Transcription
I think it's time to stop building your short-term rental empire on Airbnb's land. Sponsored listings is not a good idea. It's a great idea for the shareholders.
And if Airbnb shadowbans you or takes you off the listing, you have lost your only source of income. The consumer is getting smarter. They know that Airbnb isn't the only platform. They know that they can go and look elsewhere because they can get a better deal. Mark Simpson, welcome back to the channel, my friend. We just did a quick search and our last video on direct bookings got 275,000 views. Why do you think that is?
I think, well, this was filmed what, two years ago. I feel like when it was filmed, I feel like there was the first sort of impetus from hosts to go, "Listen, I love Airbnb, been in it for many years, but I want to see what else is out there, you know? I want to dabble on the market, so to speak." And I feel like direct bookings was just prime at the time. And I feel like in the last two years, that's only ramped up. With everything that we're going to talk about today, I feel like hosts' appetite now has never been stronger because of all the things that they've had to deal with the last two years with Airbnb and the other OTAs.
Sure. And for everyone at home, OTAs, we're going to be saying that a lot today. That means online travel agency. So, it's the platform in which you book a short-term rental. That could be Booking.com, that could be VBO, Airbnb, and so forth. And by the way, this is my first video in my new series about direct bookings, which is going to teach you my exact playbook for building a direct booking business so that you don't have to rely on Airbnb. So, you're going to want to hit the subscribe button and notification bell to stay tuned. Let's talk about this. I think it's a very topical time. Um, you know, I'm not a doom and gloom guy, per se, contrary to a lot of the thumbnails that you might see on my channel, but I do think that the end of Airbnb, um, as we know it, is approaching. Um, and what I mean by this, I recently made a video that talked about how the business model of Airbnb is shifting where I think hosts are waking up a little bit. I think they're kind of tired of being, you know, handled or poked and prodded by the Airbnb bear. And I think that the Airbnb platform, as grateful as I am for it, is making a lot of changes in this space that aren't particularly favorable to hosts, but are favorable to guests.
Yeah, I feel that a lot of people are realizing now that it's not the be all and end all. It's not the only channel. It's just a marketing channel as well. So you combine the two things, the things that they've had to put up with, policy changes, higher fees, etc. And you combine that with the fact that, um, a lot of people now are getting a bit more professional. So they are getting a property management software tool. They're getting a Guesty. And when they're on the Guesty, and they're on the back end, they see that they can connect to these other places, you know, like Vrbo or Booking.com. Booking.com has had such a big surge of listing growth in America over the last 12 months, which is crazy. But I feel like because hosts are going, "My Airbnb bookings have dried up. Let me go and try somewhere else." You know, it's like if your Instagram views are down, you go and create a TikTok, right? It's the same sort of thing. And I feel like a lot of people are realizing that. And then once you start going multi-channel, and you've got a property management software tool like Guesty, for example, then you go, "Well, there's this little button here called website. Let me just tick that." And there's a little button here, "Go where I can take payments." So I basically can do direct. And I feel like that has been the impetus over the last couple of years where people are like, "Right." And your video a couple of weeks ago was insane, how many people were saying, "I want direct bookings. I want direct bookings. Help." I was seeing in the comments how many people were believing it. So I just feel like 2026 is the year of direct bookings for sure.
I often will ask my audience, "Hey, if you want me to make content about blank, let me know in the comments." And by far, this is the video that got the most comments whenever I raise that question to the audience. I think it's time to really give some spotlight to direct bookings in a very real way in 2026. And that's what we're going to do today. One thing that I want to give you credit for that I say a lot and I don't always credit you for this, but today you're going to get the credit. So if you ever hear me say it, just know it came from Mark Simpson. There's a metaphor you gave when you spoke at my conference, Hostcon, a couple years ago. You said, "How many here are, you know, how many here work a 9-to-5 job?" And everybody raised their hands. And you said, "If you lose your 9-to-5 job, you have lost your only source of income." And Airbnb is the same way. Airbnb, for a lot of hosts, is the only place where they list their property. And if Airbnb deactivates you or shadowbans you or takes you off the listing, you have lost your only source of income. And that is something that has hit home for me. A very good host that is above board in everything that I do because I have been taken off of Airbnb two times now for things that were out of my control. The first time, someone said that we had bed bugs. We didn't have bed bugs, and we got deactivated for weeks. Oh, no. The second time, we tried to get a booking on Halloween, and Airbnb wouldn't let us get the booking because they said that they suspected a party. And it was like two older ladies, and they're like, "We don't want a party. We just need a place to stay." And we're like, "Sorry."
But this just recently happened, and I'll talk about this later in my series of direct booking in the coming weeks here. But I recently had a TikTok go viral because someone tried to stay at my property and throw a $2,000-plus party at my property, and she went viral on TikTok. I made a response. I shut her down, and I basically stitched together a response that was funny, and I was like, "Yeah, this isn't happening." And I canceled her booking, and you know, whatever. She reported me to Airbnb, and Airbnb took my listing down. Now, I'm sure I broke some kind of terms and conditions in some capacity, but it was all off of Airbnb. None of this had to do with Airbnb.com. It had to do with the fact that it was a TikTok beef, and I got my property that regularly books for $12,000 a night removed for several days. And that is the only place that I list that property. So for me, that was my income source cut off, right? And so I'm tired of this because this happens to people every single day. This doesn't just happen to me. This is happening to thousands of hosts, and I know so many people that have lost their business because of some uncontrollable circumstance outside of Airbnb. And so today's podcast isn't necessarily about getting off of Airbnb and saying, "To hell with them." We love Airbnb. I don't know if you do, but I love Airbnb. But it is time to diversify and maybe not necessarily put all of your eggs in one basket.
So, I want to talk about some of the things that Airbnb has done that has kind of stirred the pot. And, um, I know you have your own kind of insights and anecdotes into all of this, but I kind of alluded earlier to the fact that Airbnb is kind of just making some policy changes that aren't necessarily beneficial to hosts. And, um, one of those things, I think, is that recent 15% service charge that they have now put on the hosts versus charging guests 13% and charging hosts 3%, or charging guests 12% and charging hosts 3%.
Yeah. That used to be the arrangement. We were all happy with that arrangement. Everybody complained on TikTok about it, and wouldn't you know, Airbnb is now making all the hosts kind of front the bill for that.
Yeah. Uh, so firstly, for for a lot of reasons, I got to say, I do love Airbnb. I love the story. I love Brian Chesky. I love the whole story. It's fantastic. It's phenomenal. My problem isn't so much with Airbnb because, like you said, they have to do what they got to do to make money. It's the same with Booking.com. It's the same with Expedia. My problem is with the hosts who refuse to do anything about it, right? And, um, there's, you're right, there's so many instances like yours that are cropping up. And I think the best example I can give is, you're a business owner, right? And say that you buy something from me, right? We've got a nice transaction going on. If it's booked on Booking.com, it's like having a big brother looking over your shoulder at every single point and turn, where the big brother's like, "Are you sure you want to do that? Are you sure you want to do that?" You want to do is literally doubting every single move that you make.
To the point where if an Airbnb guest or an OTA guest is in your property, and if there is one little thing that is wrong, you instantly worry that you're going to get marked down in your review because if you get a bad review, then you start worrying about your average scores, and then you start worrying about your Superhost badge, and all of those things. And that's the problem with Airbnb is that you're constantly got anxiety.
Yeah. And it's not a good place to be. And the thing about that, because you can get fired, right? Like in the 9-to-5 metaphor that, you know, we talked about, you get fired from your job, you get fired from Airbnb by getting delisted. You get a two-star review that brings your five-star. Like if you have three reviews, and two of them are five-star, and one of them is two-star because of just some random crazy guest, your rating gets, it's like a 4.2. It's not good, and it takes a long time to crawl back up. And so you get a couple of these bad reviews over time, you can get fired, you know, in the eye of the public on Airbnb.com.
And this is why I say that I haven't so much got a problem with the OTAs. I got a problem with the hosts who refuse to change because I see all these things that are going on, and I see the Facebook groups, and I see the comments, and I see the people that come to me and they go, "Oh, you know, this has happened. I want to, I know I need to do something. I know I need to come off this platform, but I don't know what to do." And I lay out a foundation of what they need to do. I check in with them like a month later, and they've done nothing. And so this is why, you know, coming on the podcast, I want to help give some advice and give some feedback of what they can do. But before we do that, let's look at what they have done over the last two years. Right. So from two years ago, what have they done? Number one, you hit the nail on the head. The service fee has gone up. I spoke at one of your events. I stood on stage just under two years ago and said, "Listen, it's going to be a matter of when, not if, they're going to put your fee up." Because Booking.com charges a minimum of 15%. The Expedia Group charges the same, around about 15%. And Airbnb were charging 3%. Brian Chesky went on TV back end of last year and said that we want to, we made a mistake with our old charge because they tried to be cute and clever and they said they want it to be a simplified price, which is simplified pricing. And a lot of people, if you are connected to a PMS like Guesty, for example, you were instantly moved on October the 27th from 3% to 15.5%. And that 0.5% is the one that got me going. Because moving from 3% to 15%, and then if the guest isn't paying that, that doesn't really spark alarm bells for me. It's that 0.5%. So before the 0.5% increase, everybody was either paying 3% or 15%. What they did is they put everybody on 15.5%. So they moved the needle a little bit. 5% in most people's portfolio means nothing. But if you're at a level of Airbnb, literally overnight, you have added millions to your to your millions.
Absolutely. And the reason why that's interesting to me is that Chesky said that he wants the whole of Airbnb platform to be simplified pricing. My new prediction is it's a matter of when, not if, that everybody's going to get moved to 20%. Now, why 20%? If you look at the new tools that they brought in, which was services and experiences. Experiences came back, services is brand new. Go look at how much those vendors get charged. If you go book a massage or a walk-in tour in wherever, they get charged 20%. And if they want to have one simplified price throughout the whole website, it's just a matter of when, not if, they're going to go to 20%. Now, moving that 0.5% needle may not sting that much, but adding on an extra, you know, going to 20%, that will. And if we fail to do anything about it, we're just going to be giving them more money. And we can all argue that the service hasn't got better for it. Some may argue it's got worse.
Now, if that doesn't hurt, the other things that they've done is they've changed a lot of their policies last year. So they are trying to become the big OTA. So an online travel agent. And if you look at the Booking Holdings group, which owns Booking.com, Booking.com don't just do hotels, they don't just do vacation rentals, they also do flights. You know, they're an all-in-one OTA. Brian Chesky has said that he wants Airbnb to be the Amazon of travel. He is not investing this time and money just in services, just in experiences. There are going to be more categories, and he has said there are more categories coming, and they want to become this big online travel agent because Booking.com, if you look at the stocks and shares, is worth way more than Airbnb, right? We may not think that in the States because in America, Booking.com isn't really favored upon. You come out of America, you go to Europe, Booking.com is the major booking platform of choice. You go to Asia, Agoda is the major booking platform of choice. Agoda is owned by Booking Holdings group, which is Booking.com.
Yeah, you're right. Booking Holdings is a hundred billion valuation, and Airbnb is $68 billion in valuation, if I'm reading this correctly, or that's their market capitalization.
So, Airbnb dominates the short-term rental industry, but they don't dominate the hospitality industry. And, right, what Airbnb are doing behind the scenes is they're changing their policies. So it mirrors more an OTA. So the cancellation policy just got changed literally overnight. There's been other policies that have changed overnight. Uh, one of the things that is changing as well in America, I don't know if anybody's realized this, but you've got temporary phone numbers. So obviously when a guest books, so you got when a guest books, the uberization of, uh, of a guest. They want the whole communication to be obviously on their platform. It's their right to do so. It's their business. It's their rules.
Absolutely. Explain that a little bit though, because, um, what does this mean now? Like, you now are unable to get the customer information, basically, right?
Yeah. So basically, we all know this. If a guest books direct, you get phone number, you get email, you get name, you get all the juicy stuff. But if a guest books through Airbnb or Booking.com or Expedia, you get the first name, last name, yes, but you don't get an email address. You just get a what's called a mirrored email address where it'll be mark.simpson@bnb.com, you know what I mean? Or something like that. As soon as the guest checks out, that email address, so you can't communicate to it. You can't add it to your CRM because it will go nowhere. But we've had the phone number. The phone number's been great. You know, I've loved having that phone number because then it means that I can contact my guest after their stay. Obviously, Airbnb know this. And now they put in temporary phone numbers where it's a temporary phone number that when you call it, it goes to their real phone number, but as soon as the guest checks out, that number disappears. So, you know, they're making it harder and harder for you to try and stay in touch with a guest post booking. Um, they are increasing their costs. I think everybody will agree the level of customer support has dropped because they are investing so much more money now into AI. And, you know, AI is a lot of things, but it hasn't got common sense. You know, you can definitely argue, you're a TikToker. Yes, you may have kind of gone against the T's and C's, but you didn't go against the T's and C's of common sense. You know, if you spoke to a human 10 years ago about that, they would have been like, "No problem at all. We'll deal with it." Now, because they've grown so big, they're tapping into AI because they bought an AI solution called Game Planner. They are embedding it massively into their system, and they are hiring so many people that are not skilled, and common sense goes out the window because there are so many people within the organization in that customer support that they're reading from a script.
That's interesting. Yeah. You know, I would say I hear this a lot about the customer service. I mean, in general, I would say I've had a pretty good shake at Airbnb. Like, I think they've sided with me. A lot of people are always like, "Air Cover sucks, blah blah blah." I actually think Airbnb has, for the most part, had my back. Um, and so a lot of my anger really doesn't, it doesn't come from that. I think a lot of people are like, "Airbnb has gone down the hill, down the wayside." But for me, it's, I'm like, you know, they've had my back for the most part. But it's kind of these small things that are sort of like, you get your listing removed or suspended, and there's nothing you can do about it for possibly weeks on end. Like John Hildebrand, I know you know him. He's in the community, and he was deactivated for a very long time. I think for like a month or something like that.
Those who don't know John Hildebrand, he literally can't get higher in the host community for Airbnb. He is like, he is like one of the golden boys. And for him to get suspended, it's like, well, what hope is there for us? You know what I mean?
Well, that's what you'd be surprised, man. There are a lot of people that are like, you know, when I talk about, cuz I share all my stuff on Instagram. That's kind of my day-to-day. Like when stuff happens, I'm on Instagram. And people are like, "Yeah, but you're Rob Built. Like, just phone Brian Chesky." Like everybody thinks I have a direct line to Brian Chesky. And I'm always like, "I don't have a rep. There's no Rob, there's no Rob Built batline where I can call Airbnb to have stuff taken care of." Even for me, that doesn't exist. Um, finally, I'm establishing some contacts, but I get a lot of people that DM me and say, "Rob, I don't, you know, I know this is a long shot, but my listing just got removed. Do you know anybody at Airbnb corporate?" And I'm always like, "No, even if I did, it's not like I'm going to be like, 'Yeah, let me patch you in,' because then everybody would ask me for that." But I don't have, I don't have special contacts. And so that becomes a problem when you can't get through to the people that can reestablish your business. And I'll tell you something else that kind of has rubbed me the wrong way because this was my favorite thing about Airbnb and kind of gets into the direct bookings. And I'm going to, we're going to get into very soon here why 2026 is going to be the most important year in hosting history in my opinion. But Airbnb for a long time was best man wins. If you have the best property, you win. If you have the best copy and the best marketing within your within the platform, you rise up in the search rankings. And recently, there's been chatter that they're going to introduce sponsored listings. I don't know if you've heard about this.
Where basically hosts can now pay to have their listings boosted, which, you know, it's a bittersweet thing because on one end, it kind of, you know, for us bigger hosts, we can dedicate $1 or $2,000 a month as a marketing budget to boosting our presence. But for the smaller mom and pop people that are kind of scrappier, cheaper, you know, just more on a budget, it's going to really create this like, the rich get richer type of scenario, I think, on Airbnb. And it's going to become this, even just go back before everybody gets mad about this, the worst host can also become the best host in that if you're a horrible host with a great property, you can boost it and beat me, a very good host, just because you decided to spend more money than me. And now Airbnb becomes this like, "Who's paying me the more?" They're going to become Yelp, basically, right? Where it's like the worst filters, the worst reviews get filtered. You have to pay money to have the best one show up. You have to pay money to be at the top of the rankings. And it's like, that's just not a fair, uh, level playing ground anymore.
Yeah. Well, fun fact, I used to work for Yelp selling those sponsored listings way back when, in the day, 2008, 2009. So I know exactly about that. And this is a true test. Airbnb have said that they listen to the host community. They really do say that they try and, and I have seen them try a lot more with events that they're putting on and whatnot. This is the true test is that they listen to guests. As you said, just a TikTok storm or a Twitter storm, and they change so much, like cleaning fees and, you know, guest service charges. This is my litmus test for Airbnb to see if they really do listen to hosts because you are right, sponsored listings is not a good idea. It's a great idea for the shareholders. It's a great idea for the P&L of Airbnb. It's a really bad idea for what we know and love of Airbnb, which is what it was founded on authentically.
Yeah. Let's see if they are listening because if you do think it's a bad idea, try and get in contact with them. There is the Airbnb community forum that I'm not allowed on, but I know there's one there, right? And there is Twitter, there is social media, there are people that you can contact. And, you know, it was a throwaway comment from Brian Chesky about sponsored listings. He was talking about it because somebody asked him when they just recently hired an ex-OpenAI head of AI, whatever he was doing on that platform, he's they've hired him at Airbnb to help with their next phase of AI search. He did mention that one of the plans that they were going to be doing is bringing sponsored listings within AI search. And obviously, as we all know, if we bring it in in one segment, they're going to bring it in in all over. I think Airbnb will look so different in four years' time than what it does today.
But we all know this is a bad idea, right? And I feel like if you truly believe this is a bad idea, do something about it. Don't just sit on your hands. Don't just complain in a Facebook group and go, "Oh, I don't like this." Go to Airbnb. Go to these events when you see them at like conferences and whatnot, and you see a booth there. Go and tell them because they will pass the feedback up. And this is a true test to see if they are listening because, you know, I know we all know it's not a good idea.
So do me a favor. If I am genuinely curious for everyone at home, if you think that sponsored listings are a good idea, let me know in the comments. And if you think they're a bad idea, let me know in the comments. I actually do know people now. I'm developing relationships with people at Airbnb finally, eight years later and five years into the Rob Built platform. I actually do have some people I can pass that feedback along. If the sentiment for my audience is, "Please don't do this," in order for that to happen, I need to know. So, if you think sponsored listings are a good or a bad idea, you don't even have to write a long comment if you don't want to. Just write "good" or "bad." I'm genuinely curious what that split's going to be because I can see the appeal for certain people. I think for people that, I mean, I don't know. I see the appeal. I see myself how I can capitalize on the idea of it. But here's kind of like, sort of the fork in the road for me as a host and as a professional operator, and why I think 2026 is going to be the most important year in hosting history, is because Airbnb, if they do go through with sponsored listings, I know you said in the AI search, but if they end up mass launching it and you can just promote your property, it becomes this pay-to-play opportunity. And my question to everyone at home is, why pay to play with Airbnb when you can pay to play with your own brand and with your own set of ads and with your own ecosystem and funnel system online? And I think this is finally the year for a lot of people where, you know, hosts, if you've had enough, that's okay. Again, I'm not asking you to leave Airbnb. I love Airbnb. I'm grateful for them. I hope to have Brian Chesky on the podcast here on the channel so we can actually talk about it in a nuanced way. But like, I think it's time to stop building your empire, your short-term rental empire, on Airbnb's land. I think that it is now time to build your short-term rental empire on your own land, your digital land, so to speak. And so let's talk about that.
Now, I want to talk about, sort of like, the future of online travel agencies and kind of what this means for the everyday host. So, let's hop into that a little bit.
Yeah. No, you're right. This gets me excited. This topic because I've been talking about it for 10 years. So it's nice to see that we're at this point because you're right. Like hosts, hosts have had enough, and I feel like this is why a lot of people now are pivoting towards it and they are seeing it. And I feel like for the last 10 years, I've talked about this, and every single time people go, "It's just, I don't have time. I don't have the money. I don't have the resources. I don't know what I'm doing." But I feel like now with all of the resources that we have and the emergence of these cool free tools from like ChatGPT and Perplexity, Gemini with AI, it is so much easier now than ever to be able to learn a subject and get very, very, very good at it. And like you say, you can take that money that you would give to Airbnb, your 15%, your 20%, you know, with a sponsored listing, you could be paying up to maybe 30% of a booking. You can, and you can put it instead into building your brand because.
I wasn't even thinking about that. A percentage of your booking. I'll quit if they do that. I was thinking like, yeah, you can spend $20 a day or something, but.
Well, if you look at Booking.com, another example, Booking.com. So there's a section on Booking.com in the extra. And I've been on Booking.com for years and years and years, and I know this inside out. Is that you can pay a set rate, 15%. Right? Everybody pays 15%. But if you pay them 18% or 20%, they will boost you in the ranking, right? So, and then you can go up to as much as whatever you want to go up to, 50%, 60%. You can, you can click up and continue to give more of a percent.
It's like a little counter on the back end.
Dude, and it just puts you up. And you know, people are desperate and they do it. And it even shows you where you will go higher in the ranking. It's like, you're currently 20. You click this, you'll go to 17. Keep going. It's like gamifying in the back end. And that's literally what they'll mirror, they will mirror that, in my opinion.
So hosts are now at a point where it makes so much sense to invest that and put it into doing something direct bookings. And the cool thing is as well, direct bookings, you know, a lot of it you don't even have to pay money. You don't have to pay money to Meta or TikTok or Google. You can do it for free. It just takes time, and time has always been a massive barrier. But I say AI now has sped that time up massively. So it's a really exciting time this year.
Yeah. So, yeah, the sorry, you got me flustered on this percentage situation, but I think the other big turning point here and the importance of all of this is just owning the customer data as well. And, you know, we've alluded to this at the beginning of the podcast, but I think the reason Airbnb is so massive is because they have customer data, like millions and millions and millions of emails that they can remarket to and retarget and get people to come back.
We do not have access to any of that. And so we can't get people. There's no incentive for Airbnb to send someone back or remind them to come back to your place. They just want them to come back to Airbnb.com. And so, like, if there's no incentive there, I think it's going to be a problem. And so we get into this world of direct bookings and the pay-to-play, like you're talking about, and I'm like, you know, for reference and why this spiritual awakening has happened for me is because I recently bought that short-term rental development in Texas. It's a 13-unit tiny home village. It's got domes, it's got hobbit homes, A-frames. They're all 3,400 square feet. And these properties will do anywhere from like six to $11,000 a month a piece. I would say probably 7 to 8K is the average across all of them every single month, every year, over the year. 70% of those bookings last month came direct. And that is a massive number. So, for anyone at home, of all the bookings I got on those 13, I think we, I want to say, I don't know what we did, but like generally speaking, our average is anywhere from like 80 to 120K. That's kind of like the average on those 13 units every single month. So let's say we did 100K. $70,000 of that, in this example, came from direct bookings. And our ad spend was $2,800 bucks last month. I can, I'll pull this up for you just so we can be sure. But like in January, we did not spend like a ton on ads. We got what's called a 12 ROAS, which is absolute. Oh, we got an 11.12 ROAS. Absolute insanity. Absolute insanity. Okay. So for every dollar I spent on marketing, I got $11 back. So we spent $3,400 in January, and that produced $38,000 of bookings to my property, and then the rest that we made came from organic social media content. Point of the story is, and what I'm getting at is, would I rather spend $3,400 on marketing fees to Airbnb, or would I rather spend $3,400 on ads that get people to come back to my website, to my mailing list, to subscribe to my email list, and have them become customers that I can retarget and remarket several times over the course of a month or a year and have repeat customers several times a year? Right.
The very notion of getting all of these customers back to my property every single year. I mean, dude, you can get 5% to come back every year. It's like, at a certain point, you've got this insane business that you build on your land, your digital land. You own the customer information, and you now have access to all of the levers on the wall that can make your business money. Right now, the only lever that a host has is a big lever with the label underneath that says Airbnb, and they can pull that lever, and that's basically it. And so I think it's now at a point where I'm like, I think we're in this point where people really need to be focusing on brand, brand and social awareness, social media awareness, and brand building, and all that stuff.
Yeah, 100%. A little shout-out as well to the guns when you were just doing that as well. I see you've been working out.
Thank you very much. Hey, stop it. Uh, but also as well, like, uh, a lot of people have to think of the endgame with this, and there's a really cool example of how this all plays off really nicely. We spoke about him before we came on recording, but Isaac French, he sold his Live Oak Lake property for close to $10 million. And he said that one of the reasons why he was able to attribute so much to it was because the people who acquired his property, they absolutely loved that he had so many direct bookings. I want to say 80% direct bookings, but you build a whole brand. I think he attributed like a good couple of million to that.
Uh, someone just told me this. So he sold it for $7 million. I think he sold it for a million dollars a key. And someone just told me in passing, I think they're also friends with him, said that he got like a 20% kind of kicker or boost on his valuation because of the social media blueprint that he had.
Yeah. And that comes down to, like, the power of direct bookings. And like we said, we're not going to, we're not saying, "Listen, go sell your business for all these millions, and you're going to do it if you can hit 70%." But it's one of the things that you should be aiming towards. My thing 100% is, do not go and delete your listings on Airbnb. That is as dangerous being 100% direct as it is being 100% Airbnb. My goal is for everybody to get to 65% direct, because then you can have 35% other. Because then, like I say, if you're at 65% direct, you've got 35% of basically, you're over 50%, right? And so if Airbnb do shut you down and you lose that lever like you mentioned, you've got the direct here, you've got Vrbo, you've got Booking.com over here, because even direct falls into so many different levers as well. You've got your Meta ads like you mentioned, you've got email marketing, which you love a good ROAS. For every $1 you put into email marketing, you get $42 back. That's a pretty good return of investment right there. You know what I mean?
Can we go back? Why is it dangerous to have 100% direct bookings?
Well, let's just say this. Let's say you go cold turkey on Airbnb. You delete your listings. You go no Vrbo, no Booking.com, and you're going 100% direct. Let's just say for whatever reason, you take your eye off the ball. You stop doing your marketing. Your ad turn is off. You stop doing your emails, and your word of mouth just dries up, right? Let's just say then you just get no bookings at all. And then you're like, "Uh, I've got to start from scratch all over again. I've deleted my Airbnb. I've got nothing." Right? And so it's as dangerous doing that than it is being 100% on Airbnb. Because if you're 100% direct and all of a sudden you just turn it all off, or let's just say, you know, it takes 10 years to build a good business. It takes 10 seconds to destroy that brand, you know, say for whatever reason, you know what I mean? It can happen, and I've seen it happen.
So, I mean, we can. I never thought I'd hear you say that. I'm going to be completely honest.
Yeah. Well, I didn't think that you'd want any percent. I mean, I know we like Airbnb, but.
A fan of having multiple revenue streams coming into your business. Is this any smart, sensible business owner will have multiple streams coming in? It's like if you know a personal trainer and you're saying, "Listen, I'm doing really well. 100% of my business is coming from Facebook ads." You're like, "Dude, just be careful." You know what I mean?
Well, and I mean, to be clear, I mean, a lot of this resentment that I have about putting your eggs in the Airbnb basket and they're making all these shifts, I mean, they still exist in a certain way where I'm still a captive audience to Meta, to Google, but I at least get to use those platforms to collect customer data to my newsletter or to my email list over at my property. We have a 13,000-person email list. When bookings dry up, I send an email out, and guess what? Every time I send an email out with a 10% promo code or some kind of holiday special, like free gift baskets for Valentine's Day, whatever it is, about $3 to $5,000 of bookings come in. Your email list is the one thing that algorithms cannot take away from you. And that's the moral of today's story. YouTube can shadowban me. Facebook can shadowban me. Airbnb can shadowban me. Everyone can shadowban you except for the platform that you own, right? And so when you're talking about email lists, I can market. And when you talk about owning my own website, I own that space. Granted, obviously, I guess a hosting company can delist you if they, I mean, you know, that's a very rare scenario, but I think it's okay to have 100% direct bookings. I'll come out and say it because Tori and Seth Bolt from Bolt Farm Treehouses, like they've built an amazing brand, and they're all, they don't even list on Airbnb. And I think at a certain point, at a company level, you have a little bit of key man risk when you do rely on some of these more finicky platforms. And I think it's, I don't know. I'm just going to say, I think if you could be 100%, if I could push a button right now to be 100% direct bookings, that button would be broken because I'd be like, I'd take one of these hammers and it'd be like.
Look, look at us three years later. I would never have thought when I first reached out and commented on one of your YouTube videos. Yeah. But you'd be saying more direct bookings than I. But look at us. That's fun.
Well, dude, I mean, here's the deal. I'm good at marketing, okay? I'm good at funnels. I'm good at these levers and paid ads. And I've got an amazing team that can get me 11 ROAS, you know? Like, I think Airbnb is a very powerful vehicle for someone that knows nothing about that. And that's why I don't think anybody, no one, it's, we're talking 1% of people have year-end knowledge in the funnel marketing world on the Airbnb audience, right? So for most people, they should stay on Airbnb primarily and diversify. For me, though, I'm like, you know, and Isaac and Tori and Seth Bolt and, you know, some of these other high-end operators and large players, I it makes sense to build your own brand and be 100% direct. I think.
It's funny you mentioned that, Rob. That's why I wrote this book, The Book Direct Playbook, so that everybody can learn our secrets.
And I will link that down. Yes, I'm going to link that down in the description below. Um, but what a really good stat, and it's a stat that I recently learned from the team at Auto Rank, and it was confirmed by the team at FutureStay. 65% of all direct bookings comes on the back of an OTA search, which is a phenomenal, phenomenal stat. So basically, what that means is that.
Break it down.
If you've got a future potential guest who is looking for a place to stay, they'll jump on Google, they'll jump on Bing or wherever. They'll even jump on ChatGPT. They're going to go to the brand that they recognize. Let's just say it is Airbnb, right? But what smart people are doing now is that they are branding their businesses in their Airbnb listing. So when the guest lands on the listing, they're going, "Oh, this property is by this." So, you know, Nick Sleeps, for example. This is The Pink Pickle by Nick Sleeps. And they go and Google that. And when they Google that very specific keyword term, "Pink Pickle by Nick Sleeps," guess what comes up? The direct booking website right at the very top. And the guest knows if they book direct, they get the best rate. Especially this Gen Z generation. This is another TikTok trend that kicked off in 2024.
There were a couple of content creators that started producing TikToks where they showed the Airbnb listing. If they reverse-engineered the image, they could find the direct booking site, and they would book it direct. And those reels, they took off. Millions and millions of people saw them, and that's what has kicked off a Google Chrome extension called Directo, which is literally that. It's a Google Chrome extension. You install.
It on your computer as you're searching Airbnb. If the property that they're looking at is cheaper elsewhere, it pings up and says, "Hey, this is better if you book direct." And the consumer is getting smarter. They know that Airbnb isn't the only platform. They know that they can go and look elsewhere because they can get a better deal. And this is why 65% of all direct bookings come on the back of an OTA search because we're not going to be able to compete with the spends of Expedia.com, Airbnb. They spend bazillions, right? And we're never going to do that. But how can we billboard by being on those sites? And that should be the fuel in everybody to go to their Airbnb listings and see how they can brand their name within it. You're not going to obviously go, "Hey, come to my www.e website for the best rates." That's going to get flagged, right? But if you can do it smart, if you can do it subtly, and you can do it right, and we've got amazing opportunities in the pictures, the description, and your bio, then you will naturally drive people to your direct booking site.
Yeah. So, let's talk about who direct bookings are right for. Um, and then we can wrap up this pod. For anyone at home, if you like this and you're like, I want more. Don't worry. Um, I've got a whole series. The next two or three videos on the channel will be around direct bookings. So, if you would like to be informed and you're like, "Okay, I'm ready to learn the tangible step by step." Click the subscribe button and the notification bell and you're going to be informed whenever I drop my next one, which I'm telling you will be a banger. I will lay out for you all the mechanics.
Now, let's talk about who direct bookings are right for. I know you're going to say everyone. You know, for me, I'm talking about spending ads and I'm talking about building a social presence and building a brand. Um, I do not think that that is necessarily correct for 100% of people. I actually think that's correct for a small fragment of people. I don't think that someone that owns a condo or a town home in a random part of, you know, a metropolitan area should be taking out Facebook ads for their property. Um, not my belief. Um, I think that brand building is more for people that have unique properties, for people that have maybe Funkit style properties, right? You can go to funkitinteriors.com, look at our portfolio. Everything is very Instagrammable, very viralesque, scroll stopping. Like that kind of stuff I'm more on board with for sure. You talk about just a regular kind of stick-built home. I don't think that running ads and direct bookings are going to play out the same way. I think the opportunity is as a normal host with a condo, town home, regular stick-built home, you know, kind of like these medium-level places. I think the opportunity is the remonetization and recapture of sort of bringing your guests back as repeat properties or sorry, as repeat guests. What do you think about that?
So, I definitely agree. There are people that should be doing Facebook ads and people that shouldn't. If you know how to do it, it's like printing money. As you've proved, if you don't know what you're doing, uh, it can just basically be taking money out and burning it, put it on fire.
I've done it many times.
Yep. Um, I definitely feel like that we talk about direct bookings like it is this section of the internet that is like gold dust, right? It's when we're talking about direct bookings, it just simply means by going to somebody and saying, "Hey, book with us direct instead of going through Airbnb." And I think everybody can do that. And the reason why I believe that is that at Booley, we've helped over 2,000 people now over the last 10 years. And they've generated a billion dollars in bookings and they are every corner and globe of the internet. They're from your tiny little motel bed and breakfast as we call them here in the UK to, you know, massive properties to everything in between. And you can do a direct booking. It, you know, it literally can be as simple as something that doesn't cost any money. Uh, you just, you know, you can just say, "Hey, next time you book, come and book with us direct." Anybody can do that. You don't need a fancy website from us. You can literally put together a very simple landing page. You can, you know, get a very simple whatever put together, get a very cheap PMS. I guess they are fantastic PMS, but there are on the premium end because they are what they are. They've built that brand to be able to charge that. There are a lot of cost-effective ones that cost next to nothing. There are some that are pretty free, you know. So, there are that. So, you can definitely, definitely do it. Um, and you either pay with money or you pay with time. And I keep coming back to it. You either pay with money or you pay with time. You either got loads of money and you haven't got a lot of time, so you pay someone to do it for you. Or you haven't got a lot of money, but you've got a ton of time, so you put the time in. And now that time excuse isn't there. And I keep coming back to it like the emergence of ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, whatever you're using, they're free to use. And it is like having the best virtual assistant, like Einstein-level virtual assistant in your back pocket for free. And you can ask them to do more or less anything and they'll help you do it and they'll show you how to do it.
And for that, I feel like anybody can do direct bookings. Doesn't matter what your skill level is.
So, I agree with that and maybe I need to clarify. I think direct bookings is a fit for literally every host that does short-term rentals.
Yeah.
What I don't think is necessarily something that a host should put a ton of effort in is social media and trying to make viral reels and then putting money on ad spend. If you don't really have properties that are going to be hyper clickable and like, you know, have a good CTR click-through rate and like, like I said, I mean, it's done, people do this. That doesn't mean that I think that you shouldn't have, I think they should still have a direct booking website. But what I think the focus absolutely needs to be in these instances is that if you have a town home, stick-built house, all these kind of more boring or plain or medium-level, just whatever you want to call it, I think the opportunity is collecting the emails of your guests, putting them on an email list, and then trying to get your guests to come back. And then something, you know, a page out of your book. How do you get your guests to recommend your place um to other people? Right? How do you send them an email that says, "Hey, thanks, Mark, for staying at my property. Do you have any friends or family that would enjoy staying at I? If they come, I'm going to give them a discount and I'm going to give you a $50 referral." I think that's the game that like 50 to 70% of hosts need to be playing. And then kind of the more advanced marketing and some of the inner funnel workings are for more of those, you know, viralesque or just really scroll-stopping properties. Does that make sense?
Yeah. No, no, 110% agree. Like and this is why I've seen the emergence of Funkit um over the years and I can see why it's been so popular because it is turning properties into these scroll-stopping properties and those are the ones that deserve to go viral because they look phenomenal and they look great. That's that makes a ton of sense. If you haven't got those sort of properties and if you haven't got uh a storytelling background or a really interesting story to tell, then yeah, you should just be focusing on the all the other aspects of marketing that there is out there that can that can drive that that can drive direct because at the end of the day, it all depends on your avatar. It depends on who is coming to your area, who your demographic is, and who is your property best suited for. Once you figure that out, then you can go down all these different verticals and niches that that that are out there. And I look at Jesse Vasquez as ideal sort of candidate here.
Just about to say that.
Yeah.
It's literally like he took his model in his properties. He realized they weren't going to be your Insta famous. He pivoted onto a niche which he knew, which was healthcare, and he's made an absolute killing out of it. He's he's sort of single-handedly brought the MTR strategy to to life. And obviously it's like rolled with it and every single one of his properties that he would argue and maybe we would argue would be like, meh, but he's built a fantastic portfolio on the back of it.
And you're right. So that's I was just about to say corporate housing. There comes a place where it makes a lot of sense if you are a midterm rental operator or a corporate housing operator. They're kind of the same thing. But like if you're this person that has like this big, uh, kind of midterm rental business and you're establishing contracts and relationships with all these different housing, you know, providers and all, I forget there's like a bunch of them out there. But if you're establishing these contracts with hospitals and um, all of these placement agencies, you want a direct booking website. You want to say, "Hey, go to um, you know, hostcamp.com/ro's listings." And that's where you're going to find all my long-term rental or all my midterm rental properties and the pricing. You don't want to send them to Airbnb because a, you're going to save them on fees. You will make more if you want to charge more. You know, as long as you charge less than 15% fees, they're going to be happy and you're going to make more. So, you have a very large kind of spread on how much more you can actually make. And there's a big reason why it would be financially beneficial for you to create a direct booking website. So, there's definitely a play for everybody. And um, it's my goal in the upcoming series to teach everybody. I will teach all of my viewers how to practice very basic funnel marketing and very basic marketing practices to get repeat guests and to get people back. Um, I've been putting it off for a long time. You've been you've been nudging me to do it. So this is where it's at. If you guys want to learn more and you want a couple of resources, here are a couple of things that I'm going to point y'all to. hostcamp.com. Uh, I don't think it's going to be launched by the time relaunched by the time this video comes out, but we will have tools and articles and blog posts and education around this. I've kind of teased a few of these to you, Mark. Uh, I've got some widgets and tools that will be very beneficial for people that want to do direct bookings and it's going to be on hostcamp.com. So, keep an eye on that. But I think the best resource is if you want to learn funnel marketing and how to get people into your ecosystem. The best thing you can do is subscribe to my newsletter. I'm going to leave a description in the link, a link in the description down below. You will see how I email. You will see the frequency I email. You will see how I talk to you as someone in this space. And then you will see how I market and try to sell products, right, that benefit you. And you will understand that what I'm doing in my newsletter is exactly what you can be doing to people in your customer base. And of course, if you want an incredibly premium website and you want the best in the business, Mark has created mine and so thousands of sites, I hesitate to give the name. I guess I'll give it. It's just everybody like will go and they'll go to nicksleeps.com and then they'll like fill everything out and then do tests and then send me emails and then I have to respond to it. So, Yeah, just don't go through the whole process, please. It is my team does see it and it is it is fairly frustrating. So, go you can go funnel hack there too, but if you want um where can they find you, Mark? Where can they learn about your services and all that good stuff?
Yeah, thank you very much. So, come over and have a chat. We're at boost.co.uk. So, boostly.co.uk. Please don't go to com because it'll take you to another random website in the world. But boostly.co.uk. On there, there'll be a button where you can book a call with our team and we'll honestly go through your whole portfolio, your strategy, where you are, where you want to be, and if we can help you, we'll definitely recommend you.
And if you tell if they tell you that uh Rob Built sent you, then they get a special little discount. There's a special discount. Yeah. Make sure you put in the channel. Make sure you put in Rob Built. The team will see that and they've got a special little discount that I've told them to save for all of it. You amazing people and yeah, we we've worked with loads of Robbuilt fans and members of Host Camp over the years and it's been an absolute pleasure and we love working with you like because one of the main reasons why and I always say this, we've built websites for people and you know, they spent the money, they produce it and I speak to them in like a year and I go, "How many bookings you got?" And they go, "Oh, Mark, it's awful. I've not had one booking." And I go, "Well, let's have a look at your CRM." Because we give you a CRM as well. Go high level. And we go, "Let's see how many emails you've sent, how many social media posts you've done." And they go, "Nothing. I've not done anything." It's like the equivalent of me giving you a Lamborghini, but not the keys, right? They just want to have it, but then they think it's like the magic fairy dust that they can just go off and just get all these bookings. But when we work with you guys and the host campers, the Rob built crew, they put the effort in and they're the ones that get the best results because they aren't afraid of like getting stuck in learning new things. Uh, and that's that's a credit. That's why we love working with you guys. So, more come over, please. And uh, and yeah, I look forward to helping you get all the bookings, all the direct bookings.
Yeah. I mean, hey, look, when you first reached out to me, I had zero dollars in direct bookings. This year I will do a little over $800,000 in direct bookings. So, you know, you do have an impact on this industry. I appreciate you. We'll link your book in the description down below. And also very relevant. If you want to hear me and Mark's first conversation about direct bookings that went viral, then click right here. We break down a lot of what we talked about today and more. And no gatekeeping. We give you all the good. So, click here, of course, after you like and subscribe to be tuned in to the series. Talk soon.