Mike Bayer
You're listening to another episode of your favorite podcast, Vacation Rental Success with Heather Bayer. Before we get started, I'm Mike Bayer, CEO of the Vacation Rental Formula Business School, Heather's son and co-founding business partner. And before we dive into this episode, helping you to build a thriving business in the ever-evolving vacation rental industry, I want to take a short minute to talk about one of the biggest challenges property management companies face, onboarding new team members quickly and efficiently.

Mike Bayer
If you're a vacation rental company struggling to get your in-person or virtual new hires up to speed quickly, with a solid understanding of our industry, then I'd like to introduce you to a tool that will take away much of your onboarding headaches; THRIVE Essentials. You've heard us talk about the THRIVE Training System that we launched earlier in 2024 to support your whole team. Well, based on feedback from our THRIVE Training System clients and in discussion with the industry's top talent agency, Better Talent, we've created a stand-alone starter course to get your new hires onboarded quicker than ever.

Mike Bayer
THRIVE Essentials opens the gateway for your new hires to step into your team with a clear understanding of the business. This comprehensive course equips new employees with everything they need to excel, from exploring the industry's rich history and navigating its dynamic present, to decoding essential jargon and acronyms. And it doesn't stop there. THRIVE Essentials goes beyond the basics, instilling key standards, best practices, and deep-rooted understanding of hospitality, empowering them to thrive as part of your team from day one.

Mike Bayer
Now, here's the exciting part. THRIVE Essentials is launching very soon, but you can secure your pre-registrations today and get 50% off before launch. This is an incredible opportunity, especially if you've been struggling to streamline your onboarding. Using this simple tool with new team members will boost their confidence while saving you valuable time so you can focus on their role development. If you're ready to level up your new employee onboarding, head over to vacationrentalformular.com today or click the link in the description of this episode on your smart device and secure your registrations today. Don't wait, this early bird offer won't last forever. Let's THRIVE together.

Mike Bayer
Are you ready to start today's episode? Let's hand it over to your host, Heather Bayer.

Heather Bayer
Jenn Boyles is the founder, the architect of the Direct Booking Success Summit, which will take place on 8th-10th October of this year. Jenn is joining me today to talk about all things direct booking and to dispel a few myths and to help you discover what could work for you in the direct booking market.

Heather Bayer
This is the Vacation Rental Success Podcast, keeping you up-to-date with news, views, information, and resources on this rapidly changing short-term rental business. I'm your host, Heather Bayer, and with 25 years of experience in this industry, I'm making sure you know what's hot, what's not, what's new, and what will help make your business a success.

Heather Bayer
Well, hello and welcome to the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. For a moment, I actually forgot what it was. Nearly said something entirely different. But anyway, welcome. Glad to have you with us as ever. I'm really delighted to be back here once again. And I'm getting ready to head down south, not for the whole winter, but we're just heading off to Tennessee at the weekend to take the RV down, make sure it's out of the snow so that when we do go down for our three months of winter in January, we don't have to dig it out from the snow to get it out of the driveway, which actually would never happen.

Heather Bayer
Anyway, so in a couple of days time. We'll be heading down to Tennessee. We're going to do it nice and slowly, take 10 days over it, spend some time in a few nice places. For anybody who's been to Dale Hollow State Park in Kentucky, we're going to spend four days there. And then we will be down in Walland, Tennessee, just right at the edge of the Smoky Mountains to spend a few days before heading back, which we will do in one 14-hour drive. So it's like 10 days down there and 14 hours back.

Heather Bayer
But anyway, that aside, I'm also gearing up for the Direct Booking Success Summit. It's an online virtual summit that Jenn Boyles has been running for the past couple of years, and every year it just gets better and better. And what she says on her site is, Learn how to stop relying on platforms like Airbnb and make more money with more control when you learn how to increase your direct bookings. And she brings the most amazing team of people, industry experts, fellow property managers, to share their wisdom and their knowledge.

Heather Bayer
So in In today's episode, I'm going to be talking to Jenn, not necessarily about the summit. We will come back to it towards the end and tell you a bit more about it. But I want to talk to Jenn about her knowledge of the direct book market. How is it these days? Airbnb is starting to promote their experience co-hosting program. I mean, how do we get people off Airbnb and into our direct booking sites? And we'll talk about misconceptions that hosts have about relying on OTAs, as well as address for those who are hesitant to invest in direct booking strategies, what those key benefits are in terms of profitability and guest relations and long term sustainability. And this is going to be a really, really interesting conversation. Without further ado, let's go on over to my interview with Jenn.

Heather Bayer
Well, I am yet again super delighted to have with me today, my friend Jenn Boyles from Vancouver. So always a delight to talk to a fellow Canadian, and a fellow Canadian who lived for a long time in England. So we have huge amounts in common. Welcome back, Jen. So lovely to have you back on the show again.

Jenn Boyles
Thank you, Heather. It is just wonderful to be here.

Heather Bayer
So what's it like in Vancouver today?

Jenn Boyles
Sunny and about 20 degrees. I'm in shorts. You can't see it, but I've got shorts on. But it sounds like you're having an even better September than we are.

Heather Bayer
We are having the most awesome September. The leaves are changing. Fall in Ontario has got to be the most spectacular event. I know it's pretty good down in the Smoky Mountains, and Vermont and all those other places, but I don't think anything beats where I am anyway, which is just outside Algonquin Park, which is one of the biggest parks in in Canada. And there are signs already up the highway from Toronto that say, do not park on the side of the road to take photos. And that's on the highway, the 4-lane highway. Do not park on the side of the road to take photos of the leaves, because people do.

Jenn Boyles
Yeah, I bet they do. And I did a road trip this summer up to Calgary, to the Rocky Mountains, and we have what you call bear jams. And it's the same thing, the same thing with the leaves. And people just stop because they see what they want to take that photo of. And they don't think of the traffic and other safety issues.

Heather Bayer
I'm with you on those bear jams. We have them in town at the moment, because our local town is absolutely crawling with bears right now. And I don't know whether it's loads of... And it's sad because it's just loads of new construction, new building coming along. And people saying, Why are all these bears in town? Well, actually, they've already always been there. It's their home, and they've just been pushed out. So it's hardly surprising. There's lots of bears around. But yes, we see them. The bear sightings are dozens a day at the moment. Yeah.

Jenn Boyles
No, I hear you because we had one in our local neighborhood, and I'm in a suburb of Vancouver. But we've got lots of green space. But he would have had to swim over the Fraser River and get over here, but they do it. Yeah.

Heather Bayer
I bet there's more yummy stuff in your area, and that's what they're looking for. Anyhow, so good to have you back. We are leading up to the... Now, is it the third Direct Booking Success Summit this year?

Jenn Boyles
It is the fourth, actually. The fourth Direct Booking Success Summit. I can't believe it. Yeah.

Heather Bayer
That is amazing because I remember the first one. I think I've been involved in each one, and I've just been blown away with the way it's grown over the years and the quality of education. And it was really interesting, Jenn, you may have seen it. There was a post by Damian Sheridan on LinkedIn where he'd asked a question about the educational value of going to conferences. And it was a pie chart, and it was a huge part of the pie. And I can't remember what the percentage was, but it was a large part of the pie that said, Could be better. And the thing is, is that over the 12 or 15 years that I've been going to conferences, it actually hasn't been getting better. At least I haven't seen much evidence of great improvement. But I have with the Direct Booking Success Summit, I've seen that quality of education increasing every time, and it is pure education. You haven't got vendors there talking about their wares, and I just think it's brilliant.

Jenn Boyles
Well, thank you so much, because even sponsors that are coming in to speak. I'm like, this is not a showcase for your product. We can do that. We can do a separate session and do a demo or something like that, that'd be great. But the idea is that we're here to help. Tell people how to get in touch with you at the end, give away a freebie or whatever you want to do to get in touch with each other. But the bulk of that presentation has to be educational.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, exactly. Because that's what people come for. They can find out about the product online or they can get in touch with you online and make that connection. But yes, I'm glad you're doing that. And once again, that's what Damian is doing with the Scale Conferences is increasing the value of education and absolutely zero selling from the stage.

Jenn Boyles
Yeah. But also, if you've gone to a conference, if you're spending all your time in the vendor hall chatting away with people. You've got to make your time to go sit in the seats and listen to the presentations and get that education. So it's up to the people attending, even if it's an online conference like the Direct Booking Success Summit, you've got to make time. You've got to show up. It's not going to happen by osmosis. You've got to show up and listen, take notes, and then action what you've learnt. That's the big key.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, that was something I said on that LinkedIn post, and I came back and I said, there's a real difference. There's a different frame around education. If you'd ask that question on the second day of the VRMA Conference, perhaps, people are going to... They're in that conference-high state where they are taking things in and they're excited and they've taken loads of notes. But then you ask them three months later, how was the educational value? And those notes are probably still sat in a book that they haven't touched from the time they got home. That's where I think online summits work really well, because people, they remain in that same frame of mind. That perhaps don't get that conference-high. They're not on that level of being super, super excited, but they don't have the down. They don't come down like you do after a conference.

Heather Bayer
So anyway, we're going to come back and talk a bit more about that later. I just wanted to talk about really what's all behind it, and I guess for those people who are listening who haven't met Jenn Boyles before, there may be a few, would you just give us a brief background on why you got into this business in the first place and what got you here?

Jenn Boyles
I don't know. I'm asking myself that question, too, some days, because it is a crazy industry. And it's interesting to hear people's stories because we all fell into it. And I know your back story, and it's the same thing. You come across something and you go, Oh, this is interesting. And then before you know it, you're knee deep in vacation rentals. But I had a property with my ex-husband, and we were looking at selling it. We didn't know what to do and Airbnb had come on the scene, and we thought, let's try it. Let's try it and see what happens. And so it was a two-bed apartment in the French Alps, and I put it on Airbnb in the morning. And in the afternoon, my phone went like crazy. I was on the ski slopes - it sounds very glamorous, it wasn't really. But I was on the ski slopes, and my phone would not stop dinging. And that got us into the hospitality side. This is cool, we like this. We started hosting guests and really enjoying it. But then when we got to our third property, we thought we knew it all. We were super hosts.

Jenn Boyles
We had drunk the Airbnb Kool-Aid. We were everything Airbnb, and we  couldn't get the bookings in, because our place was amazing, but so was the next door place and the next door place, the next door place. We were looking at chalets, and they were all similar, and there was hotels, and there was so many options for guests. And this is what got me into direct bookings. I didn't know direct bookings was a thing. I didn't know anything about the online community or others doing this. But I just started with, it was actually a previous guest who had rung up and wanted to come and book and pay me off the platform, which I was like, What? You can't do that. And he's like, Yes, we can. And so I went, Okay, let's do it. And that got me into it.

Jenn Boyles
It was like the penny drop for me. And I was like, oh, I could actually do this as a proper business, not just beholden to one platform that's supposed to bring me all these bookings. So that got me into it and further into it and further into it. And before I knew it, I started helping others with their properties as well. The fourth property we launched with 80% direct bookings. And I was just like, come on, is not everyone else is doing this. Let's help them.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, and that's fantastic. And therefore, Direct Booking Summit was born.

Jenn Boyles
Yes, that's exactly it. We were coming out of the pandemic. Things were starting to open up. And we had found our online community that there was other people out there wanting to know more about direct bookings and hosting people and the hospitality side of things. And I thought, well, I can't afford to go to these big conferences. I can't afford it with time or money. Why don't I start something that is online that will stay online so that we can all come together no matter where we are? We can hang out in our shorts or our pajamas, no one's going to mind, and just get that educational bit, but also the connection.

Heather Bayer
So there has been... Let's talk about educational and thought leadership, because there's been quite the rise in people out there claiming to be the educational experts within the industry. How do you go about finding the people to deliver educational material that you know are going to bring, how do I put it, knowledgeable value? Because we've talked about this before, the rise of the 'make your million in the first six months' type of.... If you're on video, you're going to see the air quotes, "education". To me, that's not education. That's money making on behalf of... It's like you see those people, the the gurus that are standing next to the gorgeous car in front of the gorgeous house with the gorgeous sunset in the back. And they're saying, you can do exactly the same as me. But they're not actually telling you how they did it, because they may not have done it in the best possible way. But anyway, let's put that aside because that's just one of my soapbox things. How do you go about finding the people that really know what they're talking about?

Jenn Boyles
Well, you'll have to see the lineup of the speakers, those type of people, and I know exactly what you mean, are not here because this isn't all flash. The idea is that it is people who work in this industry who either have done it themselves or have worked with others, and they want to share their expertise. How do I find them? Some people come to me. I go to some people. There are some people like yourself that have been involved in multiple years, because I know that what they deliver is just good educational content. And it's wonderful. It really is. Should I tell you a couple of the people in the presentations? Yeah, please do. Just talking about hosting and Airbnb and things like that, Uvika Wahi from Rental Scale-Up, she's coming and she's going to be talking about what you can steal from Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo's ad tactics to fuel your direct bookings. So I can't wait for that. It's like, what can we get from those big online travel agents and steal from?

Heather Bayer
And I have to say, the way she writes for Rental Scale-Up and the depths of detail she goes into, quite something. And for those of you listening, if you are not subscribed to Rental Scale-Up, do it now, because it's one of the very few, and I hesitate to call it a newsletter, it's a full-on magazine online when that comes in. And I read it beginning to end and usually head off on different tangents from the moment I've started reading it. So she's going to bring fabulous value.

Jenn Boyles
Yes. And we've got a couple of people talking about content creation, whether you're doing it yourself, or coming together with the word influencer, or I know it's an overused word, but people that have their own audiences to help. And Madi Rifkin from Mount is coming on, and she's going to be talking about how you can do it yourself or partner with other creators to try to increase your audience, increase the people that are interested in coming to stay with you.

Heather Bayer
And I know that Madie has gone gangbusters on TikTok....

Jenn Boyles
Oh, my goodness. Yes.

Heather Bayer
And it's been quite phenomenal following her rise as a young entrepreneur in this space. I mean, she's one of the new generation of people coming into this industry that's going to revolutionize it.

Jenn Boyles
Yeah. She's so smart. She is just so smart. I wish I was half as smart as her at her age, because she's brilliant. Jodi Bourne is back, of course. I love Jodi, and she's going to be talking about your digital front door. So creating that welcoming and trustworthy Book Direct website that actually converts people. So people don't just go, Oh, that's a really nice website, but they want to book and stay with you. Sarah Orchard from England. She's also somebody who I've had back multiple times. Amazing. She's going to talk about how to successfully transition from being reliant on those OTAs to direct bookings.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, because that is tough. And that's a great segue into a question I had for you about Airbnb's new experienced co-hosting program. And there's been some really good threads on LinkedIn about this. It started out with Thibault Masson on Rental Scale-up, talking about this, saying, what does this mean, particularly for property managers? But what does it mean for hosts as well? What is the point of off Airbnb when this experience co-hosting program is now offering hosts absolutely everything they need to become property managers, to take on new properties? And from Airbnb's perspective, it's a really, really smart move.

Jenn Boyles
It is.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, they're putting together this package that's going to keep people within the platform. So how can  property managers and hosts compete right now using direct bookings?

Jenn Boyles
Well, that's a big question. Way to put me on the spot here, Heather. No, but going back to that new program, we know which side of the toast, Airbnb's toast is buttered, right? Guests are the most important thing. They've always been the most important part of their business model. Kudos to them. They knew it from the beginning. But it's nice to see that they're actually taking some action on the host side, because I'm sure you're in the same Facebook groups that I'm in, and people are... They get so angry that their side is not being supported with Airbnb. Now, for me, I would think that gives you more reason to go off and do your own thing.

Jenn Boyles
But for others that may be a little bit nervous about doing it on their own, I think that this is a good thing that they're actually doing something for hosts. I do see it as It's a tactic. It is a marketing tactic to keep people there. The same thing about keeping all your communication on the platform. That's a tactic because they're trying to keep everyone in there, right? So maybe the direct booking, the Book Direct movement, this message has finally got to Airbnb, and they're going, Oh, maybe we should be doing something else here to try to keep people on the platform. So that's good. I'm glad because it sounds like that message is getting out there.

Jenn Boyles
But we can, even individual owner operators can compete. We really can because they will never have what we have as property managers, as owners. And that is our business, our local experience, our local knowledge, the boots on the ground. They'll never have that. They can talk about..., they can post gorgeous photos and whatnot and help you with maybe finding a cleaner, whatever they're going to help with, or onboarding onto the platform, but they can't help you actually run or market your business, because you know everything about it. And you know your local area, you're the expert, and they can't compete with that.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, You're exactly right. But it's just interesting. I followed on from reading Thibault's post, to one from Simon Lehman, which has garnered so many responses, so many that Simon's coming onto the podcast next week to talk about this in its entirety, particularly its impact on property managers who are out there trying to compete with hosts. Are they becoming property managers or are they co-hosts? And this is this big thing. I never have quite understood what distinction there is between a co-hosting company and a property management company. I think they're very similar in many, many ways, and it's just simply a way of... It's Airbnb's way of putting a label on it. But anyway, that's coming up.

Heather Bayer
So moving on from that, for those who are out there who are hesitant to invest in the direct booking strategies, and you're going to have a number of these people who are going to come along to this summit, because they've heard about it. They're on Airbnb, or they've only ever advertised on Airbnb, or Vrbo, or Booking.com, and they're curious. They're listening to this and they're really curious now about, what can I do to make this work for me, what would you say are the key benefits of booking direct? Because it's hard work. We can't get away from the fact that it is hard work.

Jenn Boyles
It is. It is hard work. It doesn't have to cost a lot of money. I think a lot of people jump to ads right away, and that's not what I would suggest doing. You've got to start off getting the foundations, your marketing foundations in place. But coming along to the summit not only gives you that educational piece, but it also gets you to look at all these different people that could help you. So you might find somebody there that you're like, Oh, I really feel like I could learn from them ongoing. And so you're finding people like coaches and different courses that could help you. But you make more money. The bottom line is you make more money when you don't have to pay commissions. Even if you are paying for a marketing platform or whatever, you're still going to make more money, because you create those relationships with your guests, and they're coming back and again and again. And the lifetime value of those guests is a big deal. One of the major benefits for me is the control. I don't like giving... Maybe I'm a control freak, but I don't like giving that control to somebody else to run my business.

Heather Bayer
I saw a post this morning from... And it was on one of the many Facebook groups that we're both working on most of our day because this is where we get inspiration from, right?

Jenn Boyles
Definitely.

Heather Bayer
And I saw a post by somebody who said that they'd gone the book direct route and did really well, but they still had their properties on Airbnb, which is absolutely fine and almost encouraged, just to have lots and lots of channels. But he'd had a group or he'd rented his place for a couple of nights and they'd covered up his ring camera. But neighbors had contacted him to say that there were a stream of men coming in and out of the property over the course of the evening. I mean, he surmised that it was a pop-up, as he said, pop-up brothel. And so he phones Airbnb and he tells them that he wants these people out. 48 hours before he got a response from Airbnb. I guess the booking must have been longer than that because he still wanted them out. They said, If you cancel the booking now, you will be penalized. It just makes me angry. That's just one of a gazillion stories that we hear all the time.

Heather Bayer
I know that you always hear the worst on these Facebook groups. There are a lot of happy Airbnb hosts out there. We know that as well. But these things just should not happen. And if the focus on the guest, of course, there's a focus on the guest, because without the guests, without that purchasing, there would be no Airbnb over time. And profits would go down and their investors would start to shout. So they want the guests to be happy at all times. And this is exactly what you're saying about loss of control. Because this guy said, he said, if they come via my site and not Airbnb, he said, I have people who would have got them out.

Jenn Boyles
Yes.

Heather Bayer
And there would have been no bad reviews left for me.

Jenn Boyles
I hope he did call the police, but anyway, yeah.

Heather Bayer
The neighbors would have been happy. So it's stories like that that should be out there more prominently, I think. These are the real benefits. Let's take it from the negative, put it in the positive. These are the real benefits of the direct booking because you have more control. Just coming back on the benefits and perhaps some of the drawbacks in terms of, and I did say, it takes time and it's hard work and it's a challenge. And I don't want to..., she says, already making a big thing.... I don't want to make a big thing of it. But my company, when I was still running CottageLink Rental Management, had up to 200 properties at one time. And at that point, we were 95% direct book. And in my tenure there, I think we just started putting a few properties on Airbnb in the last year that we were with them, that I was with the company. It is possible. It is possible, like you did, to go to a very high percentage of direct booking.

Jenn Boyles
It is. Nobody, unless it's Heather and I, nobody's really going to give you a pat on the back. It's whatever works for you and your business. But having those channels, diversifying where the guests are coming from, that's really important. Using them as the billboard effect, so that they know you're using the Airbnb as a search engine, finding you on there and then going, Oh, I bet you if I Google them, I might be able to find their website. I think guests are getting more savvy about this, which is great.

Jenn Boyles
It takes time on our side to be marketing as property managers and owners, but it takes time for the guests to realize that they can come to us direct. And we're all doing our bit. If we're all doing our bit with our guests and telling them about this, that means the next holiday they go to book, they'll go, Oh, yeah, let's see if I can find their website. And this is how we're starting to educate the guests through our own platforms to get them to look at Booking Direct.

Heather Bayer
So when the Book Direct movement started was a number of years ago when Amy Hinote put 7th of February or the first Wednesday in February, marked that as Booked Direct Day, the whole idea of that was guest education. Let's educate guests on this. It was one day. Do you think we've gone... Have we got beyond that yet? Because it should be a year-round process of educating guests, but it really is difficult to see anywhere that is doing this consistently and effectively in any way. Have you seen any evidence of anybody that really is out there doing constant education?

Jenn Boyles
That's a really good question. I'd love to say, yes, my clients are. But we get into our own lives and our own businesses and getting those bookings in are the most important part of it. I think every time you do a post out there, whether it's a Facebook post, Instagram, LinkedIn, and you're talking about the experience that people can have when they come to stay with you and giving out your website address rather than an Airbnb link or a Vrbo link, I think that helps just give that little bit of education and that constant reminder to people, because even if they're not looking at your property, But they're seeing your post, then you're planting a seed for them for when they go to do that next holiday vacation trip, whatever it is. And they think, Oh, yeah. Even with hotels, go to the hotel website, the hotel sector has a big, huge... They've got direct booking conferences and things like that because they're battling the same thing as we are. But go to the hotel website and see what they can do for you there rather than going through the OTAs.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, that's interesting because when I was checking out the Book Direct Success Booking... Direct Booking. Direct Booking Success Summit website earlier on, the first page came up because I put in Direct Book Summit, and it came up with Direct Book Summit, and it's the hotel one.

Jenn Boyles
Yeah. It's the hotel one.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, and that's in May next year. And I went in there, I thought, That doesn't look like Jenn's site. And then realized it was hotels. But yes, I'm just one person among millions. But I have made that switch over the last couple of years. I've gone from Expedia to booking flights direct with airlines. And I've gone from hotels.com or even Booking.com to going directly to the hotel website, because you actually do get the best deal. So I'm thinking that... And I still go to Airbnb when I'm looking for a vacation rental. But the first thing I do when I find something on Airbnb, and then I start to look for their direct book site. Because I don't want all my information going through the Airbnb messaging platform. I want to speak directly with an owner. So I think for me, that was always the first thing. Yes, put your property on Airbnb, but somehow get it out on there. Whether you have a name, just have a property name. That's the first thing. You have a property name, and that name is your website, then people will be able to find you.

Jenn Boyles
I have fought with big, huge companies about this. They have their direct booking site, and they're just putting the accommodation on there as an address or something like that. And I'm like, give every property you have a little bit of a mini brand, because people are going to go on Airbnb and then go and look you up. The minute we started implementing, this was a big company in England, the minute we implementing this, this billboard effect, direct bookings shot up.

Heather Bayer
Yes. Yeah, of course it is. Because people will... And I think more and more of them are starting to look. And I'm going to have this interesting conversation with Simon Lehman next week, because we had a conversation in Amsterdam, and I remember this. It was, oh, gosh, it must have been seven, eight, maybe nine years ago. And it was at a VRMA European Conference, really great conference right in the center of Amsterdam. It was lovely. But we had this conversation where he said, Oh, direct booking, it's just a fad. Nobody wants to do direct booking.

Heather Bayer
I think I'm probably still going to get some of that from him when I speak to him. But direct booking is still around, and I believe it is growing in steam because people are looking for something more unique and they want relationships. They want one-on-ones rather than a faceless organization.

Jenn Boyles
But it was around... You're a testament to this. It was around before the online travel agents. It's not anything new. We're just correcting the balance. Airbnb came out, and I was one of them. The day I put our little apartment on and Airbnbs are bringing me these bookings, I got caught by that bug, and I just loved it. It was such a high. It was awesome that I could do this on this little platform. But we're righting the balance, I think. I think guests need to have all the education, but they also need to have all the options. They can choose. If you're a guest and you love Airbnb, well, fine, whatever. But if you're looking at where you want to stay and you want to know the best price, how you're going to be treated, then you can look around and decide where you want to go.

Heather Bayer
And that's actually the theme of my session at the Direct Booking Success Summit, because it's on trust, and it's on how you can develop trust signals and create a sense of trust everywhere you go, just from branding and then right the way through to something that really gets me, Jenn, I've shared this before on LinkedIn, and it had zero response. You know at the bottom of a website and you see the things like, it'll say VRMA, V-R-M-A. And there might be a link to.... Oh, yes. The 100 Collection is a fabulous site run by Travis Wilburn. And he has put together this collection of some of the best property management companies across across the US. And the 100 Collection doesn't mean there's a hundred of them. It means that everything is run at 100%. So they're 100% meeting their standards. So these are really special companies. But I've seen quite a number, and I'm calling you out people. I've seen at the footer of your website, it says, Proud members of the 100 Collection. And I go and click on that link, and either it doesn't take me anywhere. It's just a dead link, which is usually what... They just put these little things at the bottom, but they call them social somethings. And there's nothing. What is the point?

Heather Bayer
So in my session, I'm going to be talking about that. If you've got this list of things at the bottom of your...., at the footer of your website, don't send people off your site. So I'm saying don't send people off your site to the 100 Collection website, although Travis would love that. But Instead, send them to a page on your website that tells them more about what your membership, what your proud membership of this is. Don't send them to the VRMA website. Send them to a page on your website that tells them why you value your membership of an industry organization. This is how trust is developed. You see, I'm now getting..... I get really passionate about this, because there's so few websites I ever see where you can click, and I do it to every website I go to. I go down to the footer because I'm nuts like that, and I'll click on these links, which aren't links. They're just dead icons. So that's me done. But that's part of what I'm talking about with trust.

Heather Bayer
If you want people to book direct, you want them to trust you. And you can't just say, Hey, trust me. Give me your money, and I'll give you this wonderful place that I have the pictures of. You've got to give them more than that. You've got to give them reasons to trust you.

Heather Bayer
I was talking to Justin Ford recently. We were saying this, that every site should have a page on safety, how we keep you safe, because Airbnb has it on their site. They have this page about how we keep you safe. Maybe that's one of Uvika's things that she's going to talk about in her session, is that go to that page and steal from it, because safety is such a big concern for people when they're renting somewhere, and it's even more of a concern when they're renting away from the big platforms. So you need to do exactly the same as the big platforms are doing and tell them how you're going to keep them safe.

Jenn Boyles
Completely agree.

Heather Bayer
So that's what I'm talking about.

Jenn Boyles
Yeah. No, it's brilliant. I completely agree. This sector has such a low barrier to entry. If you were going to go build a hotel, there's going to be a lot of hoops that you're going to have to jump through to make sure that you've got all your planning permission, the safety, the training, or start a cruise line.... But for a vacation rental, you can just rent out a room. And that seems to be okay, which it shouldn't be. I love Justin Ford, and safety is so important. And it's another reason to start with Book Direct, if you're nervous about it, because you can tell everybody about what you're doing in the safety side of things. And like you said, it builds that trust. These all work together, all your marketing. If you don't want to have the parties, if you don't want to have problem guests, direct booking can fix all of that. The regulations that have come out right now, and we're still battling it here in BC, it's in front of a judge. We've actually sued the government for basically overreach and property rights, because they're wanting to shut down all short-term rentals in BC.

Jenn Boyles
These situations wouldn't start if we were all doing our own business. If we had all our own business in mind and doing our own direct booking websites, but because we're in this big Airbnb platform and it's a low barrier to entry and anybody can rent out anything, we've gotten ourselves into this mess. Regulations have to come in, because we need help getting the bad stuff out. But having bans and that, of course, is not the answer. But I know I've gone off on a tangent, too. But it comes down to trust.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, it really does. And I did another post on LinkedIn recently. I think it was just a couple of sentences, and it ended up saying Trust. That's it. You've got to work out how you get the guests, the owners, the community to trust you, because it's not just guests, it's community as well. So I don't want to finish this, Jen, without talking a little bit more about the Direct Booking Success Summit and what people can expect. So you shared a few names. What are some of the core topics and skills that people can expect to learn?

Jenn Boyles
Well, I just need to say this, too, because we were talking about going to in-person conferences and things like that, and the time and the money. The Direct Booking Success Summit is online. It's free. It's free. This is a no-brainer. It's free. Just set some time aside and come. But our core topics are marketing and hospitality and guest experience. Those are what we're wanting to talk about at this summit. But we're going to be talking about branding. So finding out how you can create a better brand, optimizing your website, using Instagram, WhatsApp, blogging. I know a lot of people go, Oh, goodness, a blog? But it's something that can be done and it's running all the time on your website while you're sleeping and helping you with so many things with your platform. Upsells, paid social media, AI.

Heather Bayer
Oh, yes.

Jenn Boyles
It's all topics, all topics

Heather Bayer
It's funny that you mentioned... Well, not funny. Obviously, you mentioned blogging. It's content. I was searching. I can't remember what I was searching for on Google yesterday. I can't remember exactly what it was. But the first thing that came up was a post that I wrote probably seven years ago.

Jenn Boyles
That's funny.

Heather Bayer
It's like, Oh, I've totally forgotten I've written that. And it wasn't what I was looking for, I just put a couple of keywords in or a sentence, question, and up came that blog post. And I do know that algorithms are going to feed me probably something that they want to know what I want to see. And of course, I want to see something that I've written. But it just went show that that was still out there. It's still live. It's still working for me. And maybe we will need a different name than blogging.

Jenn Boyles
Yeah, it's maybe the name. It's like sustainability. You think, Oh, man, it sounds like a lot of work.

Heather Bayer
I know. And I love everything to do with sustainability, but I just can't type it fast enough, without an error.

Heather Bayer
Okay, what else do you want to share about the summit? So let's have some... Oh, the other thing is, what's something that makes your summit different from every other one is that it's not just dead material. And dead material, I mean, it's not just... You're not just presenting, just a presentation with nobody there. On the whole, you want your presenters to be there, whether it's not necessarily presenting it themselves. You'll have the presentation, but the creator, that person, that expert, is there to answer questions. I love that.

Jenn Boyles
And we're doing something different this year. We're having a platform. So we're not going to be on Facebook and websites and stuff like that, but we're going to be an all-in-one summit platform. So the presentations will be there. There are some that are prerecorded. There are going to be a few live things as well. We do a networking event, a hot seat. I've got a few surprises up my sleeve. We play Bingo, which is so much fun. Great prizes. But everything is free. And the access that you get to the speakers is amazing because they're going to be there as well and you can connect with them. So the access is great. And it's a hybrid. So some pre-recorded, some live.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. And I remember from last year that there was such engagement that made such a difference. Because even if If you're going to a conference and you're going and sitting in a big audience in front of a speaker, usually at the end, there's a lineup of people to talk to the speaker and you think, Oh, I'll catch up with them later, but you don't. So having this networking is just so invaluable. I'm really looking forward to it. And I will have all the details on the Show Notes for everybody that wants to take a look. So everything will be on the website for people to see and all the agenda?

Jenn Boyles
Yes, So October 8-10 is when the summit happens. It doesn't matter what time zone you're in or anything like that. Everything, if the live events, if you don't hit them live, you'll be able to catch up afterwards. The pre-recorded stuff, you get time to watch those, but you have to make time in your calendar to come and take part, because we don't want you to miss anything. So 8-10th, head to the website. There's a waitlist there right now, but very soon, the website will open up for registration. So you have to come and get your free ticket so we can send you the details of the platform and the summit.

Heather Bayer
So what happens if somebody is not able to attend on those days?

Jenn Boyles
Everything is recorded. Absolutely everything. And we have... So everything's free, but there is a paid upgrade called the All-Access Pass. And If you're like, Oh, my goodness, this sounds so amazing, but I just can't do it. That is something to buy because it has all the replays, but also bonuses from speakers and sponsors. And yeah, we're putting it together right now. It is amazing what everyone is contributing to this All-Access Pass.

Heather Bayer
I know. And that's always been a fun part for me is figuring out what I'm going to add into this All-Access Pass. And I've known on that WhatsApp group that you created that the speakers are out there talking to one another saying, So what's your bonus? And I think everybody's trying to outdo each other, which makes it even more valuable for those who decide that they want to go that route. I'll have all the information on how you can go check out and get your free ticket, and hopefully I'll see you there. And Jenn, I will see you there on that day, too, I'm sure.

Jenn Boyles
Yeah, we'll see you online. Thank you, Heather, so much.

Heather Bayer
It's always a pleasure, Jen. We will get together. I know, hopefully we will get together again before the next CanStays Rental Alliance Conference, which is sometime next spring. So that will hopefully be a time that we will get together face-to-face and have coffee, or supper, or something equally as lovely.

Jenn Boyles
Yes. Thank you, Heather.

Heather Bayer
Thank you so much, Jen. Always an absolute pleasure to chat with her. We were just talking afterwards about conferences in 2025 and where we might meet up, thinking about the Short Stay Summit in London, which is sometime in April. Amazing that here we are, just mid-September, and already talking plans for 2025. Scary, really, how time is flying.

Heather Bayer
Anyway, all the information on the Direct Booking Success Summit will be in the Show Notes. And yeah, just please sign up for your free ticket. But think about it. I've always bought the All-Access Pass to these types of events, because you get all those terrific extra bonuses. And these are not fluff. It's not just some little thing that the presenter has thrown together at the last minute. Usually, you're going to get something pretty valuable. For me this year, it will be a mini course on how to create an About Us Page. And I'm really excited about that, because it really feeds into the whole thing about trust. And if you're going to really go all in on trust, and making your site trustworthy, then you do need an About Us Page. So I talk about how that can come together.

Heather Bayer
So that's it for this week. Really enjoyed being with you. I've prerecorded already for next week when I will be down somewhere between Tennessee and Kentucky, I think, when next week's episode is published. But that's all in the can right now. Until then and until the weeks to follow, do enjoy your listening, and I'll be with you again very soon.

Heather Bayer
It's been a pleasure as ever being with you. If there's anything you'd like to comment on, then join the conversation on the Show Notes for the episode at vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you, and I look forward to being with you again next week.