Direct Bookings in Short-Term Rentals: From 10% to 80% with Suzy Turnbull

Summary and Highlights

🌱 Meet Suzy Turnbull

Suzy Turnbull is the author of 5-Star Hosting Made Simple, a practical guidebook for independent short-term rental hosts with one to four properties. Her background is firmly rooted in marketing — she holds a Master’s in Digital Marketing from the IDM in London and has spent the last few years expanding her expertise into AI for marketing, with a focus on the practical use of generative AI tools for small business owners.

Before becoming an author and consultant, Suzy spent seven years running a highly successful five-star short-term rental in Panama, Central America. She started with no prior industry experience, built the business from the ground up, and eventually moved it from hobby hosting into a full-fledged professional operation. Today, she combines that real-world hosting experience with her marketing expertise to help independent hosts simplify operations, build trust, and create standout guest experiences.

Before our conversation, Gil and Suzy had met briefly, and it was clear almost immediately that she had packaged years of hard-won lessons into something genuinely useful for the industry. This episode is an attempt to unpack some of those lessons — especially the ones that helped her grow direct bookings from barely anything to 80% of total reservations.

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💡 Why Direct Bookings in Short-Term Rentals Demand a Marketing Mindset

One of the first things Suzy emphasized is that marketing isn’t a separate activity you bolt on once your site is live. It’s the foundation of the whole operation. And most hosts, she noted, shy away from it — not because they don’t care, but because it feels overwhelming.

“They find it painful to think about how to do this,” Suzy told Gil. “Most people don’t know how to do that.”

Her message throughout the conversation was that direct bookings in short-term rentals don’t happen because you built a nice website. They happen because you did the research, defined your ideal guest, understood your competition, and crafted a clear offer around a specific person you wanted to attract. Everything else follows from there.

This echoes what CraftedStays has written about using your ideal guest avatar as an acquisition strategy — a decision that shapes every downstream choice you make.

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📈 The Real Timeline: From 10% to 80% Direct Bookings

Suzy walked Gil through the actual year-by-year progression of her direct booking growth, and this part is worth paying attention to because it’s refreshingly honest.

Year one, roughly 10% of her bookings were direct. Year two, she hit around 30% — below her own target but steady. It was in the final six months of her operation that direct bookings jumped to 80%. And she was candid: sustaining 80% long-term would have been difficult. A more realistic mature state, she said, was probably 60–70%.

What drove the acceleration? A combination of search visibility, Google Maps presence, guests finding her villa’s name in OTA listings and searching for it directly, and a growing pool of repeat bookers from Canada who loved escaping winter in Buenaventura.

For hosts wondering how realistic direct booking growth looks, this guide on building a scalable direct booking strategy pairs nicely with Suzy’s real-world numbers.

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🧱 The Infrastructure Suzy Wishes She’d Built Sooner

Suzy’s biggest regret? Waiting six months to launch her direct booking website. She told Gil she missed real opportunity in those early months — and she wants other hosts to learn from it.

Before accepting direct bookings, she laid down a few non-negotiables:

• Damage waivers and insurance — not optional. She shared a story about a guest breaking a $700 TV, and how not having proper coverage would have taken a chunk straight out of her income.
• Payment infrastructure — Panama made this tricky. Stripe wasn’t available, so she had to find a local provider. The lesson: check what’s possible in your market before you promise direct booking to guests.
• Domain, branding, and website — your property needs a name, a brand, and a site that reflects both.
• A low-friction checkout — because guests compare your booking flow directly to Airbnb’s, whether you realize it or not.

On mobile especially, reducing friction is everything. CraftedStays’ PEF Framework for mobile booking covers what that looks like in practice.

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🐦 The Birdwatcher Story (And What It Taught Her About Listening)

One of the best moments in the conversation came when Suzy described a group of Canadian birdwatchers who stayed at her villa. They casually mentioned they’d spotted 40 bird species during their stay.

Instead of filing that away as a cute anecdote, Suzy acted on it. She bought a bird-spotting telescope, stocked a bird guide, and created a downloadable “how many birds can you spot?” checklist. She wrote blog content around it. She leaned into a niche within her niche.

That one piece of guest feedback turned into a durable marketing asset — and a clearer sense of who her property was actually for.

Her advice to every host: read your reviews carefully. The sentiment is always there. And don’t stop at your own reviews. Look at two or three of your closest competitors’ reviews too. The nuggets hiding in there are genuinely useful for sharpening your positioning.

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🛏️ The Smallest Change That Made the Biggest Difference

When Suzy’s family decided to morph from hobby hosting into a full-time operation, they raised their standards. The simplest change they made? Upgrading to high-quality beds that could be configured as either twins or a king.

It sounds trivial. It wasn’t. Guests loved being asked how they wanted the bed configured. It signaled hospitality. It signaled care. And it expanded who the property could realistically serve — from couples to families to friend groups — without changing a single other thing about the space.

Small operational decisions like these are part of what operational excellence looks like when it actually drives direct bookings.

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🤝 Hospitality Is Still the Real Moat

Gil and Suzy circled back to this theme several times: no amount of tactics replaces genuine hospitality. Suzy once called a guest who was driving out to her villa to warn him about traffic on a particular road. It took her 90 seconds. The guest never forgot it.

That kind of care is what turns one-time bookers into repeat guests — and repeat guests into a word-of-mouth engine that no OTA can provide. It’s also why hosts who get good at hospitality tend to get good at direct bookings, almost as a byproduct.

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📚 Book Recommendations

Suzy’s pick: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer — a 1996 account of a Mount Everest expedition that stuck with her because of what it teaches about resilience, endurance, and refusing to quit. Her reasoning: running your own business, whether as a solo host or a property manager, is a long climb. You will have bad days. The message of the book is simply: keep going.

Gil’s pick: Start With Why by Simon Sinek. Gil shared that this has been a foundational book for him — one he’s read multiple times. It reminded him why he left a comfortable tech career to start CraftedStays, and why grounding your work in a clear “why” makes the hard decisions easier.

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⚡ Rapid-Fire Takeaways from Suzy

• On the biggest mistake hosts make: Not understanding their target market. Research and competitive analysis aren’t optional — they’re crucial.
• On Facebook groups: Take them with a pinch of salt. You’ll read mostly the bad stories, not the good ones. Most guests are wonderful.
• On cleaning your own property: Don’t. Cover the cost in your nightly rate. Build a team.
• On AI: It’s a genuine leverage point for solo hosts. Suzy built her own custom GPTs to help hosts with guest review analysis, listing copy, and competitive analysis.
• On PMS and dynamic pricing: Non-negotiable in today’s competitive market.

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🎯 The One Tactical Takeaway

Gil closed the episode by asking Suzy what one thing listeners should work on this afternoon. Her answer was immediate:

Understand exactly who your guests are. Do the research. Do the competitive analysis. Get clear on your ideal guest, then craft your entire offer around them. Without that clarity, nothing else you do in marketing will work the way it should.

It’s the kind of advice that sounds obvious until you realize how few hosts actually sit down and do it.

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🔗 Connect With Suzy

• Website: 5starhostingmadesimple.com
• Email: suzy@5starhostingmadesimple.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/suzyturnbull
• Instagram: @5starhostingmadesimple
• Facebook: Suzy Turnbull on Facebook

Catch Suzy in London at the Short Stay Summit and the Host Planet Roadshow, where she’ll be signing copies of 5-Star Hosting Made Simple. If you’re attending either event, this is a great chance to connect in person.

🎁 Exclusive Gift for Booked Solid Listeners

Suzy is offering our community free access to her HostGenius™ Guest Review Analyzer — a custom AI tool built to help hosts quickly surface the patterns, strengths, and improvement opportunities buried inside their guest reviews. It’s the same framework Suzy used to sharpen her positioning and grow direct bookings on her Panama villa.

👉 Grab it here: 5starhostingmadesimple.com/guest-review-analyzer-crafted-stays-podcast

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🚀 Ready to Build Your Own Direct Booking Business?

Suzy’s story is a reminder that direct bookings in short-term rentals aren’t reserved for large portfolios or well-funded operators. A single-property host with the right fundamentals can outperform expectations.

Hit play on the full Booked Solid episode to hear the complete conversation — including more on AI tools, the systems Suzy built behind the scenes, and how she thinks about sustainable direct booking growth.

And when you’re ready to stop lighting marketing spend on fire with a website that doesn’t convert, head to CraftedStays.co to launch a mobile-optimized, SEO-driven direct booking site in minutes. Join the Booked Solid community to stay connected with operators who are building independent booking brands — on their terms. 🌟

Transcription

Suzy: I think they have to really understand who their guests are. They have to understand, you have to understand who your target market is, who your ideal guest is. You have to really get under the the cover of knowing who it is you’re talking to and who it is you’re trying to attract. If you don’t know that you are not going to succeed, you have to know about your target market.

So you, you need to research, you need to do your competitive analysis. It’s all those kind of like marketing things that a lot of people shy away from, but they’re crucial, crucial to understanding your business. Once you understand those things, you can craft your, your offering to your target market, to, to who your target market is.

Gil: Before we bring on my guest, I wanted to talk just a little bit about something that I’ve been hearing a lot from Host. I keep on hearing the same thing. I know my website isn’t converting, but I can’t afford $8,000 on an agency to rebuild it. Here’s the thing, you’re letting all these marketing strategies, you’re driving traffic and you’re putting it all to work.

But if your site isn’t really built to convert, you’re basically lighting your energy and money on fire. And even if you could afford an agency build, every time you want to test something or make a change, you’re having to pay them again. You can’t iterate, you can’t test, and you really can improve on things.

You don’t need a custom $10,000 website to get the conversion rates that really matter. You just need the right platform. That’s why I build CraftedStays. It’s purpose built for short term rentals and design from the ground up to help you drive more direct bookings. You can finally turn that traffic into bookings and you can keep on testing and improving as you learn, you can make changes all on the platform.

You don’t need to learn something new. So if you need some help or you wanna get started, go ahead and go to Craftedstays.co and start your free trial. Now let’s bring on our guests and dive deep into hospitality and marketing. 

Hey folks. Welcome back to the Booked Solid Show. 

The show where we’re bringing in top operators to discuss hospitality, operations and direct bookings.

On today’s show, I have Suzy Turnbull. She is the author of Five Star Hosting Made Simple. She’s also a property manager in Panama. And on today’s show, we break down how she has a portfolio of just one property, but she was able to get to 80% direct bookings in a few short years and some of the fundamentals that she puts in place.

So without further ado, let’s dive right in.

 Gil: hey, Suzy, welcome to the show.

 Suzy: Hi Gil. It’s nice to see you and thank you so much for inviting me on. I, it’s, it’s a great pleasure to be here.

 Gil: yeah. I, we had a chance to meet. It was actually right before my trip to Japan, and after we had that chance to meet, I was like, there’s so much knowledge, so much experience, and you’ve packed that already into a book. But I wanted to kind of dive deeper into your brain and kind of have you share. Um, some of your experiences, and most notably how you’re able to get to the 80% direct booking rate, um, at your property management company.

But maybe kind of to start us off with, uh, do you mind giving folks an introduction on who you are r.

 Suzy: No, not at all. I’m happy to do that. So I’m Susie Turnbull. I’m British, as you can hear from my accent. And, but I haven’t lived in England for a very long time. I’ve been, I’ve been. Traveling around the world for the last 34 years with my husband and our family. We have two children who are now based in the UK working, and um, we moved to, we moved basically to five different places in the world.

We lived in Germany, the United States we lived in. Brazil and Panama, which was where we spent the longest amount of time. My husband set up his own business there and I, I set up some businesses that I was working on too. So, um, and one of them was our short term rental, in fact, in, in Panama. But my background previous to that really was, um, my background has always been marketing.

I’m a marketing expert, really that’s where I started life. Um, worked in advertising agencies in London and then moved on to, um. Being a bit of an entrepreneur really, and working with people around the world. So when I was in the United States, I worked, um, with a, an owner of a coffee farm, an organic coffee farm.

It was the first one in Brazil. And he, um, asked me if I would take on marketing his coffee, and I said to him, I know nothing about coffee, but I’ll learn. Everything I can about coffee and learn how to market it and do all the things I need to do to, to get this, this show on the road. And funny you should mention Japan.

’cause I went to Japan when I went to help him sell into Japan. So I went to Tokyo. So, um, but I only, I only spent a few days there and I was so jet lagged. I didn’t even know which planet I was on. So, and then I flew back to Brazil, so that’s when we lived in Brazil, in fact. But, uh, yeah, so I’ve done quite a few things in my time and I think one of the most, um, exciting things I ever did actually was running the short term rental in Panama.

I, I absolutely loved it. I loved, I loved being the host. I loved, um, the people. I love getting to know the people. I’ve always enjoyed people. I think if you are a host of a short term rental, one of the things you, you have to, to, to have is a love of people that has to be in your genes really. So I really enjoyed, um, meeting the people.

I didn’t actually physically meet a lot of them, but, um, did talk to a lot of them. So, um, yeah, I really enjoyed it.

 Gil: What was, what was your portfolio like when you were running your short-term rentals in Panama?

 Suzy: Well, it was only my own house, which is a, which was a, it was a three version villa. It was, it was a one level villa. It was on the edge of a lake. It has beautiful views out to the ocean and across the lake, out to the ocean. Um, it was an exclusive, um, resort. It is the most exclusive resort in Panama.

Bueno Ventura. And it is, um, it was, it was just a fabulous house, a fabulous location. We had all those things in place before we even started to develop the, the business, if you like. So, um, yeah.

 Gil: so, so that one, that one unit there, even on a small, small portfolio, handful of properties or even a single property, you were able to reach a pretty high density of direct bookings. Is that right?

 Suzy: Yes, I did. I mean, it, we start, we started the business really on an ad hoc basis. We, we actually didn’t do it full time, put our hair in the water, you know, what I call hobby hosting, I guess is pretty well known term. I, um, felt that we had to really find out how this worked. Nobody told me how it worked. I, there were not so many people at that time who were doing it, where we were located and.

We also had, um, a situation where our children had left the house was emptied a lot of the time, and it was like, well, we gotta do something about this. You know, we gotta, we gotta, we’ve gotta, we gotta fill it, we gotta pay for our trips back to London to see our children at Christmas time. So, so that’s why we did that.

But then the pandemic hit, we moved to the beach house actually. And lived there for a whole year. And our, um, experiences were living there as, as a guest was going to live there because, you know, some people stay for two weeks or a week or whatever. So we stayed for a whole year, which was quite nice. And, um, we enjoyed seeing things that we’d never seen before, like turtles hatching on the beach and the little hatchlings coming out and all the birds and everything on the lake.

It was, it was a really amazing experience. And then immediately after the pandemic, we decided that it was the right time to go full-time with the business and that’s when we pulled in a team and management team to, to run it for us. Um, as in a manager and his cleaning team, it wasn’t a big team ’cause it’s only one house, but it took quite a lot of cleaning and quite a lot of looking after.

And I took care of all the communication with the guests, all the. All the systems, all the financials, all the other things that have to be done. So that’s, that’s how it started. What I didn’t do, what, what I did was I, first of all went on to the, um, onto to the, uh, the OTAs as, as most people do, that’s where you have to start.

Airbnb was the biggest at the time. So we went onto Airbnb and it was, it was very good, you know, they sent us bookings. I then expanded that fairly quickly to VRBO and also got quite a lot of bookings through them. And then I took a big pause and it was, it was a bit of a mistake because I didn’t do, my direct s were probably another six months after that and I wished I’d started that earlier, um, because that once I got the website built and I started doing the marketing.

And the remarketing to my, um, clients who’d, who’d already stayed, who wanted to book direct. Um, I discovered that, um, it kind of went on a roll and, and it, and it picked up quite dramatically. So that was very good. And then people started phoning me. I’d be in my car driving from Panama City down to Buena Ventura, and, and the phone would ring and it’d be somebody from, from Canada calling up and saying, Hey, we are trying to get a hold of you.

We wanna stay at your place. Can we come in these days? And they would stay for weeks because the Canadians, as you know, they, they love to leave Canada in the winter. And coming to Panama in, at that time of view is the, is is the best time for you to come. So we’ve got quite a lot of Canadians coming to stay with us, which is very nice.

 Gil: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. So it, it sounds like you originally had your career in, in advertising, uh, in marketing. You were helping others. You started to, you moved to the United States with your husband and started to, to purchase this house. And you were using this, this property as well too. And then eventually you decided to move this property as a full-time, short-term rental and manage yourself.

And you started to bring in some of the previous experiences that you, you had in marketing and that eventually helped you grow. Your direct bookings to kind of what it kind of the, the highlight of what it was. Is that right? Did that kind of summarize kind of the, the, the arc of your story?

 Suzy: it is. You haven’t quite got it right. I, we didn’t, we moved to the United States. That was one of our places we moved to in our journey and our journey sort of around the world. Um, it wasn’t until we moved to Panama, itself in Central America where the canal is, but that we actually decide to, um. To buy something.

We didn’t think about the short term rental business at that point in time. We moved there, we bought, we bought, um, our second home first. So, um, so that was our second home first, and we, we bought that first, um, because we wanted somewhere to escape to at the weekend. Um, so that’s, that’s kind of the, the story there.

And yes, I used my, of course, I had so much knowledge and understanding of marketing that, that, that really helped me with being able to put the, the things in place, the chain in place, if you like, that. And they support to actually be able to, um, to market the property and market individually, not using the platforms.

I mean, a lot of people don’t, people would ask me, I, I have property managers call me up in Bon Ventura and say, Hey, how did you get your property? Onto, onto the map, onto the Google Maps. They would ask. Silly things like that, and they d didn’t really understand how to do that. So, and, and I cover that in my book as well.

So, um, but yeah, it is my, my marketing background. Um, I started to, to to, to, uh, pay a lot more attention to ai, um, about, uh, a year and a half ago and took a couple of courses, um, with a couple of, um, with a company in London in fact. And, uh, well, it just blew my mind and I thought, well, I’ve just got to, to understand this and learn this.

And, um, when I was writing the book last year, um, I clicked that I really should try and use, um, chat GBT and write my own GBTs to actually, um, help people. Because the hardest part of really being a. Short term rental host, I think is, is the marketing. It is really a big area that people are just so frightened of.

They’re so frightened of, where do I start? You know, how do I do this and what, what am what do I do first? So I, I felt that, um, that that’s, that does have a quite a big chunk in the book. Um, uh, quite a big chunk on strategy. And I’ve written the host genius, I called them host Genius Tools chat, GPT tools in a very simple way. To, to help people who really have very little understanding or knowledge or feeling for marketing who are actually scared of marketing, so that I’m trying to hold them by the hand and take them through it. Um, and that’s really, and that’s the whole kind of concept of the book. The, the book is really about how can I show people how to, to run their businesses independently as independent hosts in the most, in the easiest, most practical way possible.

Because when I first started, there wasn’t a book. I didn’t find a book anywhere. So I feel I’ve kind of written the book that people want needed to have, that people, that people should have, because there isn’t a book out there or wasn’t a book out there.

 Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 Suzy: um, I don’t know whether you ever found one, but I I never found one.

Um.

 Gil: I, I honestly, if I didn’t have the people around me. It would’ve been a lot more difficult to understand the systems that you need to put in place, the messaging that you need to have kind of in sequence, kind of leading up to this day, how you manage your cleaning team and the expectation setting there, uh, how you do dynamic.

Like I had to piecemeal learn all of these things separately, and I did not have a single res, like a single source resource that I could, I could have gone to. Um, and yeah, I, I, I’m, I’m lucky that I had peers around me, but I think for folks that don’t, I think like a resource, like a book that you can kind of point to and say, okay, this is one way, or one, one path that I can go to, to kind of get myself from zero all the way up to understanding all the foundations.

Like that’s, that’s amazing.

 Suzy: Yeah. Yes, it, it is. And it took a, it took a lot to kind of like think through. Every single part of the business, I had to sit myself down and really focus on what are the things that I had to do. Because you, you just get up and you run your, you get up every morning and you run your business and you run it because you know what you’re doing.

You know how to run it, and you might have the systems in place, or you, you, you know what you’ve gotta do from a marketing point of view, or the guests you’ve got to talk to, um, and have a conversation with. ’cause I had a lot of conversations with a lot of my guests. Um, you, you know what you have to do in, in the day.

But, um, when I first started, like you, I mean, I, I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know anything about running. I was like, how do I do this? I listened to podcasts. I found some very good people that really gave me a lot of, um. Guidance, I think, um, Heather Bayer was one of them. I thought she was fantastic.

And she used to focus a lot more on, um, individual hosts as well as the property managers. ’cause she has a property management background. Um, and she’s now focused more on ai. But I, she was just brilliant. I mean, like, she, she was my hero really. Um, and then I found other people, and there were a lot of other people out there that, um, that really I found very interesting.

It gave me a lot of ideas about how I could do this. Um, I followed the Facebook groups, which I found terrifying because you’ve probably probably done the same thing. You go in there and people would put in there, they always tell you the bad things that have happened in their property, not necessarily the good things.

So you have to, you have to take. What you read with a bit of a pinch of salt because you, you could end up believing that all guests are horrible, difficult people that are going to make a mess of your property. And of course they’re not. I mean, I discovered to my absolute delight that 99% of my guests were absolutely amazing human beings that, you know, treated my property with respect that were lovely to communicate with.

Who even left money for my maids that came in to do all the cleaning. They were just lovely, lovely guests. I think I just was maybe incredibly lucky. We had one or two that weren’t, but that was by the buy those Facebook groups. I mean, I learned a lot from, from going into them. I still, I still go into them because I, I think it’s very interesting to hear what the noise is in the industry, but you have to be very careful what you’re listening to.

I think.

 Gil: Yeah, I, I agree with you. I agree with you. Um, you mentioned, uh, earlier on that you were working with this coffee farm and you were working on marketing. You started to apply this to towards your hospitality stuff. And I would love your take on this, but what I’ve seen is that through all the different businesses that I’ve been a part of, and also hearing how host go through marketing and working with agencies as well too, is that marketing fundamentally is not that different industry by industry.

Um, and that a lot of the fundamentals that applies to one business. Actually carries over the way that you talk and the way that you position changes and the needs that you address, changes between market and market. But the fundamentals don’t change all that much. Fundamentals, like really understanding who you’re trying to target, what problems are they trying to address?

How do you position yourself, how do you think about it on a broad perspective? Do you message more broadly or do you really niche down? And really try to hone your, your messaging on that. And then also what the conversion funnel is like. How do you get people even to know about you and how do you nurture them and how do you convert them?

Like all those fundamentals don’t change all that much. And I, I would, I’m interested in hearing from you if that’s true in your experience of like you managing the coffee farm and their marketing there and how much. At an abstract how much similar it is to running your short-term rentals.

 Suzy: Yeah, I think the difference is that it’s, it was B2B as business to business. ’cause I was selling the coffee as they, as they call it, as green coffee to, um, to the industry. So I would go to industry events that where I would be selling the green coffee in container load. So that was the, that was like wholesale.

So I wasn’t selling, I did actually sell it to some, um, a very lovely, um. Coffee roaster based in San Francisco. Um, so there were a few people that were buying, but they would probably buy it through the importer anyway, um, because that’s how they bought. But, so I would get to those people bought more on the trade side.

That’s the only difference. I mean, the, the, you know, I think B B2C business to consumer is, is a little bit different. The sensitivities are different with your target audience, um, who you’re talking to, how you talk to them, you know, what you know, where, you know they’re hanging out, for example. And that those are, that, that’s a different, slightly different thing.

But basically, you’re right, Gil, the fundamentals are all very much the same, very much the same. And, and, you know, there’s, there’s a, a string of things that you, you need to put in place to, to make sure that you. Uh, there, there’s just so much you have to do these days that you didn’t have to do years ago.

But, um, today it’s a whole different world and, you know, there’s so many places that you’ve got to, you’ve got to have visibility, you’ve gotta be seen and you’ve gotta have connection. Um, yeah.

 Gil: Yeah, talk, talk to me about, okay, so right before the show we, we talked about kind of how you’ve grown your direct bookings and, um, the one thing that I want you to share with our audience here is, one thing we talked about is like you are able to, for a single property portfolio, you’re able to get to 80% direct bookings, and that happened over a number of years of investment.

First off, what did that look like? What did that growth look like? Did you go from zero to 80 in in six months? Was that a year? Like what was that like? What was that growth like? And what I think is achievable? And then if you can break down some of the fundamentals that helped you drive towards that.

 Suzy: So that started, uh, I think the thing that started that was people saying to me, we wanna book direct. And I said, okay, good. Well, I need to do a few things before you can book direct. First got a FA few fundamentals in place because you can’t just accept bookings and, and, and not have some things in place to be able to do that.

So, you know, I, I looked for, um, the, you have to have insurance. I mean, you really have to make sure a lot of people are. Clearly relying on the, if they, if they’re through Airbnb, they’re relying on the cover from Airbnb or they’re relying on their, maybe their own homeowner insurance. Um, but you’ve also, you also need to have in place a direct, um, a a a a damage waiver.

Um, so that if people, something happens, then you’re covered. And something did happen, in fact, with, with one of our direct clients, um, um, they broke the tv, so it was about a $700 replacement tv. That’s a, that’s a big lot of money to come out of your income if it’s not covered on insurance. Um, so that’s super important to have that in place before you start accepting direct bookings.

Um. You also need to have your website, you know, your website needs to be in place. You behind the website is first of all your, the name of your property, your branding, you know, ’cause you can’t have a website that doesn’t have your name, your, um, your domain, your, your own domain name that you have. Um, so you, you’ve got to make sure that the marketing part of it is, is set up as well.

You, you can’t just jump straight and go right book. It’s just throw up a website and get on with it. It, there’s, there’s a lot of things that you need to think about. And there’s actually a whole chapter on that in my book, which, which talks through all those, all those points. Um, we started the year we started, um, we did not, um, have the website of that, the first six months of that year.

We, but I, and it, it was another six months before I had the website built and. I, I knew I missed out on a lot of opportunity there to really, to build the bookings quickly. But anyway, once we did get started with it, or I did, I got started with it. Um, I guess, um, within the first few months it was very low.

Gil, honestly, I think within the first six months it was about maybe 10% of the bookings were, were, um, direct bookings. Some people actually don’t want to book direct. Some people want to book on the platform that they have the most trust in. So the platform they booked before, they think, oh, well it’s easy.

They’ve got my credit card and, and all of that. Um, so, you know, that’s, I that’s fine. I could, I I could just book it again through Airbnb. Um, and that’s another point was about taking, you know, actually accepting a. The, um, the credit cards and things like that. It was very, very difficult. In Panama, we had a situation where we didn’t have Stripe, um, and we didn’t have some of those other platforms, so I had to find another way of doing that through another provider that was specific to Panama.

It, it’s a very strange place to, to do that kind of business. It’s the financial market’s a very odd, um, so you have to. To check that your market, um, will allow that. First of all, in fact, I think I talked to another host in, maybe it was in Costa Rica, and I think he was having the same problem or somewhere in the region.

I can’t remember exactly where it was. So, you know, you’ve gotta have that set up. Um, you’ve gotta make sure that you can accept payments and, you know, the friction on your website has gotta be as low as possible so that people can literally get in there and pay just as they will on Airbnb. Think about the experience that they have on Airbnb, how they go through to a very frictionless, uh, journey and funnel that they get to book with you.

And that’s what you’ve got to, to, to think about on your own website is how do you, how do you achieve those same sort of goals? And I, I think what you’ve managed to do, Gil, and the offer that you have and the, and that your website funnel as it were, is you’ve managed to. Make sure that the friction is as, as low as possible and that people can get to the end of their booking as fast as possible.

It’s all about speed these days. That’s what it’s about.

 Gil: So, so it sounds like there’s a, when you first got approached you, you had this inkling that you had an opportunity to offer direct folks who were coming to you because they wanted to book directly with you, and that kind of led you down the path of. Figuring out what your infrastructure and your operations look like in order for you to even do so.

You mentioned your website, getting a website spun up and it sounded like it took you six months to, to get that from kind of start to finish. You had to figure out insurance payments and then really then optimizing your conversion funnel there, making sure that the whole booking process was as seamless as possible.

 Suzy: Yeah. Very much so. Yeah, I think once, once it was up and running it, it was still quite difficult for people to do their, to do their payments, to be honest with you on that, on in Panama, it was very difficult. Um, and some of the local people, they would pay direct, particularly the di, the direct bookings that were coming from repeat visits, they would come direct.

But for example, um, you know, clients from Canada or clients from the United States, it was a little bit, bit more tricky. Um, but once, once we got, once we kind of got over those things, people, you know, you’ve gotta build trust with people. And I think, you know, having a direct conversation with ’em, people are so afraid these days to pick the phone up and actually have a conversation with people with their, with their guests or people who are inquiring about their properties, um, and looking to, um, spend, you know, a week or two weeks in your property, that that’s a very valuable kind of customer.

And I think you people need to understand that. You need to have that kind of. Conversation with them and talk to them, um, so that they can feel assured and they can feel that they trust you and you equally as the host, need to find out that you could trust them. I mean, they’re people that you know you, you’re gonna have in your home and you wanna make sure that they’re not gonna do anything bad to it.

You know, any bad actors, there aren’t that many. There really aren’t that many.

 Gil: I, I, I agree. I think that that oftentimes the, the negative kind of overshadows the positive, but in, in, in, in a volume perspective, and this is the same thing from my portfolio, I’ve only probably had two poor acting guests that were more a bit malicious, um, and malicious in the way of like trying to get money back for their stay or kind of go in a bit of coercion, cohesion, is that the right word?

Um, but not, not so like where they wrecked our property. Like we have been having like pretty respectful guests. And part of it is that our properties are, are family friendly. We, that can tends to weed out folks that are using it for recreational pur. Like they’re, they’re not, we don’t get a lot of young, young folks in, in our stays.

And that’s intentional because we market it that way. Um, so we’ve been kind of fortunate because of that. Um, you. You mentioned 10% was kind of like the first year you’re able to hit 10%. What did that look, what did that, that, if you can kind of think back of like the year, year by year progression, what was the second and third and kind of ultimately up to the 80?

 Suzy: It was only really for, um, the second year it was, it was about 30% of direct bookings, which is great ’cause I’d had a, I set myself a target of trying to reach 30% direct bookings the second year. I didn’t try to be too, too over optimistic. Um, I knew it was gonna take time to build the, um, you know, to, to build all the things around the marketing around the website to get visibility, um, on the search engines.

Um. I think one of the good things was that, um, on the Airbnb listing and the VRBO listing, I made quite sure that I put the name of our villa on there. Um, so that people, and that’s where I think a lot of, uh, people came from because they, people are getting quite savvy these days. They started to pick up on the, the name of the villa and they’d go and search for it online and they would find it, um, which was great.

And that was how we got a lot of people. Or they would be searching on a map and they would find us on the map because we were on Google Maps, you know, and on the, the Google business, I had a Google Google business listing. Um, so by the time we, in the last six months of the business, and so the first six months was about 10%, the second year was about 30%, which was lower than I wanted it to be, but.

There we go. That’s how it was. But the last six months it kind of accelerated into like 80% of the book business was direct bookings. Whether that would have followed through Gil, I’ve gotta be, you know, completely honest with you in sending you that. Would I have imagined that to continue as 80% bookings in the last year, I think we would’ve been par pushed to, for that to have been 80%.

It might have been 60%, maybe 70%, but 80%, you know, I think that would’ve been, that would’ve been difficult, um, to sustain that. So that was just six months. That was the last six months in which we, we had put the villa up for sale and we, we sold it. So, yeah. So, but it’s, it’s achievable. I think what the important thing is to understand is that. you work at it and you know what you’ve got to work at, and you know, in this book, I do tell people how to do this because it’s so important that they have a multi, a marketing strategy, which encompasses different options, different platforms, different strategies. You’ve got to have. You can’t just rely on one thing.

The problem is, the problem that I understand from talking to other host is that they. If you like, how do I put this nicely? They, they can’t be bothered. They’re really, they find it so painful to think about how to do this to, how to, particularly individual hosts. You are talking to a lot of property managers who hold a lot of properties.

They, they have a very different perspective on this, but individual hosts, it’s very painful for them to think about how they can do this and, and what to do. They may have put their toe in the water. I talked to a host recently in Panama. He actually has a bed and breakfast, a very successful bed and breakfast.

And I said to him, why did you dump your, your website? ’cause he, he, he kind of walked away from his direct booking website, said, why’d you do that? And he said, oh, well, you know, it was all the upkeep. I’ve kept the domain name, but it was all the kind of keeping up with it and everything else because they don’t know how to, to do that.

Most people don’t know how to, to, to do that. Um, they didn’t have the solution to help them to do that, and that it’s very painful for them. Gil, you know?

 Gil: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I’m glad that you have your resources and kinda like, even like this podcast series, like the whole, really the main driver for this podcast is when we’re starting this business crafted stays. We were launching these high performing beautiful sites. A lot of folks didn’t know some of the fundamentals on what it took to drive traffic.

The, some of the things that they need to think about, um, some of the fundamentals that they had to put in place. And I think things have shifted quite a bit where there’s so much resources. Like we have our blog, we have our podcast, uh, we have all of our in-app stuff that kind of guides people on how to optimize things as well too.

And that’s gonna continue to mature over time as well too. But I think it’s that that barrier to entry is becoming lower and lower for folks that are really invested in, in really achieving some pretty high direct booking rates. And I’m glad that there are also folks like, like you on, on the other side, kind of within the industry that is putting out resources as well.

 Suzy: Yeah, I think this, it’s, um, it’s a joint effort, isn’t it, for everybody really. Um, but I think that that, uh, individual hosts, you know, in the people who who, who are running one to four properties have got to start thinking in a different way because the OTAs are becoming more difficult. It is becoming, um, quite, um.

You know, that, that they, they, they have so much control. And, and I think that that was one of the main drivers for me to, to, to, to go it alone and, and build my own website. Now, I, I have a background in marketing. I knew how to build a website. I did it all myself. I could do that. Um, and, and I was happy to do that because I knew exactly what I wanted and I knew exactly how to do it.

And I know about such engine optimization and, and all that stuff. So for me, it wasn’t that difficult to do it. Um, except that I kept changing my mind every five minutes and spent way too long building the site. Ridiculous. But anyway, I wanted to be perfect ’cause I’m a bit of a perfectionist. But, uh, you know, there are tools out there now.

There are people out there like yourself who are doing a great job building great. Um, websites for people and, and you, you give them all the tools to do it. You, you optimize all the stuff for them. That’s brilliant. You know, and I think that’s, that’s the way to go. And I think that with other resources where they can find, um, help to, to do some of the, the bolt-on stuff, which, which is gonna propel the website and give it momentum and visibility is something which, um, you, you, you have to kind of learn a bit about that or get help.

I mean, you know, there are a lot of people out there that, that give help, including my, myself, and, um, you know, to help people do that on the marketing side because it

 Gil: I, I think, I think one of the biggest things, and we didn’t talk too much about this, um, is that I think one of the fundamental things, and kinda like what we talked about in terms of. You working with the Co Coffee farm is like, it’s really understanding the niche of your product and your service offering and understanding who you’re trying to target there.

And I, I think that that’s probably the one mistake that I see. Probably too often is that we build these beautiful sites and we think about the aesthetics of the sites. But oftentimes I find that it’s really the content that you put into it, the pages that you create, the messaging on your homepage that speaks to who you’re trying to pull into, to book with you directly.

Those are often much, much more impactful than the colors, the fonts, um, even sometimes, even the pictures that you may use. I think pictures kinda go hand hand with the content there. But, uh, I, I find that people lean a little bit too heavy on the aesthetic side, and it’s good on our side. Like we take care of all the aesthetics with all of our templates, but people then forget or don’t take the time and energy to really understand the type of niche that they’re trying to address, the type of clients that they’re trying to bring onto it.

And really. Create the messaging that evokes emotion and connection that converts. Ultimately,

 Suzy: Yeah. I mean it’s, it is all about identifying your unique selling proposition. You know, what makes you special, what makes you different, what makes your place different and special? You know, what are the experiences you’re gonna have when you come to your place? I think those things are really.

Important. Um, that’s something which people don’t think so much about. They just think, oh, it’s a villa with a pool and it’s got a great view and that’s it. No, that’s not it. It is, it’s all the, it’s the story around it. It’s creating the story. But um, it’s understanding your, what your unique selling proposition is and also what who your target market is.

You’ve gotta understand who your customers are. And I’ll give you an example about this, because it was, it was interesting when we went through the pandemic, um, we talked, we talked about, okay, let’s, let’s, um, let’s think about whether we should, should market this on a. Full-time basis. That means morphing from a, um, you know, hobby business as it were with, with, with a few bookings a year into being full-time that this is, this is serious business staff.

You’ve gotta have a mindset which says, I am turning this into a proper business. And, and that’s a, a very different way of, of running things. Uh, independent hosts, as many independent hosts that start like us, and they morph into, into, into more serious hosts and are very successful. Um, so you, you have to think about, um, first of all.

What you are offering. We, we knew that our target market really was, or our ideal guest was, um, the families, um, and multi-generational families. People like you, girl who’ve got smaller children who want to come to a lovely place that we can have your own pool, your own space, your barbecue and all that great stuff.

Um, and, and be able to enjoy time, um, with the family, which is really super important. And so we, for example, we made sure that we had our beds in, not in the master bedroom, but in the other two bedrooms that they separated. So you could either have twin beds or single beds depending on where you are coming from.

Um, or you could have it as a king size bed. So that just, that, just that little change alone and that flexibility. Really made a huge difference because people would then, I would say to them, how do, how do you want your bed configuration? How do you want it configured? What’s best for you and your family?

And they loved it. They absolutely loved that. So there are things like that. It’s, it’s understanding who your guests are and crafting your offering really to them. And therefore you understand what your kind of unique selling proposition is with your property or what your selling propositions. And sometimes it is a niche.

Sometimes it is a niche market. I know that your properties, you have, you know. In a way, you are in a niche market. It’s not a niche market because it’s not a tiny, tiny market. It’s a poor, fairly broad market, but it is still, it’s still a specific, a very specific market segment. Um, we, we, we, we kind of appeal to a lot of people, but we knew that, um, that our biggest market with the families.

But there were some people, there was a group that came down, another group that came down from, from, uh, Canada and they were bird watchers, absolutely fanatical bird watchers. And, um, they spent the week, or I think it may have even been two weeks there, um, looking at the birds all around. Buena Ventura, which is a lovely resort, which is beautifully done and manicured landscaping and it’s gorgeous.

And there are, Panama is like the Crosswork roads of the world for the birds. And so they came down to Panama during the dry season, which is in the early part of the year to watch the birds. And they came up with a list of 40 birds that they’d seen while they were staying at our house. So I thought, wow, this is really fantastic.

So we decided to go out and buy a bird spotter scope, a special telescope for, for looking at the birds and seeing them in more detail than the lake we had. We had binoculars in the house, but not a bird, bird, spoto scope. We had a book of, which is The Birds of Panama. Um, and this was just lovely. I mean, I created, um.

Things on my website. I did blogs on my website that talked about this. Um, you know, I did, uh, I did a whole list, a downloadable list. I left in the house. How many birds can you spot? And things like this. And people just loved it. I mean, they absolutely loved it. So it is really finding, it’s listening to your guests, Chuck Gil.

You’ve gotta listen to what your guests say to you. You’ve got to understand, you know, what they’re saying and what they’re feeling, what their sentiment is. You know, if you read the reviews, if you just kind of read the reviews and you, you read them carefully, you’ll get that sentiment from them. You know, you’ll get that feeling.

’cause people write with their feeling. That’s how they write a review. They write about how they felt. You know, if they absolutely loved your place, they’ll write about what they loved, you know?

 Gil: Yeah, absolutely. I, I think that that’s one of the advice that I give to folks. If they’re just starting off and maybe they have a, a, a portfolio that they see as like generic. Um, I tend to tell them, look at your reviews or even if you want a si use AI to assist you in that load all your reviews in there and use AI to help you comb through and find these little nuggets of people because of what they’re saying.

And when you’re doing it, do it per property first off. And you can then do it more broadly to understand your entire portfolio. Um, but really try to segment your list so that you know, kind of what your unique value proposition, how it all comes together on your entire portfolio. Um, but there’s a wealth of knowledge in those reviews, like you mentioned.

That’s. Basically feedback that guests are giving to you, what they liked about the stay, some of the amenities that they like, the location. What is it about your portfolio that makes it where they would want to come back? Um,

 Suzy: Right. And also what are they saying about you as the host? What, what are, what are the good things, and even maybe even the bad things they’re saying about you. You know, those are really interesting little nuggets of information. Um, I, I, I have, um, one of my AI tools is the, is a guest analyzer tool where you put you, you c you copy and paste all your reviews and you throw them into this guest analyzer in chat GPT, and it comes back and it gives you, um.

Tell you really what they’re saying. What are the good points? What are the bad points? What are the sentiment of the guests? Um, what you can improve on, you know, what you need to pay attention to. So I’m really happy to offer that, um, as a, a gift for anybody that would like to use it and give it a try. Um, who’s, who’s listening to the show?

The, the other thing is the other way to use that, uh, that tool, uh, or to use any tool where you are, you are looking for to, because if you, if you, if you say to people, go away and just throw guest reviews in and ask chat GBT to tell what it’s saying, people won’t know what to really ask it. So what I’ve done with my tool is I’ve asked it very specific.

I’ve told it to ask very specific questions that it will give feedback on that will be useful information for you as a host, rather than being a like, oh, I dunno, what do I’m gonna ask it to do. Um, so I’ve taken time to really write that, uh, that tool, um, so that people can really get back some real nuggets of information in a very useful way that they can use that information.

Um, because the other thing they need to do is not just look at their reviews, but look at their nearest competitor’s reviews. Go to the newest competitor. Uh, two or three people. I always like to say two or three other people who are your closest competitors, who you are, you are, you are up against, um, for, for bookings.

And find out what people are saying about them because you’ll learn things about them too. You’ll learn about, okay, what do people really like about that property? Is there something that I’m missing that they’re offering that I should be offering? Um, and that’s really important. And then I have a very sneaky thing I do, girl, I’m going to stay in London next week ’cause I’m going to the short term summit in London.

And I booked through, actually through Airbnb, um, with a, um, lady who’s very close to where my daughter lives in London and she, she’s got really good reviews. But I took the, I took all the reviews and threw them into my guest analyzer to find out really what people are really saying. So when you go and stay somewhere and we all go and stay in, in, uh, in short term rentals.

So all over the place, all of us do. It’s, uh, you know, um. You can use it to, to do that, to do that too, because there might, there might be something that’s hidden in those guest reviews that you haven’t seen or that you haven’t noted and you can’t possibly scan all those reviews yourself in, in, in a matter of 30 seconds that that chat.

GPT does it. So it’s quite useful actually.

 Gil: it’s almost like a, if you go to an Amazon page and they have, they have this review summary at the top of all the reviews. It gives you a synopsis of what everybody’s saying about it. Both, both the good and the bad. Um, I wonder if that’s, that’s, if that e-commerce tactic can, can be applied here as well too.

 Suzy: Yeah, maybe, maybe it can, I don’t know. Um, I dunno. I would. I don’t know whether I would, I would feel more trustworthy to, to, to take those reviews myself and to put it into my, my little tools, you know what I mean? Rather than have Airbnb, because Airbnb might be taking, you’d be taking a selective amount of those, uh, reviews.

You know, the ones that were the five star reviews or the 4.5 star reviews are not the ones that were not necessarily the good reviews. So I,

 Gil: That’s true. That’s true.

 Suzy: I don’t, I wouldn’t trust them to do, oh, that’s an awful thing to say. But, um, I, I would prefer to, to do that myself. I think

 Gil: Yeah. Awesome. Suzie, we, we covered a lot of topics. Um, we covered kind of your journey and how you’re able to grow to such, um, a healthy amount of direct bookings. And actually, now that you’re talking about the timeline, it’s actually a relatively short timeline. It’s within like two, two and a half years, you’re able to get to 80% direct bookings, which is phenomenal.

Some of the things you put into place. It sounds like there’s a huge emphasis in really understanding your ideal guest avatar. What is the type of messaging that resonates with them, this sense of hospitality and, and making sure that everybody has a great stay? Um, I, I kind of, kind of picked that up kind of throughout our, our conversation here.

There’s a huge care of hospitality and really thinking about what do the guests need and want and what brings them back over again. And I think that, that, we didn’t talk about this too much, but that, that attributes to a lot of strong word of mouth, but also repeat bookings as well too. Um, we also talked about.

Some of the infrastructure that you put in place, uh, the insurance, uh, we didn’t talk too much. I’m guessing you’re also using a PMS kind of behind the scenes, um, possibly to

 Suzy: was really, really important. I mean, there’s no way that I could have done what I did without having a, a good PMS and I, I, I think we, we, we talked a little bit about this before, um, the show, but we, we use the same PMS absolutely fundamental. I mean, I couldn’t have done it without that. It was absolutely key to the business.

Um, and I think these days also, if you are in a very competitive market, particularly, you need to be, be using a, a, a dynamic pricing tools as well. I mean, you absolutely have to the market the. The whole market for, for s STRs has become so competitive. It is, um, becoming more difficult all the time. You’ve gotta use the tools that are out there, which are amazing.

There’s incredible tools out there now, you know, to to, to help you to do this, um, and to help you to run your business more efficiently, more effectively, more profitably. And that’s the key, because at the end of the day, there’s no point in doing any of this, Gil, unless you’re making money. I mean, there is absolutely no point in getting up in the morning and doing all the work that we have to do as hosts, which is enormous.

It’s an enormous task. It’s very, very satisfying when you get great reviews. But it is, it is hard work. There’s, there’s no getting away from that. Um, but you can make it easier on yourself by having all the tools in place, having the people in place that you need to help run your system. I think that you, you know, don’t ever.

Clean your place yourself is something I say to people, don’t clean yourself because you could get very upset. I remember seeing a video, my, uh, manager sent to me of one, uh, uh, young woman who, who, who went to her house with my, with, with five other people. And she trashed it basically, but not, she didn’t destroy anything.

She didn’t break anything, but she left it in such a mess. And I thought, gosh, if I had gone in there and tried to clean that out myself, I would’ve been probably in tears. I mean, and that is, it isn’t worth it. It isn’t worth it. You really have to get other people and cover that cost, um, in your nightly rate to cover those costs with things like that.

 Gil: Yeah, you also don’t want animosity of like, oh, another booking, another cleaning that I have to do. Like there’s, there’s a weight that happens where I, I, I’ve never had to clean my, my stays myself, and I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m fortunate to start that from the very beginning, but I, I, it’s, it’s not sustainable for you to carry that and maybe even other things in, in your business where you can leverage a team around you or a fractional team.

 Suzy: you’ve got a le leverage team around you. You are the financials as well. If you’re not very good at financials, and I’m not the best person at financials in the whole world. I’m the first person to admit that, you know, I do have an accountant, or I did have it in Panama. I have one here in in Portugal as well, who looks after stuff.

But I, I, at least with the PMS wow, the stuff it turns out that helps to, for you to see where you are at, um, is, is great. You know, I think that, uh, so again, it is just having those systems in place that help you. That give you the kind of structure and give you the confidence as a host to feel that you can really, you, you can run this business, you can do this.

You know, there were times that I thought, oh, I can’t, I can’t do this. I, I, I dunno how I’m gonna be able to do this. I dunno how I’m gonna be able to cope with this. It’s just so much work. But, you know, when I did put those systems in place, it took a huge weight off my shoulder. Um, and, and really, really, you know, helped a lot.

Um, so yeah,

 Gil: Yeah.

 Suzy: quite an experience, Gil quite an experience. And I, I enjoy writing about it because, you know, I just, as you say, the heart of all this is hospitality. It’s how, it’s what you provide for your guests, what you do for your guests. I mean, I remember calling up a guest one day. I knew he was driving out to the beach and I, I came in.

Um, on one of the roads into the city, and the, the traffic was horrendous. There was something awful going on. So I called him and said to him, make sure you don’t take that road outta the city because the traffic’s awful. Well, he, he was like, really impressed, but it was like, for me, it was just like such a small thing.

It’s like, he’s going to my house, he’s gonna spend time there, he’s my guest and he’s paid to stay with me and you know, he has to be looked after. And, and that’s how I was with all my guests. I, I think the hospitality is absolutely at the heart of everything you do and, and at the heart of what we do in this business, that’s the, that’s the crux of it.

That’s how it is.

 Gil: Awesome. Susie, we usually end the show with three questions. I think now it’s a good time to, to kind of bring those questions up. What’s been a book? What’s been a book that has inspired you?

 Suzy: Well, Gil, it’s a long, it’s a book I read a long, long time ago. Um, and it was hugely inspiration. It’s one I will never forget, and in fact, I see it on people’s bookshelves when I go to see friends of mine. So we all read it at the time, and I’m a little bit older than you are, so, but I think some of your, um, your, uh, the people who are listening to the show Will, will, will know that into thin air.

I’ve just written it down to make sure I get it right. I, I’m looking at the date it was, um, published in 1996 and, um, it’s about a team that goes to, um, to Everest and they climb Everest and it’s about their resilience and their endurance and their never giving up. And you have to, if you are running your own business, whether it’s you are an individual host or a property manager. That’s what you have to have. You you, you’re gonna have good days. You’re gonna have bad days, but never give up and always fight to get to the end of where you want to get to. They got to the top of the summer. They did a people died along the way. It was awful. It’s a very tragic story. I think it’s actually made into a movie as well, but I don’t know.

It just hit it. Just hit it just, it’s just one of those things. I remember that. Yeah. Really It did. So yeah.

 Gil: I’ll have to, I’ll have to pick that one up. Um, second question, and maybe along the same

 Suzy: what yours was, but I don’t think I’m should do that ’cause we are running outta time.

 Gil: I, I actually have mine, um, my favorite book, and this has been a favorite even before I got into hospitality, is Simon Sinek. Like, start with y. This has been one of my favorite books. Um, I’ve read it a number of times now.

Um, this is probably my second copy. I, this was actually part of the STR book club and I actually had already a hard copy version of it, so now I have two, two copy of it. But it really talks about kind of why you do the things that you do and why that’s important and really internalizing that. As you kind of go through life and as you start projects and think about like the things that you want to invest your time and energy into, and for me that’s quite important.

Like, I didn’t have to start craft estates. Um, if it was about making money, I could have stayed in tech and I could have, I I I, I could have kept on at, um, being a director at the startups, I wa I was at, uh, it was, it’s a healthy salary there with lots of, lots of benefits. But for me, starting Craft to stay was really around.

Really pushing myself, providing value back into the world and, um, in ways I couldn’t do working as an employee. Um, so one of it was like proving to myself that I could start a company. And two, finding out that there’s a pretty big gap in the industry and specifically in hospitality that I have outside leverage because I come from a deep technology background and a big commerce background, and I’m a host myself.

So like that combination of those things allows me to bring unique innovation in a space that had a big gap there. Um, and I think it’s because of the passion of. Creating and building something new. Um, but also finding and identifying and, and, and seeing myself fitting to that, that that gap, that puzzle there is why I started the company in the first place.

And I think a lot of it is rooted by the start with why is, if, you know, those things are important. It was very easy for me to say, no, I’m not gonna get another W2. I’m not gonna find another job. I’m gonna go pursue this path. Um, yeah, I just, it just gives you a different perspective on like what’s important to you, why it’s important, how do you wanna shape your life?

Um, yeah,

 Suzy: But also something else there isn’t there? Because there’s something about being an entrepreneur and we’re all entrepreneurs in this business. If you have your. We are all entrepreneurs. All us hosts are entrepreneurs because we, whether we’re running a one, one, uh, property or whether we have a a, a portfolio of a hundred properties, we’re all entrepreneurs.

We’ve all got this, this urgentness to do something that is, that you want to feel you can achieve something and something big, hopefully. So, yeah, I, I want to read them. Sorry,

 Gil: I, I, I definitely think you should. And, and this book was written, gosh, maybe 2011, so it’s not a new book. Um, but

 Suzy: that’s okay. Some of these older books are some of the best books that, you know, advertising is one of my favorite books that, uh, I, I mean, still a lovely book to look at. So.

 Gil: Yeah. I, I find that, that I, I agree with that. I find that some of the older ones are, are more timeless and, um. I tend to appreciate more than some of the newer stuff. Um, yeah. Susie, last question. We talked a lot about all the different things that you invested into to help you get to that 80% direct booking rate.

What is one tactical takeaway that our listeners can put into practice today? What should they spend their afternoon spending time on to really help either get started in direct bookings or amplify their direct bookings?

 Suzy: I think they have to really understand. Um. Who their guests are. They have to understand who. You have to understand who your target market is, who your ideal guest is. You have to, to really get under the, the cover of, uh, knowing who it is you’re talking to and who it is you’re trying to attract. If you don’t know that you are not going to succeed, you, you have to, you have to, to know about your target market.

So you, you need to research, you need to do your competitive analysis. It’s all those kind of like marketing things that a lot of people shy away from, but you, they’re crucial, crucial to understanding your business. Um, once you understand those things, you can craft your, uh, your offering to, to, to your target market, to, to who your target market is.

Um. And I think you’ve done that very well, bill, in your offering. Um, you know, you’ve got the families, you’ve got, it’s a, it’s a kid friendly place. It’s great. Uh, so I think that you have to understand who your, who your target market is, and you have to, to do that. Yeah,

 Gil: Yeah, I, I, I couldn’t agree you more. This is like the one space that I think people under utilize and they need to invest a bit more into. Even if they’re leveraging other tools like craft estates to build out the website, this is something that you cannot gloss over it or skip the step on. Um, no matter how beautiful the website is and how frictionless it is, it doesn’t replace really making sure that the content is there to speak to who you’re trying to attract.

 Suzy: yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Number one. Yeah.

 Gil: awesome. Susie, it was a huge pleasure to have you on. If folks are interested in connecting with you, if they’re interested in any of your guides, I’ll be sure to drop a link here. But outside of that, where can folks find you? How can they connect with you?

 Suzy: well, they’ll find five star hosting made simple.com as a website. I have a, an email address, which is just very simple, Susie at five Star hosting made simple.com. And I’m on Instagram and I’m also on, um, Facebook. So you can find me on those with that name on, on those channels.

 Gil: Awesome. Suzy, it was a huge pleasure to have you on and having you share so many nuggets from your books here. Um, I think we only covered a very small portion of some of the fundamentals that you have in your book, so I definitely encourage folks to pick up a copy and, and really dive into it and maybe flip around and, and see which parts of the book it really resonates and really is like kind of the gap in learnings there.

Um, but definitely I appreciate you spending time with us today.

 Suzy: Thank you very much, Gil, for having me on. It’s been great talking to you and I wish you well and hope to talk to you again soon.

 Gil: All right. Bye.

 Suzy: Thanks so much. Bye-bye.