize draw, we pick a winner at the end of the month, and then you will win a bottle of wine or chocolates or whatever, right? Something synonymous with your local area. And if anybody here is listening to this who is based out of the United Kingdom or has ever been to the United Kingdom and knows Scarborough, you'll know something called stick of rock. It may mean nothing to most people, but stick of rock is basically candy, sugar candy. And it's synonymous with our area. We would give them away. Like to us, the cost was like less than 50 bucks. But by people posting online and tagging in us, again, the same principle applies, is that every single one of your guests is an influencer. We assume that to be an influencer, you've got to have a million followers, 100,000 followers. Every single one of your guests is an influencer. And by them posting online and tagging you in, people will go, follow the tag, go to your Instagram, click on your link, go to your website and go, oh, they've stayed there. I like that person. I can see myself going there. And again, it's just business one-on-one. It's super, super simple. But we make really confusing with like optimization skills and revenue management hacks, yada, yada, yada. So those are the most key things.
SPEAKER_01That's so smart. And uh by the way, we were just at the Freedom Factory up in Beverly, Massachusetts, just north of Boston with Mike Shogren and the crew. It's interesting. Social media marketing kind of came up, and we had some people in the room with 500,000 plus follows. But somebody asked one of the coaches what was the play with kind of like content creators and influencers. And this conversation came up with Joe Weigel, who basically said he gets approached all the time. He's got a very cool hotel, missing hotel down in Texas. Lots of people want to stay there. He has paid people with 2.5 million, you know, followers, but they didn't see a ton of conversions. And meanwhile, it was the person with 8,000 followers, but all they do is this like hyper vertical, travel-friendly. That's the exact avatar. Uh, and he saw tremendous amounts of conversion. So I think that's really smart. And in this age of kind of user-generated content, it seems like the algorithm's pretty thirsty for that. It's organic, etc. I guess I wanted to ask the question. And by the way, Mike Shogun says hi. He says, You guys go way back. He says, You're an absolute marketing genius. Yeah. But I I wanted to pick your brain on AEO, right? I'm out here in the Bay Area. SEO kind of feels like it was 1999 or something. Everyone's trying to figure out, okay, if all of the user behavior is moving away from Google and now into ChatGPT and name your LLM of choice, how does one start to show up in AI-based searches? And what do you think hoteliers or short-term rental operators need to be paying attention to here?
SPEAKER_00Wow. This could be a whole podcast in itself. But in in short, and I'll keep this as short as possible. So SEO, everybody knows, is search engine optimization. It is the age old. If you can get linked on websites that have got a very high domain authority, aka big websites that have that are looked favorably upon Google and Bing, then as long as you create quality, up-to-date content on your website, then you've got more chance of being seen when somebody types in a specific keyword in your area on Google. This is now changing, of course, with AEO or GEO, which is basically genitive engine optimization or AEO, which is with simple terms. It's if someone goes on to ChatGPT, if someone goes on to Gemini, if someone goes on to Groc and they type in a specific phrase and you want to come up. Now, this is being recorded November 2025. I guarantee by January 2025, this is out with date. But at the present moment in time, if you want to be ranked highly on these platforms, on these LLMs, all that you have to do is be mentioned favorably in as many places as possible. One of the most common sources that Chat GPT gets us information from is Reddit forums, which is bananas, but hey-ho, that's what it is. I didn't plan this, right? Over the last 10 years, I didn't plan for the world of AI to absolutely take over our conversations in the in 2025 and 2026. But over the last 10 years, Booseley has been featured on over a hundred different podcasts. It has been listed on marketplaces all over the industry, and we've got tons and tons of blog posts where we have been mentioned favorably. So now, because of that, if you go to Chat GPT and if you go to Grok, Gemini, and go into private mode. So don't go into like your own personal mode. Go into private mode and type in top website builder for the world of short term rentals or who's the go to diabooking experts. We come up. And I know this because one in every 10 calls that are booked on our website mentions AI as how they discovered Boosley.
SPEAKER_01If you're getting value from this, follow the show and share it with one. Person who's ready to move beyond short-term rentals.
SPEAKER_02And if you want to learn more about the boutique hotel secrets community, the link is in the show notes.
SPEAKER_00Now, I would say, I wouldn't recommend, but you could do. There's some people that say, listen, all you got to do, go onto Reddit forums, pay somebody from the Philippines or Pakistan or whatever, and just post on a shit ton of forums on Reddit about you and your property, your hotel, and you'll come up. And you may find for one week that you will come up top. But unfortunately, it's only gonna come up a certain amount of time because it happens all the time. Marketers spoil things, right? And they will spoil this for those people and they'll change the rules. And it's happening at such a fast rate. I'll give a tool that I use a lot and I find it's fantastic to keep atop of this. It's called Peak AI. P-E-E-C dot AI. It's a freemium service. So for the first month is free. After it, it costs about $90. But you can basically see under specific search terms where you rank on the different LLMs. And I used it for a month. I cancelled the free trial because I got everything that I needed out of it. But that is the best one to show how you are showing up visibly. But what I will say is if you've got a crap website that's built on your PMS of choice and it hasn't got any WordPressisms in it at all, because you are you're not being seen. I can tell you right now, you don't need to, you can come pay me $100, and I'll tell you you've you know because you need to have that website. So yeah, that's in a very short word, A E O, G E O, and all that lovely stuff.
SPEAKER_02Obviously, you're pushing hard for direct bookings and you have a really good product in Boostly. And the biggest thing I think that I'm thinking about right now is like KPIs or measurements. How do you measure the success? What metrics do you look at to say, okay, I'm getting great returns out of my direct booking website? Or like you said, my direct booking website is crap and I need to hire a professional or hire Boostly to take over the reins for me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So the so my goal is to help everybody get to 65% direct bookings, right? First things first. A big misconception of what I talk about, and there are people online that go, oh, he doesn't know what he's talking about. He talks about direct bookings. No, it is as dangerous going 100% direct bookings as it is being 100% OTA, right? For the simple reason being is that Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia spend millions, if not billions, for brand awareness sponsored ads to making sure that when your potential guests are running a search online, they come up, right? You can't compete with that. Doesn't matter how good at GEO, SEO, or paid ads that you do, they will literally kick you in the balls, right? Or the lady balls, right? And they will just walk away because they will win at that. But what you have to do, and this is a really cool stat, 65% of all direct bookings start off an OTA search. Okay, so let's just say seven out of your 10 last diet bookings, they've started their search on Airbnb, booking.com or verbo, right? So you have to make sure that you are ready to capitalize and take advantage of that. My sort of main goal, 65% diet booking. So 65% direct, 35% other. And we say Airbnb, we say booking.com, we say XPD. This could quite easily be another podcast episode. I think next year is the rise of the niche OTA, the niche online travel agency, right? There are a ton out there, Wimstay being one. You've got niche listing sites now for every single avatar, right? And it's only going to get bigger. So that's something else. But anyway, 65% direct, 35% online travel agency. A good KPI for you to be tracking for your website. An average industry website converts at 0.4%. So that means for every thousand hits on your website, it has just four people that will convert. With Boostly websites, we convert at 2.5%, which is five times better than the industry average. So that's a good one for us. And this is a good one for you to be looking at. But yeah, I think the main KPI and the thing that I'd be looking at is that dire bookings, especially for hotels. If again, it's so much easier for hotels and it's short-term rentals, but if you can use that barometer 65%, 65% means that if, let's just say if something goes wrong on booking.com, let's just say your Airbnb listing gets suspended, it's fine because it's just one little segment of your income coming in. Fortunately, I chat to too many people that are over 90% reliant on Airbnb. And we talk about Mike Shogram when I first met him in person, 2022. I was at Nashville. I spoke at one of their STI Wealth events way back when I got on stage in front of a thousand people and I got the whole room to stand up. And I said, Stay standing if over 90% of your income comes from Airbnb. A lot of the room stood standing. And this got clipped and it went a tiny little bit viral, but I said, Congratulations, you don't have a business, you've got a job, and Brian Chesky is your boss, right? And that was literally the case. And I stand by that. And unfortunately, if you've got over 90% of your bookings coming from one channel, let's say Airbnb, and if they suspend your list and if they cancel your account, you're screwed. And we get a lot of people come to us who are in that position. I never want to have that conversation again. So that's the KPI, that's the barometer, that's where you should be aiming for. Thankfully, so many people who come over to Boostly work towards that are at 65% to 80%, which is epic.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it's interesting that you mentioned be careful not to be 100% direct, because this actually I follow different accounts online as you do. And I'm thinking immediately of the Bolt Tree farmhouse in Tennessee, gorgeous property. Guy used to be a rock star, soaring views, domes, all the things. And they're quite proud to say we're 100% direct. We're not, you can't find us on Airbnb. So this brings me to this idea of again, pick pick your poison. But if you make that bet and you're off OTAs and you're really trying to go after this, I'd be curious to learn from you what percentage of your marketing budget. Let's imagine that a boutique hotel wants to spend money on marketing. Where do those dollars go? Because again, we're recording this in November. Kika and I are probably 30 days away from owning our first boutique hotel. We conceptually know, I don't know. Do we need $2,000, $5,000, $10,000? Obviously, you can ratchet this up, but let's imagine we've got a marketing budget and we're talking to Mark or we're talking to the Bolt Tree farmhouse gang. Like clearly there are places that you spend money. So where and how should a new boutique hotel operate?
SPEAKER_00Here's the cool thing for you guys. As you're getting going, I would spend zero on marketing. Absolutely zero. Because you can start off with simple word of mouth, and I talk about it in the book. There's a whole chapter, it's called the do you know anyone, where you just literally rely on this, your phone, your contacts, and you're just gonna go out and call and speak to people who know, love, and trust you, who will want your boutique hotel to be a success. Now, I'm not gonna ask them to be a customer. What I'm gonna do, and the exact script is in the book, is basically saying, Hey, Micah, do you know anyone who is looking for a place to stay? Do you know anyone who would love to stay at a boutique hotel? Do you know anyone who's looking to come from out of town? Do you know anyone who needs a place to stay? By asking that question, you're not asking my friends, my family, my coworkers, my peers to give me money. I'm asking, hey, simply, do you know anybody? If you do, please set up a group chat, send them my details. If they make a booking and they mention you as the reason why they booked, I'll send you X in return. That X could be a maximum spend of $50, $100. And because you know them, you know what they like. Right? Let's say they love spice room. Bottle of spice rum, I'll send you a bottle of spice room. Let's say they like soccer, like I do. Say, oh, I'll send you a soccer J or whatever, right? And by doing that, they will love to help you. Why? Because they know you, right? They want to help you succeed. And they'll be more than happy to spread the word. The reason why people don't do it is because they're scared. And it's gonna take a hell of a lot of time to send that first message. But once you've sent that first message, you'll send that second message a minute later, right? And again, you just put out a hundred people, write them down, go in your phone book and just go one by one. And that's it. Doesn't cost any money, just costs you time. Second thing that what you're gonna do, this can cost. Okay, let's tier it. The first one was free. This one, let's just say $50 to $100 a month. It's Google Ads, right? Now with Google Ads, and again, Google is massively still used, doesn't matter what anybody says about A E O and G E O and all that nonsense, right? There's a thing called bid on brand, right? Whatever you name your boutique hotel, it should be the Wesley Hotel.
SPEAKER_01We can even use that as an example.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic. Wesley Hotel. Be careful how you spell that because I would say if that would be L E E, or you could do L-E-A.
SPEAKER_01They're using it from the guy, so John Wesley Powell is a real figure. He was the pioneer that came down the Colorado River. Lake Powell, America's second largest man-made lake. It's called Lake Powell. No one knows this dude's story. And we thought Wesley, it's old timey, it's very pioneering, southwestern. It gives the place a place. So, anyways, it is EY, but I can already see where this is going. Yeah. A million people are going to type in all the variants.
SPEAKER_00So I would never have thought EY. I was going to think E E or E A. But anyway, that's going back to the first thing we talked about. But Google Ads, right? If you were to go on Google Ads and if you were to type in hotels in insert the town or city or area where you're at, you will go through that budget like that. Because again, booking.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor, Yada, Yada, Airbnb will be dominating that and have a load of money or more resources. But if you were to bid on your brand name, so the John Wesley Hotel in Yada, that's a very specific keyword phrase that costs very little money in Google Ads, right? Now, the reason why you would want to do that is that again, with hotels, I'm gonna come. Fantastic experience, go back to my friends. I'm sat in the office. Susan reaches over to me and says, Hey Matt, where did you go that weekend? Your pictures looked amazing on social media. Oh, I went to the John Wesley in here, right? And instantly she's gonna go type it in. She types that in, and if you're not bidding on your brand name, there's a there's a specific thing that you do on the OTAs is you sign the T's and C's. Nobody reads the T's and C's ever. But in the T's and C's for booking.com, XBeduan and Airbnb, they have a little section where they say that they are well in their right to bid on your brand name. Even if you trademark it, even if they trademark it, they are you they are you are signing over to say, I can use your name in my advertising. Because normally, if you trademark a name and if I tried to use it, you'll get a letter from the legal, but the T's and C's that nobody reads, you sign it away. There's nothing we can do about that, but we can fight fire with fire and bid on brand name. And because it is such a very specific keyword, you can just put a couple of extra pennies to it and you will come above booking.com, above expedia, above trip advisor, above everyone. And we all know that we are so lazy, we will click the first thing that we see, right? Susan will click on the first thing that she sees. So I'd much rather she click on our website than click on booking.com, Airbnb, TripAdvisor, etc. So that's really cheap. The other thing is like that next level up, which is the cost, right? I would be 100% go and put Stay in every single one of your rooms. It's an investment, but it's an investment that will pay back in a month, six months, 12 months. And if you don't know what Stafi is, I'm not gonna bore you. Just go to Stafi.com. It's a super effective service that gets you the data because the way that it works is that everybody who wants Wi-Fi has to give up their data to get it. Just like going into Starbucks, just like going to airport lounges, whatever. If you want the Wi-Fi, you've got to give up your data to get it. Again, it's amazing. I wish I bought that company, but I forgot there first. Great guy, great company. So that's a tiered, right? And then the final one is influencers, right? I am a massive fan of working with influencers in the shoulder season. I was doing this in 2015. I was working with bloggers, right? There was no YouTube or TikTok superstars back in 2015. We're working with bloggers. And what I will say to this, anybody who says that influencers do not work, it simply means that they're not doing it right. Okay. And there's a whole chapter in this book on how to work with influencers the right way. I'm a massive fan of working with micro influencers because unfortunately, in 2025 and 2026, we still think if they've got two million followers, they're like amazing. But as I always say, it's not the size, it's what you do with it that counts. And at the end of the day, if you've got somebody that you can work with who's got just say a thousand followers, but every single one of those followers is nailed into your avatar. So let's just say working moms with busy lives that live like a three-hour radius of where your hotel resort is, and they all fit the niche, and the influencer is like when they put when she posts, she has a thousand interactions. That is much better than somebody who's got two million followers, and when they post, it's all different avatars. And when they post, only a hundred people into her. It is much more powerful. And there's a whole chapter on that as well. When you work with these, gone are the days, it's not 2015, they're not going to do a freebie. Gone are the days when you can do it for free. You gotta pay them because they are content creators. You've got to get into your mindset. Working with these is like working with a photographer, right? You would not expect a photographer to come and snap and take pictures and videos of your place for free. These content creators now, they've got all the gear, they've got drones, they've got fantastic footage. As long as you put a really solid contract together, a work agreement where you get all of their content, all of their footage, and you can use it on your own website, your own listing afterwards, it's an amazing, amazing experience to have. And as long as you do it right, really good. So those are the three ways. You've got the free way, the low-cost way, and the cost way. And I think the best way to explain it is there's a fantastic book called Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Gadara. I guarantee Mike will have spoken about it. That book, it talks about all the unreasonable things that he does. There you go. That's the book. Talks about all the unreasonable things that they do. And he says, How do you work it into your budget? And here's a good thing. Once you get going, he basically takes 5% off his revenue and he allocates 5% towards it. And I would say over time, just basically use that as your factor. Whatever your revenue is, put 5% towards it. Doesn't have to be a lot. There's a really big misconception with it with Derek Bookings that you have to spend tons of money on Facebook, tons of money on Google. And the reason being is the person who says it doesn't work, they just went onto Facebook. They just went on Instagram and hit that boost post button. They hit that and they complained because it brought in nothing. Because that is the lazy way. That is the thing that Facebook and Meta want you to press because you are literally whatever you put down, $50, $100, you might as well just set it on fire. Because it's never another way. These things that we talk about, and the things are in this book, there's 101 tactics. Like there's only a few of them that actually cost money. Everything else is totally free. So that's how you do it.
SPEAKER_02That's amazing. My gosh, you've touched on so many things. I'm sure we've gotten great value out of this episode. I'm sure our listeners will get great value as well. If there's anything, one piece of advice outside of the many gems you've dropped outside of the book. If there's one thing someone could do today that's got a boutique hotel that's not getting direct bookings, what would you say they should do right now? Should they come talk to Mark Simpson, get a membership with Boostly? Is there one thing they could do today that could make a significant change immediately?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, obviously come to Boostly. Come and have a chat. Boost Boostly.co.uk, B-O-O-S-T-L Y.co.uk. Book a call with us. We've got a fantastic setup and service, if I do say so myself. Like I say, we've just generated a billion dollars in revenue over this. Not us. I wish I had a billion in revenue. No, that's for our clients and for our members over the last 10 years. So it works and it has a money back guarantee if it doesn't work. But outside of that, I don't know which guru I heard say this, but it really resonated with me. And I've got it now on my little morning routine pump up playlist that I listen to every day on the YouTube. And it's it's the rule of 100, right? There's a rule that goes if you dedicate 100 hours to something, you will become the top 5% in the world at that topic. And it's my belief that everybody has to be good at sales and marketing. The problem with sales and marketing is everybody will go, oh, I am crap at sales and marketing. Well, 100 hours, right? And you think, oh, I haven't got 100 hours. 100 hours over the course of a year is 18 minutes a day. And I guarantee you've got 18 minutes a day. If you still come to me and go, Mark, I haven't got 18 minutes. I'm going to get you to open up your phone, I'm going to get you to go into settings and screen time, and I will find that 18-minute brain rot that you're just doom scrolling on TikTok or wherever, right? You put 18 minutes a day to it, you will become the 5%, the world's best in sales and marketing. And I know because that was me, right? I am not, I don't see myself as good at sales and marketing. After doing this for so long and showing up consistently, I have amazing people like Mike Shogun and other people say that I'm very good at sales and marketing. I just learn and I implement and I just do it consistently every single day, showing up for 18 minutes. And I'm still doing it 10 years later. Just do it. It literally is just go ahead and do it. No excuses. I'm not asking you to try and do three hours a day, four hours a day. That's not, I'm not going to do a whole mosey and just say you've got to work till your eyes bleed. None of that nonsense. It's just 18 minutes a day. And you will you'll get very good at sales and marketing. Because at the end of the day, business 101. If nobody can see you, nobody can buy from you. And then that's what literally business is all about.
SPEAKER_01That's amazing. I did in Hong Kong, I was lucky enough to get on stage and do stand-up comedy. Actually, one of my best friends grew up in Manchester, and that was some of the advice that we got from some professionals that rolled through once a month. It's a band of amateurs, we weren't like pro-level or anything, but we had a ton of fun. And one of the questions is like, How many times have you gotten up? And come see me after you've been on stage a hundred times. If you do this once or twice and you're already trying to tweak it or compare yourself to pros, you just you can't. You don't have enough hours on stage or hours in the sales and marketing gym, quote unquote, to compare yourself accurately. So I love that advice. And maybe to close this out, again, you I love kind of pattern recognition, pattern making. So you've worked with thousands of operators at this point. So what if you had to click your finger on it? What's the one thing that you think separates people that successfully grow their audience and break away from the OTAs, from those that kind of understand it, try and do it, but then ultimately fail?
SPEAKER_00It truly boils down to no excuses, just get it done. Procrastination is the killer of all good ideas. And over the years, I've had so many people who either sign up or speak to me and send me a message, and they're like, yeah, absolutely. And then a year later, they'll go, Oh, this boostly never worked. This boostly's crap. And I'm like, all right, show me what you've done. And we've even now, thanks to Go High Level, uh, we've we've even got our own CRM at Boostly. And I've got an agency CRM where I can see every single person and client's sub account. And when somebody comes to me and goes, Mark, it's not working, oh, the website's not going buckens, I open up the sub account on their Go High level and I just pull up an email, screenshot, not one email sent, not one social media post. You've not done any of the training. And it simply is, I can see it. Those who show up, those who learn, and most importantly, implement are always the ones that succeed from the ones that just sign up and they just hope that there's going to be like a like a magical fairy that just appears and waves a magic wand, and then all of a sudden you've got 70% direct bookings. I see Mike as like Mike Shogun as like a prime example. I I feel like he he could have done any single vertical, he could have done anything. He fell into the world of short-term rentals for whatever reason, but he just has got this mindset and this work ethic and just getting shit done that I just feel like is contagious. And when you get in and amongst his world, and obviously YouTube can speak to that, is not only affecting like E and Mike and other people that are in his organization, it trickles down. And if you can just get yourself around people like that, you will just be better. Because there are loads of coaching groups, there are loads of masterminds, some are better than others, but the ones that like stand the test of time, and I always say the cream always rises to the top. And doesn't matter what happens with AI and Geo and all this nonsense that's coming down the line, doesn't matter what happens with tariffs and politics and all that shite. At the end of the day, the people that you surround yourself with will impact on how you perform. And those that do that and do the work will succeed. And that's the main trade that I've seen time and time again from people.
SPEAKER_01I love it. Take action, folks. You heard it here first. And again, this has been, as Micah had said earlier, a masterclass in in sales marketing, thinking about direct bookings, breaking away from the OTAs. So he is Mark Simpson. Again, you can check him out, boostly.uk. You can spell that wrong, in fact. And I'm sure this man is bidding on his own keywords. So I've learned a ton, man. So thank you so much for again just being an advocate out there in the space. I see you everywhere. So again, as a small band, I don't even know how big your organization is, but you guys have an outsized presence. And again, that's not by accident, that's not a mistake. That's through intentional effort. So again, thank you for agreeing to chat with us. Thank you for what you're doing for the industry. And yeah, I can't wait to see where all this goes and moving forward. But a real pleasure to have you on. And it sounds like you're coming over to the World Cup next year. Any predictions there? Maybe we can wrap off. Is Team USA gonna dominate to Team England? Is that what I've heard? I've heard that.
SPEAKER_00But team team USA will be going out in the groups. Where's my predictions? I think England are looking all right. I think you can't ever look Spain past Spain. Spain are looking good, France are looking good. But then you never know. One of these it won't be Brazil, Brazil is shocking even with Angelois. It would be awesome to see Argentina do something, obviously with the Messi factor, but I honestly think a European country will be taking it home. But I'll be there at the final at life at New Jersey. So I'm looking forward to coming over, and we're gonna spend the whole summer in America. So uh looking forward to checking it out and coming up to see all the places and hopefully I'll come over to uh to you guys and check out the hotel.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say if you're out in the Bay Area, I'm just 30 minutes east of San Francisco, so please feel free to ring me. And then again, if you get down to the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Zion, if you're gonna do that grand circle loop, Page, Arizona is where we're at. And again, we're targeting that April, May time frame to be up and running. So again, fingers crossed on our side, but we just feel like it's important to document our journey going from zero to one. Again, a couple guys that were pretty successful with normal jobs, grew kind of some side income, side hustle on Airbnb, now jumping into the hotel space. We're having a ton of fun. And again, talking to experts like you, I think gives me confidence that we can do this. Thanks again for your time and expertise and everything you do. And that's the pod. All right, that's it for today on the official Book Geek Hotel Secrets podcast.
SPEAKER_02If this helps, be sure to follow or subscribe and send it to someone who needs that bigger push. And if you want the community or the resource and playbooks behind what we're learning, the link is in the channel. Quick note we're BHS community members sharing our own experience. And if you have questions or topics you want us to cover, reach out and let us know. We're building this show for operators just like you. Catch you on the next one.