You're listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

Are you ready to master your marketing so you can ditch your reliance on the online agents and grow your direct bookings?

I'll be sharing with you exactly what it takes to grow your direct bookings and the simple marketing steps to get more profit in your pocket.

Hello and a very warm welcome back to the Get Full Booked podcast.

I'm your host, Sarah Orchard.

Today I'm delighted to welcome Alison Carley to the podcast.

She is both a host and an industry expert.

So we've got two for the price of one today.

Welcome to the podcast, Alison.

Thank you.

Thank you for the welcome.

Yeah, it's great to have you here.

So I think first, let's start because I've alluded to the fact that you're a host as well as an industry expert.

So should we start with a little bit of background as to your life as a host?

Yeah, so.

So I haven't been a host all my life.

I've been hosting now for about 13 years.

But I have, my background previously was I came from corporate sales and I was managing some brands, large multinational brands that many people will know, like Heinz, John west young seafood, McCain chips, and lots of people know them.

And yeah, it was always mine and my husband's dream really, to find a chalet in a ski resort.

And we were looking for about five years and eventually we found one that we loved and was in a perfect position in a ski resort.

And we bought it.

And it was.

We were looking ideally for a chalet for hospitality, whether it be a full chalet or bed and breakfast.

But the one we found was an apartment house, which was set up perfectly for us.

So we live downstairs on the ground floor, and we had.

There are two apartments upstairs on the first floor.

And then we renovated the top floor to make a third apartment.

And we host, we.

We rent out to hikers and bikers and people wanting adventure in the summer, family adventure in the summer, and to skiers in the winter.

So we have off seasons in the in between because nothing much happens in between.

Kind of like Easter to middle of May and then November, beginning of December, it's very quiet here.

But yeah, we host.

We host to the three apartments basically out to.

To holiday makers.

And we get to enjoy the beautiful area and get to tell all our guests about it as well.

So the fact that you get to live, and obviously I presume you're skiers, which is why you wanted to buy a chalet in the first place.

Exactly.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're both.

Me and my husband are keen skiers.

That's how we met actually with skiing.

And yeah, we love the mountains, we love the outdoors, we love hiking.

So yeah, it's just the perfect place for us living.

Living the good life by the sounds of it.

Yeah, it was definitely a work life balance move for us.

Sounds perfect.

So you, you and I have known each other for a little while in the industry, in the short term rental industry and I invited you to come along and do some training actually in my marketing club, the fully booked business club around property management software or PMS's booking systems, whatever we want to call them.

So obviously that's what we're going to talk a little bit about today and I've got some questions for you just to sort of explore, I think a little bit beyond sort of people's immediate considerations about like if I want to have a direct booking website, you know, I need to have maybe some tech that's going to help me handle the bookings so that I don't.

Maybe you're on other like OTA platforms so you don't want to get double bookings and things like that.

So people think about the sort of, the basics.

But maybe let's start with, as I said, a bit beyond that, the bit that most hosts probably don't think about.

And how much does your booking system actually impact on your actual marketing that you can do for your business?

Yeah, so very much it does impact on your marketing because think, people think, think of what they call a booking calendar a lot.

I hear people say in like Facebook groups and everything, oh, I'm looking for a booking calendar.

And they don't, they think of it as an operational tool just to take whole bookings, but they don't think of it as what it can actually be, the engine behind your marketing.

It can capture data, it can enable automation for you and it can improve that guest journey and get you repeat bookings as a result.

If you, if you do it correctly and kind of how it should work in terms of that whole booking journey is if you think about it, you start off with some marketing somewhere, hopefully they come to your website, it turns into an inquiry or a booking that reaches your property management system where you collect all that guest data and then you have some automated communication going to them, they have a great experience while they're staying with you, which that communication helps with obviously as well.

You hopefully get a great review and hopefully get a repeat booking from it and then you can further market to them.

So it's that whole process really of that whole journey is not just a booking, it's not just a booking calendar.

It's that whole journey from start to end and hopefully in the future as well.

And I guess it's all about for example the first thing is to attract so being as visible as possible.

I recommend being as visible on as many channels as you can because that really does help your visibility and that's really a great way to market.

And a channel manager can really help you manage that effectively.

And make sure you don't get double bookings and then obviously having things like a direct booking engine on your website that's easy for the guests to use, etc.

And then converting them into the booking, making sure that booking flow works really easily for them on your website and collect that guest information through the booking process and then retaining them.

That part of it is basically making sure that you send that post day communication, making sure your property management system connects to your email marketing system.

And then things like your property management system can really help you as well because it remembers the guest preferences.

But for example you can get data from it in terms of the party makeup, are they family, the couples, do they have a dog, that type of thing.

And also you can offer repeat discounts etc.

To bring them back to book direct with you next time.

So it's all really an integrated system that can help you.

Absolutely.

With your marketing of your guests and get you more bookings.

Yeah, and it's definitely not just a booking calendar.

And I think people underestimate, don't they about if you create friction on your website and I've been on to, I've done well over 100 website audits now and sometimes you go onto the sort of book now button if there's actually one there and then you to go to the booking, you know what we think of as like the booking calendar and then maybe like the integration they've got, maybe they're using like a free widget, maybe for like WordPress or something and, or a plugin and it actually can be really clunky, really difficult and if we create friction at that stage like you're saying you can be visible but actually then that, that impacts on conversion, doesn't it?

And then people don't go ahead and make the booking and we don't get that chance to know complete that entire customer journey.

So I think it's, it's so important and people underestimate, I think they just think like you say it's almost like plug that Little gap.

I need a booking calendar.

And it's so much more than that.

Yeah, so much more than that.

So you've touched on this a little bit.

So the guest data obviously is.

You know, I talk about this a lot and I've done quite a few episodes on this podcast about email marketing.

But it's only marketing gold if you've got guest data, if you can actually access it.

And obviously, I suppose one of the biggest things about having a direct booking website is that you own the relationship and you've got that data, which obviously the OTAS people like the Airbnb of this world and vrbo and booking.com don't want you to have.

But what information should hosts be capturing about their guests?

And what are the biggest mistakes that you see businesses making when it comes to collecting and managing that guest data?

So I recommend to my clients to collect all their guest details.

So obviously the obvious ones are just name and email address.

And not even.

We don't get email addresses through some of the online travel agents.

So Airbnb won't provide them, booking.com don't provide them.

So definitely collecting name and email address, phone number.

Absolutely.

So you can make sure you contact them if they've got any questions, if you've got any questions, if you need to contact them.

And I also recommend collecting a dress as well.

And main reason behind this is just in case something does happen, and hopefully it will never happen.

But if you do need to take a customer to small claims court, for example, you absolutely need that address to do that.

You cannot do it without an address.

So many people think that's not important, but actually it can be hugely important in specific situations.

And then things like I mentioned before, party composition, you can collect things like, are they a family, are they a couple, what age are the children?

That's a brilliant one to get.

And also you can collect dates of birth.

Some people don't like collecting this, but dates of birth can be really great for birthdays and anniversaries and things like that, just to just to keep a reminder.

And you can keep all this in your property management system as well.

Maybe something like preferences.

So if they've got any accessibility preferences, maybe they're wanting a ground floor apartment, that type of thing.

And then of course, you've got all your stay history with them.

Where did they originally come from?

What was the source of the booking?

And are they a repeat guest as well?

That's key as well for me and for people like me, what I collect is things like Obviously, did they stay in the summer or did they stay in the winter?

Are they a skier or are they a hiker?

We do have very much two distinct type of guests that come to us.

We do occasionally get some guests that come in winter and summer, but you don't really want to be marketing to them for a ski holiday when they're not skiers, for example.

So that's, that's quite critical.

So you can segment your market, basically segment your guests and then the last thing obviously is marketing permissions.

You've got certain amount that you can actually market to them because if they've been a guest, then you've got legitimate interest in terms of sending them correspondence, but not ongoing.

So it's always best to get some marketing permissions from, from your guests.

So make sure that you can market to them after their stay.

Mistakes.

Well, first of all, that you don't collect the data at all.

And there's easy ways to do that.

You can have a check in form.

Lots of property management systems have a great check in form that you can use to collect all that data for you.

I've seen and I have experienced this myself until I got myself into a proper property management system.

You don't have all the data in one place.

It's strewed across various places.

WhatsApp, Airbnb app, booking.com, pulse app, or in your property management system or in a spreadsheet.

So making sure it's all of all, everything is in one place and your property management system should be the place for all of that, that you don't get marketing consent, that's another one.

Never clean the data.

So this was one of my mottos in my old job when I was in sales, which is weed your own garden.

Basically get rid of anything that's not performing.

If the guests aren't responding in terms of they're not opening your emails, they're not clicking, then make sure that you weed your own garden regularly and you know, just clean that database up.

And the worst mistake, probably you don't use it at all.

You don't use that data.

Yeah, I think a lot of hosts do collect it and sit on it and say, I'm going to do something with this one day, but then never end up doing anything with it.

No, exactly.

I think one of the things I always do, I mean my pms, I use Glamp manager and I love it because I can do my sources of booking.

So I always will look whenever we get a new booking, come in the first Thing I look at is the source because obviously that's telling me whether my marketing's working.

So if we, we've had recently some, some posts do really well on Instagram.

So then I'm looking for that sort of, that correlation between what's been going on on socials or if I've sent out an email campaign or checking in with, you know, basically where the bookings are coming from.

And also we look at the age profile.

I think we don't ask for date of birth but we just asked for their ages.

So we know that we bit like you.

We've got, you know, not seasonal so much, but we've got two very distinct age profiles that come to the hideout and actually that's all come from the RPMs and being able to sort of track that and keep an eye on that.

Sometimes people don't fill it in, but I'd say that probably 90% of guests do.

And I also love my private notes field where I can put, maybe they weren't such good guests and I might put some little notes so that if they come back or I can also blacklist them with my booking system, which I've only had to do a handful of times, but I have done it.

So that's the sort of clever stuff that if you were doing this manually like you say, or having stuff in lots of different places, that would be really, really difficult to, to keep track of, wouldn't it?

And to be able to do that.

Yeah, yeah.

And you either have to have a very good memory or lose it.

I have got one client I'm working with at the moment actually and her mum's very heavily involved in the business and she still has a paper diary that's like terrifying but there's probably people still out there that are using a wall planner or a paper diary.

But I think with this sort of tech driven age it's like get the tools because they make your life a lot easier.

Now we talked a little bit about email automation, but that can make such a difference to direct bookings.

But it does rely heavily on what's happening inside the booking system.

So what do you think are the most useful automations that a holiday rental business should have in place?

Maybe from the moment someone inquires all the way through.

You mentioned about like post day and encouraging that repeat booking, what would you think are the most important automations?

So the first one I recommend always having, if your property management system supports it, is having an abandoned cart or abandoned booking type message.

So basically if a customer comes onto your website and inquires and they get to the stage of putting in their email address and for whatever reason it doesn't go through.

They might have had a bad experience or something might have gone wrong with the Internet went down at the time.

My PMS actually sends me a message saying I've got a cancelled booking.

So the first thing I do is go in and pick up the details of that and I email the guest directly and say I've just seen you've been on a website and you were attempting to make a booking.

Can we help at all?

Is there anything we can help with?

I've managed to convert probably about 75% of those that have come through.

So yeah, that really does work.

So that's a great one to have if your property management system does support that next one.

Obviously booking confirmation, giving the summary of the booking, giving you more details of the stay and building that anticipation and also the trust element of the stay.

And so for example, putting in local recommendations, maybe a guest guidebook, use something like Touchstay or hostfully that can give your guests more information, etc.

That's something that I do recommend.

And also giving opportunity for upsells to the guests ahead of their stay.

So whether it be bringing a dog, adding on a welcome pack, paying for an early arrival if you have that facility, that type of thing, that can also help plan their stay ahead pre arrival, obviously with check in details, but then again building up all those information in terms of the anticipation of the stay and maybe giving them some recommendations, for example, if they need to book ahead for things like restaurants, particularly if they're booking in high season, that's something very much here we've got an issue with over high season.

We have to make sure that our guests are aware that they need to book ahead for restaurants, otherwise they just won't get in.

They're going to go hungry.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, they can cook in the apartment, but most people don't like cooking the apartment so they like to go out and eat, which we like as well because it means less cleaning,.

Double bonus there.

Yes, we make sure they know about that.

I always recommend to my clients to have a checking in with you email if you're not on site.

If you're on site.

We live on site, we see our guests quite regularly and we always see them the morning after the first night, etc.

And say, how is everything?

Is everything going okay?

If you're not on site, obviously you can't do that, but I always say it's really nice to just send in a message to your guests the morning after they arrive just to say, is everything going okay?

Can we help at all?

It just makes sure that any issues are highlighted there and then and you don't get the opportunity, the guests to give an opportunity afterwards to come back to you saying, oh, the place was a complete mess, it wasn't cleaned properly, that type of thing.

So that's one I always recommend that works really nicely and builds that relationship as well with the guest checking out.

I've seen so many hosts on Facebook say my guests didn't realize that they were supposed to check out today or they didn't realize the checkout time.

So it's really great just to send a message to your guest the night before, the evening before the checking out.

Just a quick reminder, polite reminder just to say, here's your details, you're checking out tomorrow, here's the checkout time.

And give them the opportunity to, you know, feedback to if you want as well, just, just help stop those instances where, where, where you get the guest.

Overstaying which then makes it a nightmare for the changeover.

Yes.

And we all know that people don't read everything that we send them.

And I think that's the thing.

If you only send one thing in one form, there's a good chance, you know, people say, well it was in the, you know, it was in my digital guest guide.

Well, if they haven't read that, actually you can get the PMS to sort of help with the sort of frequency of messaging which sometimes I think we feel, sometimes we're doing too much.

But actually all of us experience hosts know that generally people don't read it.

So it's good to repeat stuff.

Yeah, yeah, it's true.

And then obviously the post day email mentioned that before in terms of thanking them for the stay, asking them for their feedback, giving them the opportunity to leave you a review and then potentially having a discount code which a lot of property management systems do support discount codes where you can give them a discount for their next day if they book direct with you.

Yeah, we do that.

So we send that out on our post day email with our links to our Google for our reviews and then we give them the 10% off their next day if they book again.

Yeah, it does work.

Which is, which is great.

And yeah, and all of this hopefully set it all up to be automated so you can go off and live life.

Exactly.

Again, I did have a client who was doing all of her pre arrival emails and all of her guest comms manually.

And she had three safari tents, so three units.

And I was just like, how do you do it?

And she was a bit like, well, I've got, you know, I've got a booking system.

I won't name it, she said, but, oh, it doesn't have the automated email functionality.

And I'm like, I think it's worth paying for it to have that so that you're not having to, you know, scramble around thinking which guests and what have I sent them in terms of communications and then firing out those emails.

Because even if you've got them saved as scripts, you've still got all the time of putting them in and sending them out.

And also you could forget, you know, whereas when it's automated, it's doing that heavy lifting for you.

Very much so it's not so bad if you've only got one.

One, one let.

But if you've got more than one let, remembering that on a ongoing basis is pretty difficult.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, we've only got the one unit with the hideout and I, I.

But I honestly don't think I could keep on top of all the comms if I wasn't.

Because we've got a sequence of about.

I think we've got about nine emails that go out from booking to, like, post stay, what with, like, directions, reminders and, like, you were saying, like, extras and.

And then reminders to order the extras, you know, so we're trying to have lots of little touch points so you don't bombard them with too much information, but it's sort of timely based on when they need to know stuff.

And also, some of our guests book about six months out, so they probably can't even remember what they ticked when they were doing the checkout and doing the extras, because we obviously sell quite a lot of extras on another page on our booking system, but they've probably even forgotten what they ticked at that point if it was six months ago.

So you have to remind them that they haven't told you what preferences they want for breakfast and all those lovely things.

So the system's doing a lot of the hard work.

My next question, we were talking a little bit about, you know, the actual sort of, I suppose, the checkout process when people are going through the actual booking.

So where do you see, you know, I touched on it a little bit, but where do you see booking systems creating unnecessary friction or maybe just making guests leave?

Like you were saying, your system will tell you if people don't convert.

But what's Typically causing maybe that to happen.

So I think a key thing for me that I recommend if people can have is a visible calendar on their website so that people can, even before they've kind of clicked the Book now button, or maybe during, after they've clicked the Book now button, is to see what availability there is.

And it's easy to kind of visualize that on screen.

But then other things that kind of can really not help is not having very transparent pricing.

It's kind of the Ryanair effect where they, you know, you end up at the end of the booking and they've added on what knows by the end of the booking.

Making sure that everything is as upfront as possible.

It's quite difficult with some things.

So for example, we, we here have tourist taxes in Austria and I had to find a property management system that actually could work for me that to put those tourist taxes up front in the upfront cost to the customer and they didn't find it right at the end of the booking.

So, yeah, that was quite a difficult find for me to go through and find the right property management system for that.

But that's one example where people can get upset because they didn't realise that they're going to have that extra cost when they come to the end of the booking.

Having a simple checkout with minimal clicks.

Some property management systems do make it too complicated and people get fed up and it also loses trust as well.

If you spend clicking off to different areas, you lose the trust in the customer basically and you want to keep them, you know, on site and on brand as much as possible.

Not having necessarily a secure payment system.

I think a lot of people prefer to pay by credit card these days because guests think they've got a bit more security.

And making sure that you're advertising, that is a secure payment system offering a credit card checkouts, but then potentially offering another solution as well.

So some people may prefer to pay by bank transfer.

Not all property management systems offer that because the thing is then it's an offline payment and it's manual adjustment in terms of the property management system that you have to make.

But it can make the, the guests feel more at ease when, when doing the, the booking.

Those are probably the things I've most seen in terms of making sure that things are working right.

But yeah, when it causes friction for them.

I've seen, I've seen some property management systems ask you to log in before you complete a booking.

Now that would just turn me off as a guest completely.

I wouldn't even start.

I don't think they don't need my information at that stage that, you know, they can.

They can get it through the booking process.

I saw that the other day on a website.

I think you're spot on.

I literally was fed back to the client.

I said, it's asking you to create an account before you can see the prices and check whether you want to go ahead.

And that just.

For me, that just means I'm running for the hills.

Yeah.

You lose trust at that stage, I think.

Yeah.

If it's not optimized for a mobile.

There's so many people using mobiles now to book places.

I think sometimes the mobile experience cannot be as good.

People don't necessarily check what the booking system looks like on a mobile.

So definitely go ahead and try and book your own property online on a mobile and see how it works.

And then things like when you search for dates and there's no availability, but it's not telling you why, and you can see on the calendar there's availability, but it might be, for example, the minimum night stay isn't correct.

It does not meet in the minimum stay.

Or there's no check in that day, there's no checkout that day, but there's no communication anywhere to tell you that that's the reason why you can't book.

And then they just get fed up.

Yeah.

You're frantically clicking.

We've been on websites, haven't we, where you're frantically clicking on a set of dates and for some reason it just won't accept it.

And then you just think, well, is that because it's not available or it's just like, I'm not meeting the.

Like you say the requirements and then in the end you just give up and you go and book somewhere else.

Yeah, very much so, yeah.

And then also just.

Just making sure you've got the trust signals.

On the website, we talked about trust a little bit, but, you know, those reviews, etc.

Making sure that that's all there mentioned about the secure payments and.

Yeah, I guess it's just making the guest feel like it's as safe to book you directly as it was to go ahead on Airbnb.

Basically, they just feel safe.

Yeah.

And often, I think, you know, a lot of the.

The PMS's, the booking systems now are sort of mirroring some of the online travel agents like Airbnb and booking.com because they do make stuff very easy for the consumer.

And obviously, when people have accounts with them, that does make it super easy.

I know, you know, like booking.com, you know, once you've got an account, it can be very quick and easy to book something or reserve something, also to cancel it as well, which is not always, not always good for us hosts.

But you know, ultimately they, they are on the side of the consumer and they're always trying to make it as easy as possible for them.

So if there's a host listening today and they're thinking, I really, you know, this has really touched a pain point for them.

And they're pretty sure that their booking system is really holding them back in their business, maybe transactionally and also from a marketing perspective.

And I know this is a massive question for you because actually it's probably how long is a piece of string?

But what are the key features or integrations and capabilities?

Like if there was like maybe a top three or five that, you know, they really should have, can you narrow it down to that or is that too difficult a question for you?

Alison?

Well, I always say it depends on your business needs.

And I see everyone asking on social media, etc, what's the best property management system?

And everyone comes back with an answer and then they just go up with the answer that's given to them.

And I just see that so much.

But there's no thought that goes into actually what the property management system can do for you and your business.

So I think I always tell people, first of all, I have a list of questions I go through when I'm recommending a property management system to sell someone, and I go through them all and say, what, how do you want to run your business?

What do you want to do?

What do you want to take?

Do you want to take security deposits?

Do you want to get them to sign rental agreements, that type of thing.

So everything that, the functionality of your business, even your pricing, what type of pricing do you operate currently?

What do you want to offer?

What kind of discounts?

The thing is with property management systems is they are very different from each other.

And I think people don't realize, they just assume they do everything.

And then you sign up to a property management system, give it a trial, and then you start to realize two weeks later that it can't do half the things you want it to do.

And I found this out, obviously, I've tried so many property management systems and that's why I kind of started doing what I do because I found out it was, it was, it's, you know, it's really difficult to understand which, which property management system does what?

And what's going to, you know, which ones don't do it.

So, yeah, there's.

It's very.

Start off with a list of things you want to achieve that you want it to do for your business.

And then the key ones that you really have to look out for is the channel manager.

That's the one.

If you're on one channel.

And maybe, for example, so if you're doing direct bookings and then maybe you're on Airbnb with request to book, that's fine to use Ical, but I always say to anyone, if you're wanting to go onto multi channels, do not use iCal.

It's not reliable.

I've used it in the past before, I've got burnt from it, I've had double bookings from it.

And we'll never use Ical again.

Yeah.

For those that are listening that don't understand about that.

So Channel Manager is obviously just managing when you're on multiple platforms.

So if you're using Airbnb, booking.com, vRBO, you've got to make sure that you're managing all those channels with your one main calendar so that it doesn't, you know.

And what's the other options from Ical then?

So Ical is just a way of communicating the availability, isn't it, between the systems?

But what's the other option that people should be looking for?

So we call it.

The technical term is API integration, which basically means instant information that passes between the systems.

And it's not just availability, it's all the booking details that passes between the systems.

So if a booking comes from Airbnb into your booking system, it contains all that guest detail that comes through.

So the name, the number of people, the value of the booking.

It also contains the phone number that goes into your property management system.

It doesn't contain the email.

So, yes, all that information comes through, but also everything that you send from your property management system to the channel.

So, for example, obviously your availability in terms of dates, that blocks, but also your check in dates, your checkout dates, if they're not available, et cetera, your pricing is also sent over an API integration as well.

So you can manage your pricing in one place and you don't have to go into each individual channel and change your pricing every time you change it.

I've heard a lot of people have headaches with that and also just with systems as well, that maybe like you were saying about, think about you, what, what you want to achieve.

I had one client who Got told by a sales team that this system did what she wanted, which was basically she had five cottages and she wanted people to be able to book as a group and book the whole site and have exclusive hire, which obviously was a key selling point.

And then she found out when she went with this particular PMS that actually it couldn't do that.

And that was a whole rationale for, for moving.

So not all of them, like you say, are created equal and some are better for doing those things.

I had another client who wanted it to talk and communicate with like keybox codes because they changed the keybox codes for each of the.

I think he had something like 20 odd units and it was like he needed a system, a PMS that could integrate with his like key code software and communicate that in like real time to each of the guests.

Now that's quite a technical aspect and I think people, you know, might in their head be thinking, well that's quite, you know, easy and not realize that not all of the systems can, can handle that type of complexity.

Yeah, definitely.

And that's.

Yeah.

So lots of property management systems have what they call integrations now with other applications.

So.

Exactly that with smart locks, dynamic pricing, they can connect to things like mailchimp.

So if you do collect that information, for example, from your guests, you can send it over to mailchimp, that type of thing.

So yeah, there's all sorts of things you can collect to.

Lots of people use Xero for their accounting, so you can send all the information about your bookings over to Xero for your accountant, etc, to collect all that information.

So yeah, it's very much understanding exactly what your needs are as a business, as to what you want it to do, as to which one is, is right for you basically.

But yeah, that's fantastic.

You shared some amazing tips with us today.

But for the listeners, Alison, obviously, you know, as I said, she's a host, but also she, as you can tell, is a PMS expert and she provides consultations.

And I would always say to, you know, clients and my club members, you know, if they're thinking of making.

It's a big pain to move booking systems, it can cause a lot of headaches.

It's can be complex to coordinate.

So Alison is someone who can provide you with help and support of maybe narrowing down those choices so that you're not trialing about 15 different PMS software and going insane in the process.

She can help you sort of fast track to the ones from her experience that are the better ones to go for for maybe your needs.

And, and I know you can even help clients set up their PMSS if it really does give them nightmares and keep them awake at night.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's the fear that most people have, to be honest.

The first is choosing the right property management system and lots of, as I said, go into one then realize it's not the right one.

But then yeah, the setting up of it just.

Yeah, some people have absolute fear over it.

I don't blame them.

It's not easy.

And yeah, when everything's instant as well, you need to make sure you're doing it correctly, just to make sure everything's happening correctly.

But yeah, absolutely, I offer that service as well to a lot of my clients.

So whether it be a consultation in terms of making sure you're picking the right one or, and, or setting you up on the right one for you.

Yeah, I offer both those services and.

If people want to find out more, I will put some links in the show notes.

But what's the best way to connect with you and to get in touch.

So they can contact me through my email?

Alisonclhospitality.com I have a website which is aclhospitality.com you'll find me as well on social media, on Facebook and Instagram.

I am on LinkedIn but I don't get on there regularly.

So yeah, any of those methods really.

Yeah, just send me a message through Facebook if you're on Facebook is probably the easiest way.

But yeah, anyway, brilliant.

I will put all of those links in the show notes so that everyone can get in touch with you because I know that PMS's do follow feel fill a lot of people with dread or they have one that they're not happy with.

And maybe, maybe sometimes it's not about changing either.

Sometimes you have got the best solution and you can jump out of the frying pan into the fire as that client did and of mine and actually, you know, found out that it wasn't what she'd been promised.

So.

Yeah, actually one of the things that I have seen that people just don't know how to optimize their property management systems even they're not using it to the fullest.

I've seen so many people just using it as a booking calendar and not realizing it has all this other functionality in it.

So yeah, if, if, yeah, if you not sure whether you you making the most out of your property management system as well, that's something I can help you with.

Brilliant.

Because that's something that came up in my mastermind group, actually, they were, there's a lot of super control users and they were sharing notes and someone said, oh, you can get that report by going like, here, there and everywhere.

And the person was like, I didn't even know it did that.

There we go.

It just goes to show sometimes, like you say, we're not making the most of our systems.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

That's been amazing.

I think we could have, we could have talked for another half an hour on.

Because it is a big subject and I'm sure Alison won't mind people getting in touch if they've got questions for you.

And obviously if they need some help and support, you're there for them as well.

So thank you for joining us today.

Thank you very much for having me.

Thank you everyone for listening.

If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you could leave me a review because you know how much us hosts love those five star reviews.

Next week, I'm back with another solo episode looking at an amazing free marketing tool that I hope all hosts are using.

But you never know.

Tune in next week to find out more.

Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

If you want to see if you are ready to ditch the likes of Airbnb and grow your direct bookings, put your business to the test with my free direct booking roadmap course quiz.

Head to my website get-fullly booked.com quiz and let's get you more direct bookings and more profit in your pocket.