How to Fill Your Calendar with Direct Bookings (Ep502)

By Jasper Ribbers

August 29, 2022

Online Travel Agencies (OTA) spend millions in marketing and advertising to drive online searches to their websites.

A great thing for STR hosts. Or is it?

It’s dangerous to have all your STR hosting business on a site you don’t own.

But it can be just as risky to go 100% in direct bookings.

So how can you be sure you have a healthy mix of OTA and direct bookings? And how can you drive more direct bookings to expand your brand?

Mark Simpson is the founder of Boostly and the host of The Boostly Podcast. As one of the top consultants in the STR industry, Mark has worked with thousands of hosts to help them increase their direct bookings and build better websites and marketing campaigns.

On this episode of Get Paid for Your Pad, Mark joins me to walk us through how to diversify your bookings to maximize your income.

He’ll walk us through the 3 main strategies you can use to drive your guests to book with you directly, plus ways to use the personalization options on Airbnb to boost your brand and your direct booking book of business.

Listen in to learn how to make the visibility of the OTA booking sites work for you instead of against you and why it’s vital to build your STR business on ‘your own land.’

Mark shares how you can find out your direct booking marketing score for FREE, plus an opportunity for one of our listeners to win a personalized marketing consultation!

Topics Covered

Why you need a healthy mix of direct and OTA bookings
How to make the visibility of the OTA booking sites work for you
The biggest mistakes hosts make when they start with direct bookings
How to use your Airbnb listing to engage bookings on your brand’s booking website
The one question to ask your former guests to land more bookings
FREE ways to use social marketing in your niche for more visibility
When to use OTA and when to use direct bookings in your STR hosting journey
How to find out your direct booking score