How to Fill Your Calendar with Direct Bookings

Get Paid For Your Pad
Published: August 29, 2022
Growth & Marketing

Summary

This article discusses strategies for driving direct bookings to your STR business, emphasizing the importance of a healthy mix of direct and OTA bookings. It also covers revenue management routines and the CEO's role in scaling a business. Hosts should focus on building a strong brand presence and implementing effective revenue management practices.

Key Insights

  • CEOs of STR businesses waste 30 to 50 percent of their time on low-value activities, which becomes more dangerous as businesses grow.
  • STR revenue management routines involve daily and weekly pricing workflows, reviewing bookings as pricing signals, and analyzing booking windows and pacing.
  • It's dangerous to have all your STR hosting business on a site you don’t own.

Action Items

  • Review every booking to reveal pricing and demand signals.
    Effort: low
    Impact: medium
  • Find out your direct booking marketing score for FREE.
    Effort: low
    Impact: medium
  • Rethink priorities and recognize patterns inside your business to identify the true bottlenecks that require CEO-level attention.
    Effort: medium
    Impact: high

Tools & Resources

  • Boostly Podcast: Mark Simpson is the founder of Boostly and the host of The Boostly Podcast.
  • Direct Booking Marketing Score: Resources Find Out Your Direct Booking Marketing Score
  • Freewyld Foundry: Learn more about Freewyld Foundry(https://www.freewyldfoundry.com)

Common Mistakes

  • Being busy does not mean your STR business is progressing.
  • The biggest revenue mistake most STR operators make isn’t their pricing tool… but the lack of a daily and weekly pricing routine.

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