The Three Pillars of Direct Booking Success: Trust, Responsibility, Hospitality with Heather Bayer

Summary and Highlights

1. Trust is the Foundation of Direct Bookings

One of the biggest challenges for direct bookings is convincing guests to trust your site over an OTA like Airbnb. Heather emphasizes the importance of strong trust signals, such as transparent policies, clear communication, and visible safety measures.

“If someone lands on your website and doesn’t immediately trust you, they’ll head right back to Airbnb.”

Practical Steps:

• Include a Trust Page on your website showcasing reviews, certifications, and policies.
• Highlight safety measures such as fire safety precautions and insurance coverage.
• Display social proof, including affiliations with local organizations or industry certifications.

2. Direct Booking Success Starts with a Strong Website

Your website is the first impression guests get of your brand, and it needs to feel as professional and reliable as any major booking platform.

Heather suggests doing a thorough website audit as if you were a first-time guest. Does it clearly state where your properties are located? Are cancellation policies easy to find? Does it showcase why guests should book directly?

Action Item: Take an hour to review your website, ensuring that it is visually appealing, easy to navigate, and packed with trust-building elements.

3. Why Safety & Sustainability Should Be Marketed, Not Just Managed

Many hosts focus on safety and sustainability for risk mitigation, but Heather argues these are powerful marketing tools. Today’s travelers actively look for eco-friendly stays and secure properties.

Steps to Leverage This:

• Add a safety section detailing measures like fire prevention, pool safety, and property accessibility.
• Showcase sustainability initiatives, such as energy-efficient appliances, eco-friendly amenities, or community involvement.
• Ensure trust signals (like third-party safety certifications) are linked internally on your website rather than sending visitors away.

4. The Power of Guest Experience in Repeat Direct Bookings

Heather emphasizes that direct bookings are built on relationships. Guests who trust you and have a seamless experience are more likely to book directly in the future.

Proven Guest Retention Strategies:

• Personalized Communication: Send post-stay thank-you emails and exclusive offers.
• Stay Audits: Personally experience your own rental as a guest to identify improvement areas.
• Local Partnerships: Offer concierge-like services through curated local experiences.

“Your guests aren’t just booking a stay—they’re looking for an experience. If you provide an unforgettable one, they’ll come back and book directly.”

Heather’s insights highlight that direct bookings aren’t just about technology or automation—they’re about building trust, ensuring responsibility, and delivering outstanding hospitality. If you focus on these elements, you’ll naturally grow your direct booking rate over time.

Transcription

Heather: Trust is the absolute primary. element that has to be brought into any direct booking strategy, because without trust you’re not going to get anybody who’s been out on Airbnb who spend billions to get guests to trust them to come to you with your website, small, medium, large website, but trust you enough to part with their money with you.

Because you’re not showing those trust signals that Airbnb are. So that’s at the core of what we train and teach. And then we go into responsibility, which means your responsibility to safety, to, uh, regulatory compliance, to sustainability, to having the right insurance, all these things come together to actually create that trustworthy business.

Gilbert: Hey folks, welcome back to Direct Booking Simplified, where we break down the strategies and tactics on how to win in direct bookings. On today’s show, I have Heather Bader. Heather, welcome to the show.

Heather: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on. This is, this is always, I always love being on the other side of the mic.

Gilbert: Yeah, yeah. It’s fun to do this both sides. I actually, I think if I had a preference, it’s more fun to be a guest on the show than a host on the show. I don’t know why. It just, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because it’s change of pace and you get to relax and be the one to consume all the questions rather than thinking ahead about the next set of questions.

Gilbert: I think it is a lot of fun being the guest.

Heather: Well, as As I’ve been podcasting for nearly 14 years now. Every Wednesday for 14 years. It, it just is a great contrast to, to be asked the questions and not asking them. So, yeah, far away.

Gilbert: maybe, maybe slight tangent there. Well, any word of advice for myself or anyone that’s getting into podcasts, thinking about it, how did you 14 years of quite a run in terms of pace there. And a lot of folks, I think even like the first six months, they start to give up. Like, what’s, what’s your secret to, to lasting quite, quite that time.

Heather: Um, well, it is consistency. The only way to, to grow an audience is to be consistent. And if you’re continuously consistent, um, and this is why I’ve never done, I’ve never done, you know, Series 1, Series 2 or Season 1, Season 2. You know, I just. just publish every week and, and it becomes habit. It is, and you batch record.

Heather: So, and, and the other thing is, is, is that if you really love the business and have passion for the business, you just love talking to people. So that just converts into a 45 minute recording. What, you know, what, what more can it

Gilbert: hear you. I 100 percent hear you on that one. I, I’ve met so many people through this show and I’m sure it’ll resonate with you, but like, it’s a great way to tap into the greatest minds in the industry and ask the stupidest questions that you can think of. And you just feel very vulnerable about asking those types of questions because it helps a lot of folks.

Heather: I, I’ve met, I think I’ve met just about everybody that has, you know, been at the core of this industry for so many, for decades. And, and it’s a huge honour to be in that position. And, and yes, get to ask whatever you want. And, yeah, get some, get some crazy answers sometimes. I, I, I will share, share one. Uh, anecdote of interviewing Matt Landau from the Vacation Rental Marketing blog and now from his, his new, his new venture, Here Goes Nothing.

Heather: And it was way back in 2014, I think, and Airbnb had really just hit the short term rental market. Uh, you know, coming, coming away from staying in, staying in people’s houses and looking at whole home rentals. And Matt and I were discussing this on an episode and we both decided that this was a fly by night company that wasn’t going to last. So,

Gilbert: what a difference.

Heather: yeah, you can’t find that episode. I think, I do think I might have deleted that one. But that was, yeah, that was, that was, that was some crazy episode, that one.

Gilbert: Yeah. I mean, that speaks to a little bit about like kind of your introduction there. You’ve been doing this for a long while, not just on the podcasting side of things, but, uh, maybe a quick introduction on, on who you are. You’ve managed 200 plus properties that you’ve sold now in, in 2022, and you’re now a full time coach consultant in the short term rental space.

Heather: Yeah, I, I started way back in the, the, the late mid to late 1990s, you know, last century, and I started buying properties in Ontario, in Canada, while I was still living in England. And by the time I emigrated, uh, in 2003, I had seven properties and then started a property management company, which went for two years.

Heather: Two decades, sold it in 2022 after nearly 20 years. And we, as you say, we’re managing, we had managed up to 200 properties and over that time, um, and during that time, and particularly in the early days, it was very difficult to find any information about how to do it. And I remember starting up the property management company in 2003 and thinking, well, how do I do this?

Heather: I’ve come to a new country. Um, there’s a lot of really established property management companies, agencies here, and I’ve got to get in here and prove my worth, and nobody would tell me how to do it, and I hadn’t had Apart from owning my own places, I’d had no experience of, of managing other people’s. And, and I had to learn it from the ground up and made huge amounts of mistakes.

Heather: So in 2007, I wrote a book called Renting Your Recreational Property for Profit, which was about all those mistakes and gave a lot of, Suggestions on how people could do it better than I had. And that when, um, um, please do not go looking for that book on Amazon. It is still there. But don’t buy it because it’s got 2007 marketing advice and a lot of it.

Heather: And yeah, it’s, it’s probably not a good read unless you like a bit of story. There’s a lot of stories in there, but then I started, um, then I really wanted to give back to people because I didn’t want people experiencing what I had and that feeling of isolation. Being out there on my own, wondering what the heck to do.

Heather: There were no Facebook groups. There was no LinkedIn. Um, when I started, there was no Airbnb and, and people out there on YouTube giving all this free information, which they do now. So way back then, I started sharing and I started a blog called cottageblogger. com. And that was, that was to help hosts and other managers to, to do it better than I had.

Heather: And then the podcast came along. And then in 2020, 22, I sold my business. and went into education, vacation rental education full time, and if I go back to the mid 1990s, it was where I’d come from because I was running a management training consultancy in England at that time. So now I’ve come full circle back into training and marrying it with all I’ve learned over the two, two and a half decades of vacation rental experience.

Heather: And now we’ve just added AI consultancy into the mix. So we, uh, we’re, we’re definitely keeping up with the times that’s for sure.

Gilbert: Yeah, I definitely want to talk a little bit more about the A. I. Consultancy stuff because there’s a big buzz, at least for the last two years. Now we’ve been hearing a lot about A. I. And there is a lot of fluff in A. I. And it being not used in all the appropriate places. But there’s also a lot of folks that are using it quite well and strategically to really streamline their business.

Gilbert: I definitely want to hear a little bit more about that on the kind of the last 20 years of managing What’s been, I guess, your greatest learning in that process?

Heather: Oh that, I guess, it’s, it’s too, it’s, it’s Always on the hospitality side. It’s never, never lose touch with what this business is about. It’s about hospitality. It’s about the people behind a business. And this is particularly relevant when we start talking about AI and chatbots and become everything becoming Automatically driven and that you don’t have to lift a finger because that is the hospitality side is as relevant now as it was 20 years ago, and perhaps even more so because people want they’re getting less and less personal connection in their in their daily lives when they when they go on vacation, whether they want to actually meet a person face to face or actually have a conversation on the phone with them.

Heather: They want to know. Mhm. That that person is there, and that person can provide them with that hospitality without referring them to a chatbot. So I think, yeah, that question, hospitality, is what I’ve learned, is, is timeless.

Gilbert: Yeah. That’s interesting you say that because, so, in addition to being, like, the podcast host here, we have our software company. And we do have the little chat bubble on the very bottom corner of my screen for me. I don’t know if it comes from my hospitality side and me being a host myself, but I try to be very active.

Gilbert: And when I have one of my customers that message me using the chat bubble, they don’t expect someone, a live person to be responding. Near immediately, and if I, if I, if I’m on my computer and I’m not like defocus on something, I’ll respond, I’ll, I’ll switch gears and I’ll, I’ll answer someone. And then more recently, I’ve been getting folks asking me, is this a bot?

Gilbert: Because they don’t expect someone to pick up the line and answer people right away. They assume that it’s some computer that’s automating that business for them.

Heather: Oh, exactly. Exactly. I mean, I, I loved live chat. Um, I love to have it on my website and I always wanted to be the one that answered, that got in there the moment somebody had, had asked a question and I was there answering it. Now, this is going back before, um, before chatbots and before people needed to ask whether you were a real person or not.

Heather: Um, but I, I would like to think that that still goes on. It’s lovely to hear that you still. You still do that because the moment that hospitality gets driven all the way over to that, I mean, call it a dark side or whatever, to an automated side, you’ve lost something out of the business and I would hate to see that happen.

Heather: Um, but there’s, there’s place, there’s place for. There is a place for, um, automated responses. I mean, we, we had, we had automated messages go out on text, uh, all the time. Just, you know, reminders to guests and, you know, reminder that it’s checkout time, it’s, uh, you know, at 11 o’clock tomorrow morning. But it was always, if you’ve got any questions, get back to us, and then there would be a person.

Gilbert: yeah. Yeah, it’s, it’s going to be interesting to see how that unfolds. And I do see a lot of value out of bringing in chatbots and, and some AI tools, especially in the guest messaging side of things, just to help answer quickly some of those low level of questions that you typically get asked. Um, yeah, we’ll see, we’ll see where it goes and it’s actually getting a lot.

Gilbert: I’ve seen a bunch of those AI tools now and I’ve had a chance to try them out. They’ve, they’ve gotten quite sophisticated over time.

Heather: Yeah, I mean, the thing I have when I go to a vacation rental, and particularly in the US, is that, you know, I’m a Brit. I drink tea. I have to have a kettle. Those people who know me know that I have this thing about tea kettles. So, everywhere I go, it’s one of my questions, do you have a tea kettle? I don’t expect a real person to come back and tell me that there is a tea kettle in that particular unit that I’m going to stay in.

Heather: Um, I just, you know, I just need that question answered. But if I had a very specific question about, you know, I’m, I’m bringing a disabled relative with me and I need to know how accessible the property is. Now that’s when I want it. I would want to speak to somebody who’d actually been there and experienced it themselves.

Gilbert: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I totally hear you on that one. Um, maybe I kind of like transition just a little bit. Um, right before the show, we talked a little bit about some of the stuff that you have specifically within your coaching program. Um, you call it the foundations. Can you speak to us a little bit about what you meant there and kind of why it’s so important to kind of really like understand that those foundations early on.

Heather: We are working with a number of companies and to, to build a culture of what we call thrive within that company and thrive stands for trust, uh, hospitality and responsibility in a vibrant environment. So we, we, we talk about how the different stakeholders. in every company or any business, the guests, the owners, the community and the team and bringing those values of trust, responsibility and hospitality to all of those stakeholders.

Heather: So trust is, is probably the primary foundation. And sadly, it’s something that is, is, is forgotten in the drive for, for profit. And I see this on, every time I go to a website, I’m looking for trust signals on that website. And I don’t know if you’ve come across Chris, Chris Morn from IPRAC.

Gilbert: I haven’t come across him yet.

Heather: Oh, you need to follow, you need to follow Chris on LinkedIn.

Heather: He is the most knowledgeable person I’ve ever known on trust. He The, the neurological basis of trust. You know, how are peop how a person comes to a website, looks at it and goes, I know from that first 30 seconds that I can trust this person, I can trust this site. So I take a lot of what I’ve learned from Chris and use that in, in the way we coach and, and train.

Heather: Um, just, just in terms of how you portray your trustworthiness. To, to guests. And as we talk about, um, direct booking, trust is the absolute primary element that has to be brought into any direct booking strategy. Because without trust, you’re not going to get anybody who’s been out on Airbnb, who spend billions, to get guests to trust them, to come to you with your website, small, medium, large website, but trust you enough to part with their money with you.

Heather: Because you’re not showing those trust signals that Airbnb are so so that that’s that’s at the core of of what we of what we train and teach. And then we go into the response responsibility, which means your responsibility to safety to regulatory compliance to sustainability to having the right insurance.

Heather: All these all these things come together to actually create that trustworthy business.

Gilbert: Yeah, it’s, it’s so interesting in, in this space. I think a lot of folks, and I talk about this quite often on the show, a lot of folks will get into short term rentals, maybe because of the tax benefits, or maybe because they’re looking to, uh, get outsized returns on their investments. And they may think it’s passive.

Gilbert: And they soon find out shortly after that they’ve just, you know. In addition to buying a property, they’ve, they’ve started a business of their own, and they’re starting to learn all these different things. And, um, it’s interesting to see how much effort it does take to run a short term rental business or property management business well.

Gilbert: Um, and I love how your, um, Kind of peeling back the onion on on on a topic that actually isn’t talked about quite quite that often trust, sustainability, responsibility. There’s very few people in our industry that that talks about that. Why? Why do you think that is?

Heather: Well, it’s interesting. I mean, this goes back to, um, 2023 and the Verma conference in, uh, Orlando and Justin Ford, who is the safety expert talked about the fact that as he was going through the halls and going to all the different seminar rooms. At the conference, the rooms where they were talking about marketing, or they were talking about the guest experience, or even talking about revenue management, they were packed, standing room only.

Heather: Yet you go to the really insightful presentations where they’re talking about, uh, sustainability and talking about safety or talking about insurance, and you’ve got a handful of people. So he was, he said, he wrote a post on LinkedIn after that and said, this, this is so sad. We are not getting this message across.

Heather: So we, at Vacation Rental Formula, then in, in, uh, February of 2024, we launched what we called the Stir Crazy Program, which was a five week event where we covered each of, say, stir, s s t i r c r a z y. Safety, sustainability, trust, insurance and regulations. And we have a week on each one of those elements and it went really well.

Heather: So this this year, 2025, uh, we did the same thing and just expanded it, added some gamification, added some prizes and, um, With the goal of bringing these core elements of the business back to the forefront to get people thinking about the risks of not having a safe rental, the risks of not having proper insurance.

Heather: And the benefits, in fact, the benefits of having a safe rental, the benefits of having a, of spending time on sustainability and creating environmentally friendly spaces, and then going on to your own website and telling everybody that you’re doing this. It just seems to me to be a complete no brainer. people who are out doing direct booking have their safety pages, they have a trust page, they have a sustainability page on their websites because the statistics are out there on, let’s say, booking. com does a report every year that says more and more people are looking for sustainable rentals.

Heather: There are statistics that say the um, Rising amount of guests are looking for safe rentals. If, if these people are out there looking for this stuff, why aren’t we promoting it? Why aren’t we making this a, a big part of our website? Saying this is how we help you be safe on your vacation. This is how we are contributing to a greener environment.

Heather: With what we do. Um, people are out there looking for this stuff, and we’re just not delivering it. Or if we are delivering it, we’re not talking about it

Gilbert: Yeah, so you see, so what you’re saying is almost that it’s, it’s not necessarily just a risk mitigation, like getting, getting insurance, thinking about sustainability is not just about risk mitigation and making sure that your asset is well protected and that you’re protecting your guests, but it’s also, there’s benefits along with it that can be marketable and can attract guests that aren’t, aren’t really, they, they don’t, they don’t find it elsewhere.

Heather: They’re not, well, they will find it on Airbnb. Airbnb are out there saying, you know, this is, this, this is our safety policy. This is our sustainability policy. Um, but we’re not, and it’s, it’s just such a simple thing to do. And all of these things combined together create that trust. So it all works in conjunction.

Heather: The more you put on the website that tells your visitors how you’re protecting them, and how you’re protecting the environment, the more they’re going to trust you, and the more likely they are to book directly with you.

Gilbert: Yeah. Yeah. It feels like you’re still very early in this journey of getting this, this message out, um, there. Uh, I don’t, I know, I don’t know if you agree with that, but what is your longterm vision of this program? And really this awareness.

Heather: Oh, it’s, it’s a little bit like, and I wrote this on a, I’ve got a Facebook group and I wrote this in my group the other day in response to something that Justin Ford said about how important this stir crazy month was and I said you know we’re still having trouble getting people registering because they don’t find it sexy enough, they don’t find it Enough to take them out of their, their daily life to appreciate that it’s going to be massive benefit to them.

Heather: So, you know, over time, we’ll just continue banging the drum. I’m out there on LinkedIn talking about trust, um, tagging Justin Ford and the rent responsibly crew in just about everything we do, because I, I really believe that if we don’t pay attention. To these foundations of our business. It will crumble just like any, any house will crumble if the foundations aren’t given attention.

Gilbert: Yeah. What do you, do you see a market shift happening down the road where we’re almost forced to pay attention to this? I feel like a lot of times when, You’re going through such an industry change. It does take some sort of event, uh, or some side of movement to help get us there.

Heather: I think it’s a matter of slowly chipping away. And I just this morning, I saw a post from Justin Ford, who was talking about a county in Tennessee, where They’ve, they’ve made a new, a new regulation that says all combustible materials must be 15 feet away

Gilbert: I’m in that County. I’m in that County.

Heather: How do you pronounce it?

Gilbert: Uh, I think it’s in, um, the Smoky Mountains, severe, severe County.

Heather: severe, severe, severe bill.

Heather: Yeah. Um, I know it well, because that’s where we leave our RV in, um, through, through the, through the summer. Um, but yes, they’ve, they’ve just put this, uh, the new regulation that your combustible. Um, you know, barbecue or a patio table with a gas fire in it must be 15 feet away from a building.

Gilbert: Yep.

Heather: These, and as Justin said, this is going to, this is just one county, it’s going to escalate.

Heather: And if people don’t pay attention to their safety, um, and do a safety audit on the place, they’re going to find themselves being shut down. Because they’re not complying with new regulations, so I mean, his his thrust is all on safety audits and people that are managing these companies becoming really familiar, not just with the local regulations on safety, but with with with building code with, um, simple things like understanding where a fire extinguisher should actually go.

Heather: It’s not rocket science, but I, as a property manager, I remember talking to so many owners who, who would show me their fire extinguisher that was still kept in a box in a closet because they didn’t want it out on display because it spoilt the aesthetics of the design of their property. Um, so. Yeah, I, you, you can tell by the way I talk here that this is huge passion for me is, is getting this message out that unless you pay attention to these core elements, you could be out of business.

Heather: And I’ll just keep banging that drum.

Gilbert: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like going back to like your specific example there about the combustibles within 15 ft. It severe county put that in place because Gatlinburg had a major fire a couple years back that took down complete neighborhoods of homes and they’re all log cabins. So they’re highly highly combustible.

Gilbert: Um, and like I remember We now have a fire pit at our Gatlinburg. I have a Gatlinburg property as well, too. And I remember calling the fire marshal before we actually designed our fire pit, and I asked them, What do I need to consider while I’m designing this to make sure that I’m doing this responsibly?

Gilbert: And there’s like multiple reasons, but like, one, I don’t want my house to burn down. And two, like, Sevier County And Gatlinburg City, they do audits on us on an annual basis, they will come out and they will inspect our property. It doesn’t take them very long. It only takes them 15 minutes, but they know exactly what to look out for.

Gilbert: And the last thing you want to do as a host is ignore what it is, especially when you just purchased a property, you may be taking over the hands and you just apply for your permit. They’re going to go out there and inspect that property to make sure that it adheres like our pool cabin. We make sure that we have pool alarms in there.

Gilbert: We have door. We have a door alarm on there. We have safe safety equipment to help save lives. If someone gets into a pool where it’s unsafe. Um, and I think yeah, That county and specifically has seen so much happen throughout the years that a lot of folks, they feel like, oh, they’re putting a lot of burden on us as hosts to really meet these standards, but they’re not doing it out of spite.

Gilbert: They’re not doing it to make it harder for folks to get their short term rental license. They’re doing it because they’ve seen the things that have happened and they don’t want them to happen again. Yeah,

Heather: Ford’s presentations at a conference, you would come away thinking, you know, this is my, the number one priority now is to make sure I pay attention to safety. There are so many incidents, whether it’s pools or whether, whether it’s overcrowding on a deck and the deck, um, collapsing or somebody tripping on a rug and making a massive claim.

Heather: Um, there’s just so many incidents that he talks about in these presentations, but people don’t get to hear about. And we occasionally call Justin, you know, the harbinger of doom. Um, because, because this is, you know, this is what he talks about, but this is his, his thing, you know, got to get it across that safety is paramount.

Heather: And you obviously pay huge attention to safety and I, and I really applaud you for that. But so many don’t, it’s, it’s, it’s not, as I said earlier on, it’s not something that, that is interesting enough. To get people to watch videos on or to listen to podcasts on.

Gilbert: yeah, I agree with that. And I think also that get to a point where as a host, one of the things you want to get to is not having to worry about your, your properties or your stays. And that, I think that’s kind of the reason, one of the main reasons why I pay attention to some of those things and how I monetize my place and how do I make it more. How do I make it easier on my staff to make sure that they can maintain things is what I don’t want is that I put amenities in there that don’t work or that I have to worry about the city coming down on me on on a certain thing. Like I’d rather just know that I can or cannot do something and that way I can run my business and pay attention to other parts of my business because I don’t want to worry about skirting and figuring out.

Gilbert: Am I doing things right? Um, so for me, I just yeah. I’d rather just pay that up front and, and do the homework on it and make sure and you learn along the way that there’s things that like we could have done differently. And we’ve we’ve learned, um, like, for instance, like we learned that our decks get really slippery when it’s when it’s out wet on there.

Gilbert: And so we started installing these grip tiles on there to just make it a lot, a lot more safe. And it wasn’t in yeah. The regulation. It wasn’t in the inspection report, but just just living there ourselves and staying there. We’re like, okay, how do we make this a much more pleasant stay? How do we make it safer?

Gilbert: Especially if we’re not the ones very familiar with it. If there’s a guest coming in, we don’t want them learning about a new property and like having to be in an unsafe place.

Heather: It’s about setting foot in every property you own or manage and as a guest. And, and trying to do it as a guest who has never been in that house before, which is, which can be a struggle. So, you know, get somebody in who’s never been there and get them to walk around and be really critical about different aspects of it.

Heather: You know, and just that thought of, of going out onto a deck after it’s rained, you know, the sun’s come out and let’s run out on the deck because now we’ve got great weather and somebody steps foot, sets foot on it and slips. And that’s a vacation, ruined and maybe a lawsuit following. And I mention lawsuits because we were sued for a slip and fall accident.

Heather: And so I went through that process of, of having a lawsuit, having somebody knock on the door. And it was, it was a kid who, who served the suit and it, I think he’d been watching way too many shows because he handed it over and he was very solemn and he said, you’ve been served. I went, but I will never forget that, that it was a Sunday afternoon and we were having a barbecue with friends and, and.

Heather: My office was in the basement of my home. So my address, my home address was, was on our, was our business. And that, that, that certainly put a damper on, on the party we were having. And then it was nearly two years of depositions and statements and, uh, just providing evidence that we were not negligent, which in, in, in effect, it, we, we, we, it ended up that we were not.

Heather: negligent, but there was things that the owner could have done, the things that we could have done to have prevented it. And I think if we’d have somebody out there at the very outset that was able to look at it from a different perspective than myself, maybe as, um, in my position of owner acquisition or the owner who knew the property, like the back of his hand, just have somebody independent come and really check it out.

Heather: As if they were going to litigate from the moment they walked in the door. Mm hm. Mm

Gilbert: That’s interesting because I was thinking about how do we make this a sustainable thing where there’s so many different areas that you can look into home and no matter how much you listen or watch Justin Ford’s videos, there’s inevitably going to be more and more things to look out for. So how do you actually sustainably make sure that your property is safe?

Gilbert: And I think a very tangible and probably very practical one is. Live there for a couple of nights and stay there and like really absorb it yourself. You’ll end up Really understanding like one how to make that stay much more comfortable, how to make him a more pleasant state. But you also get to know the area a lot better.

Gilbert: Um, we for for a lot of the design process when we Purchase a property. I’m not there to furnish the property. I don’t live anywhere close. We’re many, many hours away from our properties. Um, but we try to make sure that before we go live, we actually bring the family over there and we have a family vacation.

Gilbert: We got to celebrate a new place. Um, part of it is a family vacation, but part of it is like really making sure that Our property is up to our standards, and there’s no surprises there. Um, because even if you have a team that’s furnishing things, you’re inevitably at get questions on where is this? Where is that?

Gilbert: Or should you have extra supplies somewhere? Or what types of supplies you want? Because every property is going to have different needs there. Um, but definitely staying there, walking through the property yourself as an owner, I think it’s invaluable.

Heather: Oh, exactly. We tried as far as we could to get our staff to go and stay in different properties as we took them on. Uh, obviously we couldn’t do it for everyone, but it was, it was The ones where we did have a staff member go, we then had them write, um, a report or a blog post and we, we, we called it. We’ve stayed here and those properties where one of our staff had been had the we’ve stayed here badge on it.

Heather: And when you clicked on that badge, it took it to their video and their report of being there and experiencing it. And that’s, you know, that covered a multiple. Such as, you know, that they could, they could assess safety. They could assess how usable and how accessible. The space was they, and they could assess how the amenities and features work.

Heather: So very much like you staying, going and staying in your own place, but I, you know, definitely would recommend that anybody who is managing taking on new places that as far as you possibly can get somebody independent, whether it’s a member of your staff or hire somebody to go and, or, or I’m sure there is a, there is a space for somebody to, to start a company where they just go and stay at places and, and write reports on them.

Heather: I mean, I’d be happy to do it.

Gilbert: That’s actually a, not a bad business idea for any of our listeners here.

Heather: Yeah, exactly. I think Debra Lavey has, uh, uh, from the Have You Got Network, I think she, she’s, uh, she’s suggested that a couple of times. But yes, you know,

Gilbert: no one, no one’s taken it.

Heather: have somebody independent, go stay, whether it’s, you know, just a night or Preferably a couple of nights and come back with a complete report that says, you know, you need to do this, this and this.

Heather: I remember years ago going to a property in the Bahamas and it was first time we’d, first time we’d been there and the property was fantastic. We arrived. Late in the evening, as you do, we, we just managed to, to hit the liquor store on the way, the way to the property and bought some wine and some beer and we arrived and we, we had something to eat and we had a few, few beers and a few glasses of wine and then we went to bed and there was a power outage overnight and I will never forget waking up in the middle of the night getting out of bed And realizing I was in an unfamiliar fa uh, place.

Heather: I had no idea where the light switches were. There were no night lights. And I tripped over a step. There was a step down from the bedroom into a hallway. And I tripped down there and nearly hurt myself. Um, and I’ve not forgotten that because it could have been much worse than it actually was. But it’s this thing, you know, you’re in, you’re in, you’ve got vacation brain, you’re in vacation mode.

Heather: People arrive, they have something to drink. Owners don’t think that those people who come to their place are completely unfamiliar with it. They’ve never experienced it at night. And these particular owners hadn’t thought about the fact that people would be negotiating and navigating unfamiliar terrain in the middle of the night where there was no electricity. That’s a cautionary tale, you know, and always remember that, uh, that every, the majority of people who come to your place, 99. 9%, unless you have a lot of repeat guests, have never been in there before, and will be completely unfamiliar with it.

Gilbert: Yeah. I like the concept of the, the, we stayed here and having your staff stay there because I think there’s, and I’m starting to hear this thread from this conversation that you may do things to really make sure that you’re setting up good foundations for But also, they could be good marketing strategies as well, too, because the things that you do to make it safe, if you outwardly talk about it, if you outwardly publicize the things that you’re doing that a lot of people aren’t aware of, they actually are very attractive to host, sorry, to guests to really trust you.

Heather: Everything you do, in terms of responsibility, ties into marketing. Because, as I mentioned earlier, there is, there is a new generation of people that are looking for safety, they’re looking for sustainability, they’re looking for, for trust. So everything you do needs to be tied back in to how you market it, because it all becomes a selling point.

Heather: And to see websites which are just bland, simple websites, they might have the most amazing photos, um, and great descriptions written by AI. But if there’s no safety page, if there’s no page on there that makes me feel I can trust you, Um, then it’s wasted. It’s all, I wouldn’t say all wasted, but to a certain degree it is.

Gilbert: Yeah. Yeah, and we talked about this before the show. I definitely want to have you kind of like audit our, our templates and, and figure out like how do we encourage more hosts to include some of these, like in in in, in our space, we try to make it where we create standard pages for a lot of things that we want our hosts to put onto their website.

Gilbert: We asked them to upload a picture of themselves, we asked them to provide a bio, really, and we found through tests is that when you do that, it makes your site much more personable. It doesn’t feel like a big property management company where they don’t know who’s actually managing that behind the scenes.

Gilbert: So we actually have a field in there that encourages folks. It’s actually a checkbox that they had to fill out before. Their website is like complete. Um, so I definitely want to have you and we’ll, we’ll chat about this offline, but to have you audit our templates and figure out like, okay, are there things that we should be including?

Gilbert: I hadn’t thought about really encouraging our hosts to include a safety page, um, or a trust page or sustainability page. So those are things that like, I haven’t been exposed to that. I definitely want to. Encourage this kind of this wave of really using that as a way to build more trust with their, their guests.

Heather: And I’m looking forward to doing that because the majority of templates are, they don’t go into this. You know, the templated style that comes out from the, from the PMSs, they are just a vehicle to put your property on it and to, to, to create some, um, some listings, maybe put a blog on. Um, but I, I, I think there is, there is huge, huge scope there.

Heather: To, to create something that’s really easy for people to fill in, you know, because I, I do know, I know this, people want to do the minimum amount of work, but I, I think it can be made to, um, to be time efficient, yet really, really effective.

Gilbert: Yeah. And I do think that, like, if you make it part of the onboarding process and this goes for agencies as well, too. Like if, if you have an agency building out your website. They have a checklist of things that they want to ask you for, uh, and similarly, when you go on our, our platform, we have a checklist of things that we want you to input so that you can not just check off all the boxes, but you’re including the relevant information to really drive higher conversions for your site.

Heather: Yeah, it, it, exactly. And it will, it will drive higher conversions. And

Gilbert: Mm.

Heather: add in something else that’s a particular bugbearer of mine. Um, Chris Morn talks about trust signals, you know, the, the, and the social, social proof. It’s down in the footer and it might be, let’s say, um, let’s say you’re a member of the local chamber of commerce.

Heather: So people will put a, the logo of the local chamber of commerce. Now, usually they go from there two directions. Either it does no link, it doesn’t go anywhere. Which is completely useless. Uh, or secondly, you click on it and it takes you out of that website and onto the Chamber website. But isn’t it so much better to link back, to have an internal link in the website that takes you back to maybe your Trust page?

Heather: And The on the trust page is that we are it says we are members of numerous local organizations. We’re a member of the chamber of commerce. We’re a member of the of the tourism department. We do, we do, we give to this charity. Um, but everything you have in that footer, I believe, and you know, I’m happy to be, for somebody to argue against this, um, but I will argue my case that if you’ve got something in the footer, it should link back to something on your website and not send them away somewhere.

Gilbert: I mean, having my experience in e commerce, uh, prior, prior to this, that’s utterly important. You definitely, on a, on a commerce website, on a conversion focused website, you’re trying to drive people down a funnel. And you don’t want them to abandon that, because if you do open another tab, and God hopes you don’t actually open that as a new, as like redirecting them off your site altogether.

Gilbert: Um, but even opening them to a new tab, you’re distracting them from, From what they came there for, or what you want them to come there for, which is to book a stay with you.

Heather: just a couple of other examples that, um, Sustonica is, is a company that offers, um, a sustainability certificate and, and, but I’ve seen Sustonica logos on a website and when you click on it, it takes them to the Sustonica, takes them out to the Sustonica website, which is fantastic. I mean, there’s a huge amount of information on that site, but so much better.

Heather: To go back internally and say this is why we went for Sustonica certification because we believe in sustainability and we’ve met all the criteria of the Sustonica certification by doing this and then list all the things you’ve done. Um, it just keeps people on the site. It holds their attention. And then, of course, on that page, you’ve got a call to action that says, you know, book one of our.

Heather: sustainable properties.

Gilbert: Yeah, um, we’re about to I’m sure a lot of our listeners know this already, but one of the big things that we want to introduce into our platform this year, actually in the first half of the year, is our blog. And I wonder whether or not a blog is a good way to talk about some of these things, and in a very structured format where you can have those links actually linked to a blog, where you can talk at length about these types of programs.

Gilbert: Or do you prefer to have more landing pages to talk about those things?

Heather: I, I like to have the static, the evergreen pages. You know, that’s the way I was sort of brought up. I mean, I’ve been, I was a blogger before I became anything else. And knowing that, you know, knowing what was evergreen and what was dynamic was, was really important. And, I, I see some of those areas like safety and sustainability to be, um, to be static.

Heather: But yes, to, to link out from there to blog posts, it’s just more internal linking, isn’t it? It’s, it’s keeping people on the site, getting them more im, immersed in, and every mo every time they link from one page to another on your own site, they’re trusting you more and more.

Gilbert: yeah, and

Heather: so, so I just see a mix, a mix of both, maybe just having, I mean, you could have one page that, that, that talks about your responsibilities, that talks about your responsibility to safety, sustainability, um, and, uh, regulatory compliance, et cetera, just, just one single page, and then that could link out, uh, they could have, uh, hyperlinks out to, um, specific blog posts,

Gilbert: yeah, yeah, I think that’s a very, very scalable way of doing it without really adding a whole bunch of orphan landing pages and so on. Content that people can discover. And I think you mentioned internal links. And whenever I think about internal links, the, the, one of the very added benefits of this is that it starts to drive up your SEO as well, too.

Gilbert: So you get that SEO benefit from, from building out these pages and the content around it, um, and building that site authority so that it shows up on, on the big search engines much more effectively.

Heather: Oh, yes. Yeah, exactly. And using, using multimedia too, and you, you mentioned about us pages, and that, that’s, that’s a particular passion of mine too. Whenever I go to a website, I’m off, I’m, one of the first pages I go to is the about us page, because I want to know the person behind it. I want to see the face.

Heather: I want to hear the story. And when I say I want to hear the story, if there’s a video of them telling their story, that’s even better. And even, even audio, but just video, just, just a short video. There’s some, um, I I’ve written a number of posts on about us pages and the ones that I’ve researched, the ones with, with videos do so much better than those with just a static photo and, and a description,

Gilbert: I can definitely see that because there’s a lot more emotion that you’re, you’re able to convey in video that doesn’t come across on text and images. Yeah. Um, one of the last topics I want to chat with you about is really as folks get into direct bookings, what’s some of the more tangible things that they can put into practice to help them in that first year where they’re trying to figure out how to build their direct booking engine.

Heather: um, really everything, everything we’ve talked about is building out that content. Um, becoming. You know, people have got to find you. Um, so, there’s a I’m trying to remember the book. Marcus Oh! I will let you have the name of the book. It’s called They Ask You Answer.

Gilbert: Okay.

Heather: And I can’t remember, I can’t remember his name, but anyways, his first name is Marcus.

Heather: Um, but he built out his company, which is um, Pools, Pools and Spas. But he built out his company by answering every single question that his customers ever asked on his website. Whether it was in a blog post or whether it was actually frequently asked questions on the website. everything they ever asked was on that site.

Heather: And that was how he, he built a massive, massive following. Because when people are still out there asking general questions, and we’re, we’re using, we’re using conversational language now in, in our prompts in chat GPT, we’re not, you know, I think the whole prompt engineering thing is, is less important now than it, than it used to be.

Heather: But people are using conversation like answer this question for me. And if you have that specific answer to that question on your website, it’s, they’re going, hopefully they’re going to come across it. So that’s, that’s the first thing is know what your guests are asking, know what they want, um, and make sure you have the answer to it and you have it on your website somewhere.

Heather: Uh, whether it’s in a blog post or whether it’s in Frequently Asked Questions. Um, secondly is to build trust from the outset. Put trust above the fold. Now whether that is in a nav bar where it has, uh, where it has the text that just says, Why trust us? People are going to go there. They’re going to say, OK, why should I trust you?

Heather: I’ll click here. Or it’s just simply trust. But try and get that word trust somewhere. www. frumprov. com On that, uh, that, that home page. Now it could be that you go for certification, IPRAC certification or something like that, which is, is trust certification. And I’m, I’m going to put a plug in here for Chris Morn, um, and IPRAC because he is, um, releasing his trust score report.

Heather: Uh, shortly. And that looks, that, that trust score, um, mechanism looks at over 120 different trust signals on a website and then delivers a report that gives you a score as to how trustworthy your website actually is. So, so that’s the second thing. Make trust right up front so that’s when, if somebody just lands on your website, Because they, they, they do.

Heather: They’ve, they’ve found it, maybe they’ve found it by, through Hi Chi, they’ve been looking at Hi Chi and they’ve put an Airbnb, um, link in there, um, and they’ve found your website. They’ve got to trust you before they go any further or before they just click back to Airbnb and make that booking. Um,

Gilbert: yeah.

Heather: Does that answer that question?

Gilbert: I think so. Um, yeah, and I do like how, how, how you have a very different perspective. Like you’re not talking necessarily about email marketing and some of those things. But like, these are one of those foundational pieces. And the thing I find, and I say this a lot on the show is that, The thing about direct bookings is that it compounds over time that it builds on top of everything that you do in your business, whereas I find that on Airbnb, it’s very transactional.

Gilbert: You’re trying to get that next booking, but in this case, you’re actually layering in the trust aspect in there. You’re thinking about your ideal guest avatar, what they might be asking, what they’re looking for on the page, and these things build over time so that when you invest into it, you will start to reap those benefits as it compounds over time.

Gilbert: Yeah.

Heather: about how many times people visit a website before they make that final decision. And you want them to find something new every time they come on your website. Uh, you know, if they didn’t see it first, they’re going to see it the second or the third time. Yeah, you know, I, I agree. Email marketing and all that marketing stuff is, is important.

Heather: But it’s useless if once people get to the website and then feel that It’s, it’s not worth pursuing and it’s much, I feel much safer if I go back to Airbnb because they look after me with their, with their guest guarantee. So the work on the website is, to me, is just as important as collecting an email list and all the digital marketing in the world.

Heather: You’ve got to have that product that makes people feel comfortable at the end of the day.

Gilbert: agree. Awesome. Heather. Um, we usually end the show with two, two questions. You might have answered the second one already. Um, I might, I might ask you to, I might ask it again either way. Um, but the first question I’ve, I’ve been changing this around, but it’s really around, uh, what is a book that you would recommend, um, that has changed your life?

Heather: Ooh, you didn’t give me this one in advance, did you? Um, the one that’s, you know, changing, changing my business life. And the, the, the way I, I, I approach websites, it is, they ask, you answer. Um, and I’ve, I’ve read that book years ago and, and it made, you know, it had really profound, um, it made profound change in what I did.

Heather: Cause it made me understand the customer. And what the customer was looking for. And also, how I could beat the competition, because the competition wasn’t out there doing that. So that’s, that’s, yeah, I’ll, I’ll just leave that one with you. Um,

Gilbert: And

Heather: I, I read,

Gilbert: Sheridan.

Heather: Marcus Sheridan, thank you. You Googled.

Gilbert: I did Google. I didn’t want to leave it hanging.

Heather: I know, I was thinking about Marcus Radar, but Marcus Radar is, um, host away, I believe.

Gilbert: I think so. Awesome. Uh, the last question I had, and again, you might have answered it, so we, I might ask you for a very tactical thing. Um, but what is the one tactical advice that you want everybody listening to the show today to put into practice? What’s that one small thing that they can start to do right away?

Gilbert: Yep.

Heather: Oh, the easiest one is to take an hour, maybe more, sit down and do a thorough audit of your website. And go to it as if you had never seen it before, if you were a guest on your very first finding of it. And, you know, just from the simple things, if somebody comes to your website and, and, and they’re looking for somewhere to go, and it doesn’t say right on the front page where you’re located.

Heather: So many, so many sites do that. They don’t show where they are. You know, we used to say Ontario cottage rentals because we were in Ontario, but often you go to a site and it has some obscure town that you may never have heard of. And how do you know you’ve been in the right place? But anyway, so, go to your site, do a thorough audit, page by page by page, and go to every single page, and figure out how somebody who has never been to your site, how trusting you’re making them feel.

Heather: Is what you’re putting on that page Does it make them feel, give them that warm, fluffy feeling. They’re, they’re in the right place and that you are going to really, really look after them. Be super critical. Or if you can’t, if you can’t do that yourself, ask somebody else you can trust to be critical, to go and do that for you.

Heather: You don’t want them to be kind to you and say, Oh, a lovely pictures. You want them to say, Hey, there’s, there’s nothing on here that makes me feel safe or that I can trust you or I’ve just gone to your, I’ve just gone to your, um, I’ve just looked for your cancellation policies and there’s nothing on there about cancellation. Um, where is it? your terms and conditions? What happens if, what happens if I have to leave suddenly? You know, all, all these things get somebody to do this for you if you can’t do it yourself.

Gilbert: Awesome. Awesome. And I’m, I’m hoping that over time we start to incorporate some of these things into just how we build our sites so that it becomes almost standard practice at some point.

Heather: Absolutely. It’s the pillars of this business. Have it in mind all the time. Trust, responsibility, and hospitality, of course. We haven’t talked much about hospitality, but then I’m sure you have a ton of people who come on and talk about hospitality.

Gilbert: Yes. Awesome. Heather, it was really good to have you on the show and dive really deep into a topic that I think a lot of folks don’t think too much about. But I think after, after listening to this episode, we start to reconsider some of the foundational pieces that we start to need to invest into early on.

Heather: Well, it’s been great. I’ve really enjoyed it, Gil. I’d love to hear what you’re doing with your properties and your company, because I don’t come across truly responsible people a lot, unfortunately. So it was, it was, it’s great to hear that you’re there already.

Gilbert: I mean, it’s, you learn over time, you learn over time, and I think like I’m lucky enough to be in a county that’s a little bit more restrictive, but you also, you know what the best practices are, and if you’re scaling to other markets, it’s easier to know what, what you should be looking out for, even though they don’t have regulations there that way. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you, Heather.

Heather: Thank you, Gil. It’s been a pleasure.

Yeah. Yeah.