Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / How to Rank Higher on Booking.com

Transcript

How to Rank Higher on Booking.com · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to Host Planet Bite Size, the podcast brought
• 0:03
  to you by Host Planet and House Philly.
• 0:05
  My name's James Farley, the founder of Host Planet, and our
• 0:09
  goal is to share everything you need to know about buying and
• 0:12
  managing short term rentals. Today's guest is Miroslav
• 0:15
  Gospodinov from My Day to Value and he's got 5 tips to share on
• 0:19
  optimizing your listing on booking.com.
• 0:22
  OK, real talk now for all you hosts out there, you know that
• 0:26
  moment when your guest messages you again with, hey, what's the
• 0:30
  Wi-Fi code? Or you're staring at 5 different
• 0:32
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• 0:35
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• 0:39
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• 0:48
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• 0:52
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• 0:56
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• 0:58
  Honestly, it just makes your life easier and keeps your
• 1:02
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• 1:06
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• 1:09
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• 1:12
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• 1:28
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• 1:31
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• 1:34
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• 1:36
  Less stress, more bookings sorted with Housefully.
• 1:47
  Mira, welcome to host Planet Bite Size.
• 1:49
  Thank you for joining us. You've got 5 tips to share about
• 1:53
  how to optimize your listings on booking.com, so take it away
• 1:57
  with tip #1. Thank you for inviting me,
• 2:00
  James, and it's a pleasure to be at the on the podcast.
• 2:03
  And actually even before I start, I want to provide some
• 2:06
  context. Actually booking.com is one of
• 2:08
  the largest, it's actually the largest online travel agency OTA
• 2:14
  in Europe. So essentially what I will
• 2:18
  share, I think it will be directly applicable for most of
• 2:20
  the hosting the viewers of your podcast to start with.
• 2:24
  The first tip, we're going to focus on the rank.
• 2:28
  And when I say rank, this means the position of your listing,
• 2:31
  booking.com listing once you go as a guest on thebooking.com
• 2:36
  page and the higher your rank and especially in the top 20,
• 2:40
  the first page then the likelihood somebody book to book
• 2:44
  your listing. It's quite important what we
• 2:46
  have seen, we have done a research for over 1,000,000
• 2:49
  listings and we spent the beginning of the year a few
• 2:52
  months on that. So actually we, we what we have
• 2:54
  found out is a huge correlation in terms of the rank, again, not
• 2:58
  necessarily to be as high as possible, but to be immediately
• 3:02
  visible for potential guests and potential guests of booking.com.
• 3:08
  And actually if we think about rank, this is top of the funnel
• 3:12
  and then you have low on the funnel, you have the rank that
• 3:16
  is dependent on the different filters you have length of stay,
• 3:19
  number of adults, different device types, desktop, mobile,
• 3:24
  the, as we said, the number of people as well that they are
• 3:28
  staying. And all this is opening for you
• 3:30
  how many potential visitors, how many potential guests will see
• 3:34
  in terms of searches on booking.com, the higher the
• 3:37
  visibility, the higher likelihood.
• 3:39
  And then what we want is to go to the listing views being as
• 3:42
  attractive as possible. That will go with the next
• 3:44
  steps. And then we're going to the
• 3:46
  lowest funnel where the last phase where is the conversion
• 3:50
  and the conversion actually it's about, OK, can I generate a
• 3:54
  revenue and can I be efficient in terms of my search, search
• 3:58
  views. And the ranking is a very
• 4:00
  important and it's good to monitor the ranking on
• 4:03
  individual days in advance. For individual, what is your
• 4:07
  competitive position for each day, let's say for the next 180
• 4:11
  days, for the next 365 days. This way you're increasing the
• 4:16
  potential of your listing and you can generate more revenue.
• 4:19
  So how do you improve that ranking?
• 4:24
  This is a very good question and we're going to go straight into
• 4:27
  the tip #2 naturally leading to it.
• 4:30
  Actually, it's a lot about forest promotions.
• 4:34
  You have different factors. So when you say promotions, what
• 4:38
  we can find out is what I will give you an example.
• 4:41
  One of our clients is actually institutional provider, so he
• 4:46
  has listings in UK, France and as well Spain.
• 4:50
  And what he has done is actually he's been using dynamic pricing,
• 4:54
  but this wasn't enough because he didn't optimize his channel
• 4:58
  and optimization is actually on a channel level and it's not
• 5:02
  just a fix. So you have a lot of like over
• 5:07
  1000 different combinations on booking.com that you can
• 5:10
  combine. What is if you have a new
• 5:12
  property, it's a new property batch.
• 5:14
  This gives you immediately jump to the top, as we said, in terms
• 5:17
  of the rank and answering your question.
• 5:19
  So this is just one limited time deal being in the newsletters
• 5:23
  within booking.com. And then limited time deal is
• 5:26
  one of the lowest hanging fruits because you need to become in
• 5:30
  the top few of the search rank and this gives you a massive
• 5:34
  exposure. It's all about the
• 5:36
  attractiveness and the conversion actually to lead to
• 5:40
  the next parts of the funnel and different promotions as every
• 5:43
  book last minute basic deal. And how do you balance that
• 5:47
  across the whole period, period of time between the different,
• 5:51
  let's say 180 days. What is my first seven days
• 5:54
  between 7 to 30, thirty, 280. However, this is where it
• 5:58
  becomes complicated because you can still have a basic setup,
• 6:02
  but if you really want to make sure that you leverage your
• 6:06
  visibility, it's important to understand the different
• 6:10
  competitive position for each window, every day, next future
• 6:15
  booking and obviously as many availability, so you increase
• 6:21
  the potential of your listing. You mentioned there the.
• 6:25
  Special offers and having something available and that's
• 6:28
  going to improve your ranking. Is it possible to always be
• 6:32
  running some kind of special offer on booking.com?
• 6:36
  I love your question and this is actually most of the operators
• 6:40
  as well. They're trying to leverage on
• 6:44
  that and based on our findings is actually you want to be smart
• 6:48
  about it. So it should be on and off.
• 6:50
  You need to have different. So it's dynamic channel
• 6:53
  optimization, which at the moment nobody does in the
• 6:56
  industry or they're doing that manually to spreadsheets.
• 7:01
  And obviously as a company is our biggest focus.
• 7:04
  So actually having the batch all the time, it's like that you'll
• 7:07
  get penalized from booking.com. So essentially you want to
• 7:10
  balance that. If you're using property
• 7:12
  management system potentially with your markup, then you can
• 7:16
  be when it's saying be testing is do changes.
• 7:20
  You do this. Now we're going actually to the
• 7:23
  next tip with there is actually it's the fourth tip.
• 7:27
  I'll mention this in in a second, but it's all about
• 7:30
  benchmarking and understanding how actually the changes, what
• 7:35
  is the impact of the different changes.
• 7:37
  OK, so not a permanent special offer, but keep using it when
• 7:41
  it's when it's relevant. OK then so we've had a couple of
• 7:43
  tips. So what's tip #3?
• 7:47
  Excellent. So we're going to rate plans.
• 7:49
  So a rate plans is actually the foundation of the channel
• 7:54
  optimization regardless not only for booking.com.
• 7:57
  So what does what does it mean is a rate plans in order to give
• 8:01
  the maximum exposure it's good to have you have like different
• 8:07
  cancellation policy, let's say non refundable or flexible.
• 8:10
  This is a rate plan foundation that is increasing your
• 8:13
  visibility. Now if we go to the specific,
• 8:16
  this separate topic in itself, what is your operational
• 8:19
  strategy? Are you operating in urban, sub
• 8:23
  urban area, geographic area? Because then your strategy to be
• 8:27
  different. Do you have a lot of weekend
• 8:30
  bookings? Do you want to limit your length
• 8:32
  of state? So again, it's not always about
• 8:35
  providing the biggest exposure, but is to align this with the
• 8:38
  50,000 feet strategic view in terms of what do you want to
• 8:41
  achieve as a company or for this particular listing support value
• 8:45
  of of listings. And this is normally giving a
• 8:51
  good exposure. And then we're going to the
• 8:54
  discount rates in terms of seven days and then 30 days.
• 8:58
  So this is especially useful for vacation and rental operators.
• 9:03
  When you operate a larger property, you have, you have
• 9:08
  actually more competitive advantage and you have just one
• 9:11
  availability. When you have a multi unit,
• 9:15
  let's say like a hotel strategy, you can do double bookings,
• 9:18
  right? And these double bookings
• 9:20
  actually it's offsetting your risk if somebody doesn't turn up
• 9:24
  and it doesn't block your calendar.
• 9:26
  And when you do, for example, seven days or 30 days, you're
• 9:29
  targeting and limiting the gaps in your calendar, especially in
• 9:32
  the high season, this is extremely important.
• 9:36
  Interesting. And what you mentioned there
• 9:38
  about the flexibility, giving people the right to cancel and
• 9:44
  and have no charge. I always think that's one thing
• 9:47
  that helps properties on booking.com to really stand out
• 9:51
  because you as a consumer, it gives you that Peace of Mind.
• 9:54
  If you know that you can cancel maybe right up until the last
• 9:57
  minute or up until like 48 hours before, it can make a huge
• 10:00
  difference to whether you're going to make a booking or not,
• 10:02
  especially if it's for a high value.
• 10:04
  So if you've got special offers and you're offering the free
• 10:08
  cancellation up to say 48 hours before, that's going to give you
• 10:11
  a huge boost on booking.com. And I guess that's something
• 10:15
  that a lot of vacation rental hosts they maybe prefer not to
• 10:18
  do. But I wonder kind of how many
• 10:20
  guests, if they've got the option of free cancellation,
• 10:24
  actually do cancel. I guess most of them they will
• 10:26
  take the trip. Actually, thank you for
• 10:30
  mentioning that. This leads us to tip #4 which is
• 10:33
  again very much related to what you said and it's all about our
• 10:37
  understanding of the market and competitor set.
• 10:41
  And actually, the tip is to use and leverage on booking.com
• 10:45
  Extranet as as much as possible. booking.com Extranet is the
• 10:48
  portal that you log in as owner, doesn't matter if you have a
• 10:53
  single listing or portfolio listings.
• 10:55
  And this is where actually you have 13 edge analytics that they
• 11:00
  can tell you immediately from the single source intensive
• 11:04
  channel. In terms of the channel in this
• 11:06
  particular case, because they provided the real data for your
• 11:11
  markets. For example, if we go on a city
• 11:14
  level, we can see just by looking into booking.com extra
• 11:18
  net city demand, we can see who is booking how many, how many
• 11:24
  days in advance. So we can see this book window
• 11:28
  and you can see the different buckets.
• 11:30
  This is for your city. Also, you can customize for your
• 11:33
  competitive set for your peer group.
• 11:36
  Competitive set is let's say top ten properties.
• 11:38
  Peer group is the top 50 properties.
• 11:41
  And then the market level and you have one more, one more
• 11:44
  level, which is region where you put what is the searches for the
• 11:49
  past 14 days, 30 days. This gives you immediate
• 11:53
  overview. OK, what, what is my visibility?
• 11:56
  If somebody's booking one day in advance and you're if you're
• 12:00
  restricting one day in advance booking, then obviously you
• 12:03
  might be missing 50% of bookings.
• 12:05
  Then it's the same thing for length of stay.
• 12:08
  So length of stay it's again the most popular normal.
• 12:11
  It's one night, especially in busy organ city.
• 12:14
  So this now it can be the longest 50 plus percent and this
• 12:19
  is impacting this right away doesn't mean that you need to do
• 12:22
  it because there is a huge demand.
• 12:24
  So it's all about understanding the demand in this particular
• 12:27
  tip. And by understanding the demand,
• 12:30
  then we can fine tune our listing to find the best
• 12:33
  possible positioning. And this is directly correlated
• 12:37
  with the promotions that we were discussing.
• 12:40
  Of course, you will be having a foundation of dynamic pricing,
• 12:43
  but you need another layer of actually customizing for for
• 12:47
  your channel. And then is the device type, is
• 12:49
  it on mobile? Is it on the web?
• 12:51
  What is the, as you said, cancellation policies?
• 12:53
  Actually coming from the previous question, you can see
• 12:56
  your city, you can see your peer group, you can see your
• 12:59
  competitors that you can select properties around you and you
• 13:02
  can see actually how they are being booked on booking.com.
• 13:05
  So it's apple to Apple comparison and it's not mixed,
• 13:09
  for example, it's aggregation or just scrape data that is coming
• 13:13
  actually from the source. So for me, everybody needs to
• 13:18
  leverage as much as much as possible.
• 13:19
  Again, paralysis analysis. So again, you want to limit how
• 13:24
  much information you take, but you can.
• 13:27
  There is some very low hanging food that you can immediately
• 13:30
  leverage on and optimizeyourbooking.com
• 13:33
  exposure. Yeah, it's very useful.
• 13:35
  I mean, you've got all those analytics, all that data in
• 13:38
  front of you, you might as well use it and utilize it and see
• 13:40
  what your competitors are doing. And if they're getting more
• 13:43
  bookings than you, you you've got an idea of their of, of how
• 13:45
  they're achieving it. OK then Miro.
• 13:47
  So tip #5. Thanks, James.
• 13:52
  Yeah, tip #5 actually, for us, this is coming, especially it's
• 13:56
  aligned with our company strategy and for us is the most
• 13:59
  important. And actually, we discussed this
• 14:01
  with you actually in terms of the podcast at the beginning,
• 14:05
  it's all about actually tracking, testing the changes to
• 14:09
  do a snapshot of different performance, let's say for the
• 14:12
  previous day. Do you do that manually through
• 14:14
  a spreadsheet? Even on our website for free,
• 14:17
  you can read 1 button extract for your property, 180 days, 365
• 14:24
  days for every single position. And you have automatic
• 14:27
  competitor set. So this is completely free as
• 14:31
  well. And for this, it's important
• 14:34
  that you take the snapshots when you do changes.
• 14:37
  So actually to try to answer, that's 10/20/50 percent, 70%
• 14:43
  confidence. What are these impacts?
• 14:45
  OK, is it my content if I change my title price?
• 14:49
  But if the correlation with the price is 5060% on the market,
• 14:53
  your competitive change, a competitive position is
• 14:55
  changing. You are not optimized with the
• 14:57
  promotions and the different changes.
• 14:59
  And then this is impacting your performance.
• 15:02
  So we're taking a snapshot in terms of the whole, in terms of
• 15:05
  the prices, channels, optimization, the content and
• 15:09
  even the users. They can do that in a
• 15:12
  spreadsheet, in a simplified spreadsheet.
• 15:15
  What are those changes that they work on the individual property
• 15:19
  level? Of course, when you optimize
• 15:22
  portfolio properties, then this is a huge problem.
• 15:25
  Of course this is where we are coming in as well.
• 15:27
  But for us this is extremely important because then you start
• 15:32
  making data-driven decisions. Where do I want to compete for
• 15:36
  each in? Where do I want to position and
• 15:38
  obviously compete for each individual day in advance.
• 15:41
  You understand clearly what is my availability, who are my
• 15:45
  competitors And based on that you can now when we spoke in
• 15:48
  terms of even the promotions and rates, you can do lots of, lots
• 15:53
  of different tests and you do normally split test different
• 15:56
  changes for different properties.
• 15:58
  And we're coming to the benchmarking that we discussed
• 16:00
  earlier. I wanted to touch base on it's
• 16:03
  benchmarking is about as well. You can do that same time last
• 16:07
  year, the traditional one hotels that they're using then you have
• 16:12
  your competitors positioning. So in real time because the
• 16:16
  demand is supply, it's very unique for this particular
• 16:19
  snapshot of time and we want to we want to benchmark in real
• 16:24
  time. So that's why it's very
• 16:25
  important to track your ranking price position and also your
• 16:31
  marketing and closer competitors where they are.
• 16:34
  So again, this comes complementary actually to the
• 16:39
  foundational dynamic pricing from our perspective.
• 16:42
  So you can unlock a lot of revenue by actually
• 16:46
  understanding, tracking, then iterating things that they have
• 16:50
  performed. So changes that they have made a
• 16:53
  big impact to yourbooking.com listings.
• 16:56
  Very good. Yeah, Well explained as well.
• 16:58
  So if you were setting up a listing tomorrow on booking.com,
• 17:03
  what are the few things that are absolutely essential to get
• 17:06
  right to ensure that you're going to get bookings straight
• 17:09
  away? That's a very good question.
• 17:12
  And actually I will just start then top, top down approach
• 17:17
  50,000 feet view. And this is not only for
• 17:21
  booking.com, but genuinely when you list the listing you want to
• 17:24
  do that. So where you want to start from
• 17:27
  what So strategic, what is my availability, what are my
• 17:31
  operational restrictions? What can I do and allow myself
• 17:35
  depending on my operational teams or individually as a host?
• 17:39
  So once you know that, then you're moving to actually
• 17:43
  understanding the market. This is what we have said.
• 17:47
  You can list your property as a draft on booking.com.
• 17:50
  You can get immediate access to all these analytics for free
• 17:54
  without the software. So this is a no brainer by
• 17:57
  looking at OK, what is my market?
• 18:00
  What is the dynamics, When is the seasonality?
• 18:03
  You can look actually in the sales report in booking.com for
• 18:05
  the past sometimes up to 20 years.
• 18:09
  I can see what is very few people know that, but this is
• 18:13
  huge. And again, not that the history,
• 18:16
  it will be always consistent, but is very good baseline.
• 18:19
  Actually to understand a particular market and actually
• 18:22
  even to make an investment is not just to manage your listing
• 18:25
  and coming back listing your property.
• 18:27
  So analyzing the trends. So this is the, this is
• 18:30
  determining my strategy, what my strategy is for the listing in
• 18:33
  terms of the price in order to have a competitive position and
• 18:38
  then the layer of channel and rates optimizations where
• 18:41
  actually I can make sure that I can do these changes.
• 18:46
  So organically, even with PMS markup, I can balance and keep
• 18:50
  my net ADR doesn't eat for my net ADR, it's rate part, it is
• 18:55
  the equality in price between the different channels.
• 18:59
  And once I'm confident in that, then I go and I also monitor my
• 19:02
  listings in terms of content optimization.
• 19:04
  Now you have good copy title images and this is the content
• 19:08
  optimization layer. By having all of that, I'm
• 19:12
  improving the likelihood of this listing to have a health score
• 19:16
  in terms of static changes 100, dynamic changes 100.
• 19:20
  But it's very difficult part, especially to learn and change
• 19:24
  because you need to go on a dynamic level and then on
• 19:27
  individual channel level because the channel level it's super
• 19:31
  important in terms of visibility and exposure.
• 19:34
  But this is where a lot of resources are taken and you
• 19:37
  don't have a lot of automations. Fantastic.
• 19:40
  Some brilliant tips there. So Miro, just tell us a bit more
• 19:44
  about my data value and where people can find out more
• 19:47
  information. Yes, of course.
• 19:50
  Actually you can find on our website, as I mentioned a few
• 19:53
  times as when I was going through the different tips and
• 19:58
  you can see our website at mydatavalue.com.
• 20:02
  You can see we have a research which is open in terms of
• 20:05
  booking.com ranking research and what I have discussed.
• 20:09
  But actually in detail it's open for for anybody they can look
• 20:14
  into it to read. Feel free to ask me any
• 20:16
  questions. I'm always open trying to be
• 20:18
  active on LinkedIn as well. And then you have we have free
• 20:22
  tools. We have on our website when you
• 20:24
  click on free tools, actually you'll see that we're providing
• 20:29
  the free tool where you can enter yourbooking.com name or
• 20:32
  URL and you can search for over 4 million plus list booking.com
• 20:37
  listings and you can find any your property, your competitors
• 20:40
  just with a single click. You can see that and leverage on
• 20:43
  this intelligence. Then we have a free calculator
• 20:46
  for promotions and for rates actually, again, it's free to
• 20:51
  open. So actually you understand how
• 20:53
  they stack up and what potentially how you can even do
• 20:56
  your strategy if you want manually.
• 20:59
  That's not a problem at all. And the last one is actually our
• 21:02
  com extension. So we have a com extension.
• 21:05
  We spoke a lot about booking.com extranet.
• 21:07
  We have access as well to thebooking.com public data in
• 21:11
  terms of the snapshots, but we are complementing with what we
• 21:14
  said about booking.com Extranet so we can actually make more
• 21:18
  intelligent decisions. And we are actually, I will
• 21:21
  mention this one not we're going to start being more active as
• 21:26
  well about that and, and communicate in a few weeks,
• 21:29
  we're going to launch actually completely new launch of my data
• 21:33
  value where we are leveraging on AI recommendation to optimize
• 21:39
  your booking channel and promotions.
• 21:41
  And you're able to automate that with one click.
• 21:44
  And it's it's very exciting, but I think this is a different
• 21:48
  topic. Sounds very exciting indeed.
• 21:51
  You're looking forward to hearing more about that.
• 21:53
  And yeah, I think I need to get on there and optimise my
• 21:56
  booking.com listings because I mean, at the moment, I would say
• 21:59
  probably, you know, the majority of my bookings come from
• 22:02
  booking.com and Airbnb. But it feels like we
• 22:05
  booking.com, there's a lot more potential and probably a lot
• 22:07
  more growth coming. It's a it's an interesting area
• 22:10
  to to be focusing on. Miro, thank you so much.
• 22:14
  We can touch base on that on a separate note, yeah.
• 22:17
  Let's let's chat let's chat Miro.
• 22:19
  It's it's it's been a real pleasure.
• 22:21
  Thank you for joining us on Host Planet Buy Size.
• 22:24
  Thank you for inviting me again, it was pleasure.
• 22:27
  Great to chat to Miro there about booking.com.
• 22:29
  Those special offers and your cancellation policy could
• 22:33
  supercharge you growth on Europe's biggest OTA.
• 22:36
  All right, that's it for today's episode.
• 22:38
  Remember, this podcast is brought to you in collaboration
• 22:41
  with host Philly, which is trusted by short term rental
• 22:44
  professionals across the globe. As a Host Planet listener, you
• 22:48
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• 23:04
  To grab these deals, click the link in the show notes or head
• 23:08
  to housephilly.com. For more free education tips and
• 23:12
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• 23:18
  Listen to our podcast and download a suite of ebooks for
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  hosts and property managers. That's it for today's episode of
• 23:25
  House Planet Bite Size. Until next time, happy hosting.