Freetobook Podcast
Hi, it's Karen here. I'm the founder and owner of bed and breakfast academy. I help aspiring and existing B&B owners to create a B&B lifestyle. You're going to love living. And to attract guests to become loyal. Repeat customers. If you're new to this podcast. Hello, I've been running B&B academy since 2006, and I also ran my own B&B hopped in house here in Shropshire for 17 years.
I have trained many hundreds of B&B owners over the years. Today, we're diving into everything you need to know about choosing a new, using the right online booking platform for your bed and breakfast. Even if you have a booking engine you're happy with then this podcast has contained some useful tips on using your booking engine more effectively.
I'll be chatting with Heather Scott from freetobook, which is the booking system I used at my own B&B hopped in house to get her expert insights. We'll cover what booking engines [00:01:00] are. The key features to look for and the legal and administrative bits you need to keep in mind. Plus we'll share some practical tips. On how to use research and compare different platforms. But at the end of this episode, you'll have a clear idea of how to make an informed decision to boost your B&B business.
Thank you very much for joining me on today's podcast. It would be great if we could get started by you just giving an introduction of yourself. So I'm an account manager for Freetobook. I've been working for the company for eight and a half years. I was in fact a customer of Freetobook.
I had a bed and breakfast and self catering in Scotland for. nine years went through a number of different booking engines, ended up with Freetobook. And then when I, I sold up and moved back down south to Wiltshire I ended up working for them and I now help people set up their Freetobook accounts.
Or I help people who are taking over properties that are already running a Freetobook account. That's fabulous. Thank [00:02:00] you. , You've mentioned Freetobook. So what is Freetobook to book is a booking engine or a PMS property management software. So it's software that helps a, a bed and breakfast hotel guest house any kind of accommodation business.
manage all its bookings. So they'll have an online diary that they manage at the back end. And there'll be a piece of software on their website, which will allow a customer to book directly with the property, complete a payment, et cetera, et cetera. So it's, it's basically doing both sides. Okay, brilliant.
So we'll get more into that throughout our conversation today. But I did have one question when, when I was preparing for this I was coming across lots of different terminology, said booking engine, booking platform, booking software, PMS. Is it all the same thing? Yes, so we would call ourselves a booking engine.
But I would think most people would say that we're a property management system or a PMS. That's normally the abbreviation. Sometimes it's [00:03:00] confused with something called a channel manager. A channel manager refers specifically to When you connect your booking engine to a third party, like say booking.
com or Expedia, it allows us to transfer information between two different systems. And that process is called channel management, but it's normally additional or separate to your PMS. Your PMS, it belongs to a third party. To you, that looks after your business. Okay. Thank you. That makes it much clearer.
So I will endeavor to use booking engine rather than any others, but my apologies if I slip into platform or software. It's okay. So that takes us on to really, can you explain to us what a booking engine is and how it works? So, everyone will be familiar when you book something online, you'll go on and you'll search for availability or find information about the property and it's basically the booking engine that's providing that information, whether it be to your own personal [00:04:00] website.
Or to a third party like booking. com, but it allows the property to manage all their availability and prices from one place. They'll be doing that in the backend. It allows you to take bookings directly through your website. It should allow you to take payments. It should allow you to communicate with your guests so that you can confirm bookings or follow up on bookings.
It should be doing everything that we used to do. over the phone or in the post in the olden days when I started doing B& B. Yeah, I remember those days myself back in 2004 before I very, I very quickly got a booking engine. Well, it, it was a very basic booking engine at the time, but I guess one of the concerns I have, I hear from people who come on my courses, is do they actually need a booking engine these days?
What do you think? Absolutely, totally, completely essential. A business can't function without it. I mean, apart from anything else, if you go to book a holiday [00:05:00] yourself, if you went on to a hotel's website and you weren't able to search availability or make a booking, you'd probably move on. And just go and book something else because people expect to be able to access that information immediately.
Is it available? How much is it? And they expect to be able to book it. So as a business, if you're not providing that functionality to a customer, it's going to really affect your bookings. If you decided that you were going to be using like an online travel agent, like booking. com, and you were allowing people to book there, but not book on your website.
Again, that could be disastrous for your own bookings, your profitability because you'd be paying commission on everything. So yeah, booking engine is essential. You can't live without one now. . I think I've, I've been using the statistics for quite a few years, so it's, it's probably a larger number now, but I, I did see a stat which said 80 percent of people
won't book with a B& B or a hotel or self catering, whatever, if it doesn't have an online booking engine these days. And I imagine that figures much [00:06:00] bigger these days. Yeah. I mean, and I'm, I'm setting people up all the time, so I've got properties who've resisted, they didn't want to do it.
They maybe have had a lot of repeat bookers over the years, but those repeat bookers have started to diminish and then finding that they're not replacing those people because the people that they're replacing them with expect to be able to go online and book, they're not going to ring up.
They're not going to send an email. They can't wait for that reply. So yeah, I mean, it's, it's really, really hard for any business to, to operate without a booking engine. , it's funny you talking about customers ringing up in my Facebook group that I run for past course attendees that someone was saying the other day that they'd been called at one o'clock in the morning by someone wanting to book for that.
morning or that night. And I remember when, when I first started out before people were used to using booking engines we used to get rung up at all times of the day and night from people. You probably had that experience yourself. [00:07:00] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my, my bed and breakfast was in Scotland, so I was getting a lot of overseas customers who didn't have any concept of time zones.
So yeah, I would be getting phone calls all times of the day. I mean, I remember when I got my first booking system, Literally the phone didn't ring for a week. , but I was getting bookings. And it's amazing you go to bed and you've got, haven't had a booking. You wake up in the morning and you've got four or five new bookings that come in overnight.
Not necessarily from overseas. They're just people who are up at 11 o'clock at night in their pajamas, just booking their holiday. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's fabulous. And some people don't quite understand the boundaries of when it's okay to ring up, do they? Yeah. Well, I was having this conversation with someone recently about the nine o'clock rule.
I still do the nine o'clock don't ring after nine o'clock. Otherwise it's an emergency. Yeah, I've spent a long time training my mother in law not to ring after nine o'clock, but I now have an eight o'clock rule, it's even worse. Okay, so why do you [00:08:00] think it is, well, we've talked about it a bit already, but why do you think it's crucial for B& B owners to choose the right booking engine?
I think basically your, your booking engine is going to be an extension of you. It's going to be like a whole other member of staff. So it's going to be your receptionist, it's going to be your secretary, it's going to be, , organizing your day to day cleaning, diary, everything. So, , it's important that you spend as much time picking your booking engine as you would pick your member of staff, because you're going to be working together so closely, and you need to trust it.
You need to trust that the information that's in it is accurate, that , it's sending out the right communications at the right time, that the bookings are, you're not getting double bookings, that all the data is right. So, It's really essential that you put the work into checking all that out before you decide which one you're going to go with.
Tasks that you would have normally done by phone in the olden days, as I [00:09:00] say, so much of that can be done online now via your booking system. And one thing I think, both of us will know having run an accommodation, is your time is so precious. And, , none of us get into hospitality or running bed and breakfast to be sat in front of a computer all day.
And the, the computer can do it all for you. You just need to feed it with enough information that it can do that. I love the analogy of it being an extra member of staff and one that you can trust. Again, going back to the olden days when there was always at risk of a double booking, wasn't there?
I don't know if you ever had one, I, well, I do remember when the online travel agents first came in and it wasn't possible then to connect the two systems together. So you'd have, you'd get a booking from booking. com and then you'd have to quickly jump onto your own diary and block it out.
And vice versa. Yeah, double booking was a thing. It shouldn't be now. , no booking system should allow that to happen now. But sometimes it is down to user error. I did. I [00:10:00] have one occasion when I had a knock on the door And some guests there and I didn't really, I wasn't really concentrating and I said, right, well, I'll just take you up to your room because I was expecting some guests and I said, Oh no, we're booked in the downstairs room.
And it was only I knew that I had repeat guests coming in the downstairs room so I knew who they were. And , I was going into complete panic. I thought I've double booked, I've double booked. And luckily , I had my Freetobook booking engine. I was able to go and look and they'd actually booked for the next week and they'd got their weeks wrong.
And that was such a relief for me to know that it wasn't my fault. It wasn't great. I think the only one I ever had was where my husband took a booking over the phone and didn't put it into the Freetobook system. And somebody obviously came along and booked that room and it wasn't until like two days later I found the post it note that I realized that, that he'd taken a booking and thankfully I was able to sort of cut it off at the pass and [00:11:00] reorganize things but, yeah, I think any double bookings that happen these days it's normally, somebody's taken a booking and hasn't immediately put it into the system.
And because these things are live, obviously people can be booking from anywhere at any point. So it's important that you, you do use them as prescribed. Yeah, so I guess just as an additional question, it is something that is quite easy to do, isn't it, is just be able to, if you do have a phone booking, which are quite rare, but when you do, you can easily go onto the system and update it.
Yeah, I mean, most people would have their booking system open all day, every day anyway. Yeah. Because they'll have bookings coming in, they'll be wanting to look at who's coming, who's going, who's paid, who hasn't, they might be responding to messages. So it's normally something that you've got open on your computer or your tablet or whatever, all day, every day.
So it doesn't take two seconds to just go in. Plus you've got to be in the booking system in order to check whether you've got the availability in the first place. Because you can't be selling something without checking on [00:12:00] the system, the live system, whether you've actually got something to sell.
Okay. So, so would you still use a paper diary? That's the question. I wouldn't personally, I, I do know some people that have, but it becomes, quite arduous to keep the paper diary up to date because you're, you can move things around on your online system. You can swap people around in their rooms to have to go and keep duplicating that all the time that it normally doesn't last a month.
Normally people are quite fed up. And I think once they've, they've got confidence in their booking system and they think, well, no, it is right. I can trust it. I can rely on it. A lot of people worry that maybe if the internet goes down, they won't be able to get on it, but you can get on it on your phone.
So if you've got mobile data on your phone, you could always get it. As long as you can get onto the internet somewhere, you can still get onto your booking system. Yeah, that's a great point. So what are some of the common features and services that a good booking [00:13:00] engine should offer?
Well, obviously the first one is online booking for the customer. I always say, we've only got one job in our life and that is to get you bookings. So the first thing is that the customer can book on your website quickly and, , accurately, efficiently. And it's easy for them and it's easy for you.
The second thing would be payment processing. Again, going back to the olden days, we weren't able to secure bookings with credit cards or we weren't able to take payments up front. Now you can do all of that. And in an age where no shows and cancellations are the sort of bane of any hospitality business, Capturing those card details at the time of booking so that you can enforce your terms and conditions is absolutely key.
Channel management, it's very rare You come across a property these days that doesn't use an online travel agent in some way shape or form Even if it's only in the, the shoulder months. So having that channel connection between your booking engine and the OTAs, [00:14:00] I would say is, is really important.
The communication side of things I'd say that is becoming even more important now particularly for forging relationships with your customers. So you're, communicating to them clearly and accurately what they've booked, what, the situation is with turning up. Yeah. Again, we have a lot of properties that have keyless entry now.
So we're having to explain to people how to get in the building, what their key codes are, et cetera. And also as well, it helps you build relationships with customers that might have booked through a third party. So if they booked through booking. com, you can sort of take ownership of the conversation with that customer and start to build a relationship with them.
rather than booking. com owning that customer. Special offers and promo codes. These are sort of all the little add ons that you should be able to do with your booking system. You shouldn't have to pay extra to be able to do those things. And of course, reporting and analytics. Your booking system should be able to churn out no end of reports [00:15:00] for you, both to help you with your accounting, to help you with, setting your pricing for the next year.
giving you an idea of what your occupancy levels are, what rooms are performing better, all of that kind of thing. It just helps you make better choices next year when it comes to, , prices, minimum stays, et cetera. Okay. Thank you. So just going back to channel management a moment. So, Maybe for those people who are thinking of running a B&B and aren't there yet we're talking about things like booking.
com, aren't we? And would AirB&B be included in that? There's two big main channels of OTAs. So the big one is booking. com, Priceline. So that company, I think they own about 40 different brands. So Booking. com, Late Rooms, Agoda, Hotels Combined, there's, there's a whole load of them.
If you're on Booking. com, you're on all of them. The other big one is Expedia Holdings, they own Hotels. com, Travago, Travelocity, again I think it's about 79 brands they [00:16:00] own again, if you're on Expedia, you're on all of them. AirB&B, we would class that as being an online travel agent. There's also industry specific ones, so things like Hostelworld.
for hostels, Pitch Up for campsites so there's, there's all sorts of different, but the two big players are Booking. com, Expedia, AirB&B in the middle, and coming up on the rails, not so much a channel, we class it as a direct route, is the Google Connections. And these have been a real game changer recently where you can now feed your prices directly into Google.
And again, we manage that availability and price feed as well. So basically you could be in a situation where you're on four different, Third parties, as well as your own website, so it's important you've got something that's coordinating all of that otherwise you will get in a pickle. Yeah, it could be really overwhelming couldn't it and keeping everything to date across all of them and that's what a good booking engine will do all of [00:17:00] that channel management for you.
So, I guess we'll talk about the user friendliness of a booking engine. And I think we're seeing it from a couple of different viewpoints, we've got it from the B& B owner and also from the guests. So can we talk through what makes a user friendly booking engine,
my priority, I think coming from the hospitality background, my priority has always been for the customer. So I think first and foremost, , if you're looking at booking engines, The thing you want to be looking at first is how does it look for the customer? How does it work for the customer? You'll be dealing with people with all different technical abilities, languages, countries, needs.
You need to have a booking system that is clear and simple for the customer to use. You want to get them through that process as quickly as possible. Before they change their mind, but also you want them to get through it without making unnecessary errors and mistakes. [00:18:00] So you want to make sure that whatever you're looking at from a customer's perspective, it's, it's dummy proof.
From your side of things, obviously you want to be looking at the backend and you want to have something that is, , is simple and easy for you to use. You don't want to have to go hunting. for how to do something. It should just be there and logical and simple and easy. Yeah, our system, people say that the back end looks quite basic, but we're happy with that.
We want it to be simple and easy for you to find things. We could make it look really, really complicated and you'd think it was even more fancy than it is. But why, , all the nuts and bolts should be under the bonnet. You shouldn't have to be bothered with them. You should just be able to get to what you want to do quickly and easily and get on with your day.
Your job is to be a B&B owner and create fantastic customer satisfaction, isn't it? Not be spending all day. We, , we do the technology so that you don't have to do the technology. So it should just be [00:19:00] quick and easy to use. And there should always be support available. When you need it.
Gallery View & Screen Share-2: Okay. And a question I forgot to ask right at the beginning, Heather and I know we're talking a bit in general about booking platforms now, but I just want to come back to Freetobook. A lot of my listeners on the podcast are from overseas, so is, is Freetobook international? Yes, yes, we've, I think we're, I think it's about 120 countries we're in.
Right, wow. So, I mean, I was just speaking to someone this morning in Singapore. Yesterday I was doing Portugal. Anybody can use Freetobook in any country. There's, there's no restrictions on that. Okay, that's lovely. Sorry, I forgot to ask that at the beginning. So, I know a lot of people are very wedded to the, and rightly so, to the look and feel of their website because it sort of describes their, their brand and what their B& B is all about or their hotel.
So how important would you say customization and flexibility is for a booking engine? Well, I'm bound to say very because we [00:20:00] have customized our booking pages so here we can, you can actually Customize your booking page, so it's, it's your colors, your logos, basically so it matches your website. The booking page is selling you, it's not selling us.
So yeah, I would say, it is very important that you, you get that, that page to, to mimic or represent what you do or the quality of your product. Because also as well from a security point of view, you don't want people feeling that they just clicked a booking button on your website and now they've been taken somewhere completely random.
Because as a customer, you think, oh, hang on a minute, where did I go? Is that safe? If it, if it all looks like you, then that gives the customer the confidence to carry on with their booking. That's a really important point. And I mean, talking about data protection and that sort of thing.
I mean, obviously people are becoming more and more aware with scams and spams and people pretending to be someone else and phishing are more and more concerned around data protection and also Of course, in the last few years, we've [00:21:00] had GDPR come in, which data protection in, in Europe and the UK, and then there are different data protection rules in, in the States and lots of different countries.
So, I guess what are the key data protection issues that B&B or accommodation owners need to be aware of? I mean, I'd say probably the hot potato at the moment. In fact, I was, I saw this morning, there was something on the television this morning about booking. com customers being scanned out of, giving over their card details and things.
I think the key thing for every accommodation owner at the moment is how secure that actual booking system is. You multifactor authentication here. So if somebody was to attempt to gain access to your account. from a different place, a different device, it would automatically, instigate the, the multifactor authentication on it.
And I, I think anybody who doesn't have that should have that because that's the first thing to do is to lock down your actual [00:22:00] booking system because that's where all this data is going to live. That's where your customers contact details are. The credit cards are encrypted so they wouldn't be able to get that, but they would be able, if they got into your system, they might be able to send people messages to get them to make payments.
But, we've really, really locked it down. But I think there's some sort of bad practice that we see occasionally people giving their passwords to all the members of staff. I've got people who run pubs where, you know, Billy who works on the bar has got the same access as the owner.
And that's just, just bad practice. And I think, there's, there's a lot people can do within their own organizations to tighten up. what they do and who they give access to the account to. The GDPR thing GDPR, just in case anybody doesn't understand, it's the rules that govern who you can contact, how you can contact them and the permission you've got to get in order to contact them.
So as part of the messaging [00:23:00] system, what we've got is a digital registration form that is sent to the customer prior to arrival. And on that registration form, they're asked to agree To be included in marketing and people will have seen this themselves when they've done things that they agree to sign up to marketing.
And you can then run a report that only extracts those people that have agreed to do that. And that means then that you can stop yourself accidentally breaking the rules by contacting people that didn't opt in. Okay. I'm just thinking about that. There are two types of contact, aren't there?
, there's the marketing contact, but then there's the emails that are sent as part of booking. And that's a little different. Yeah. So anything that's considered to be as part of the the business of the contract, the booking that's been made between both parties, yes, you can email the customer, this is the code for you to get in.
These are the directions or, whatever it is you need to do. But as far as the, dear Mrs. So and so, we saw you stayed with us three weeks ago last Thursday. Would you like to come back again in January? [00:24:00] That now comes under the category of marketing. Yeah. So you wouldn't need their permission for , the emails that were part of the booking.
It's covered. That's the, it's something like performance of contract or something, I think. There is a term, isn't there? There is, there is. It'll come back to us. So that's, yeah, it just is so important. I think, as you say, for you to keep your data secure. I once stayed at a B& B in the Lake District and we went in and a guest book on the reception desk with people's address, email address.
Credit cards. Yeah, so you signed in and you could see everybody else's details. Yeah, I mean, again, going back to the olden days, I can remember being sent people's credit card details by fax. I can remember being in a hotel where they literally had a lever arch file with all the faxes in with all the credit cards on.
Yeah. It's like a, a hacker's dream. I think we're all a lot more aware now, the banks are cracking down a lot, and I know people do get quite cross sometimes [00:25:00] about the fact that they're having to authenticate things when they, they buy online, or they're having to do the multi factor authentication on, on our system, when they're, gone to visit their sister 500 miles away using their Wi Fi, but it's all there to protect you, your data, your customers.
So most people accept that it's something we just have to live with now if we're going to keep everything safe. Yeah. So, a key question to be asking any perspective booking engine supplier is what is your security and, and what is Yeah, I mean, I would say multifactor authentication is a basic, every booking engine should have that.
It shouldn't be that you just have a username and password and that's it. You're in as I say, with the multifactor authentication, it identifies the DI device and the, iP address that you usually use. And when you log in on that, it doesn't ask you every time to authorize anything. But if you use something different, somewhere different, then it will trigger [00:26:00] it because that's what it's looking for is suspicious activity.
Okay. Oh, and I guess just to explain to people, anyone who doesn't know it's that is when you you put in an alternative contact detail, isn't it? And it's like, yeah, we've got choices. So you can either have a code sent you an email, a code sent your phone. You can have an authenticator app where you just go in and type in a six digit number.
You have a choice of things that you can do, but yeah, I say any booking engine you look at should have MFA. Brilliant. Thank you. So, It sounds I know when we're talking about booking engines, when I used to run the course classroom courses, people would come in with this idealized vision of what running a B&B actually meant, and it was all about creating a beautiful room for guests, perfectly decorated and fabulous breakfast and building that relation with customers and lots of chats.
And I was that person. Yeah, all my rooms done by 11 o'clock and then the rest of [00:27:00] the day for myself. Yeah. So once I get past the, and did you know cleaning is going to take you five hours a day. There was that question around admin and people just used to say, well, I'm in an office job and my reason for wanting to run a B& B is to get away from the computer.
So, it sounds like a lot of admin. So what sort of admin tasks can a booking engine actually facilitate? Well, I've mentioned it already, the communication side of things. I mean, I think properties fall into two camps with this. You either get the people who do communicate and they always have done.
They've always sent out emails to their customer, they get the booking and they show the customer a lot of love before they even walk through the door. And then you get other properties who's get the booking and literally the customer never hears a word from them again until the day they turn up.
So. So if we're dealing with category one, we can help those people a lot because we can help automate a lot of that by having a load of scheduled messages [00:28:00] and you can personalize those. So we just drop in, dates of stay names and things like that. So they don't look automated. The second category who never did anything and probably should have been doing something.
thing. Again, equally, you can help them with the communication side of things, because that's now doing a job that possibly they never had time to do. So I'm thinking of maybe bigger, busier properties who just didn't have the luxury of time of doing that manually before. So I think communication is, is probably the biggest one.
The payment side is also another one. So a lot of that can be automated and scheduled within your booking system. So whether that's actually gathering the full value of the booking at the time of booking, or sending the customer a link forward for two weeks before arrival, four weeks before arrival, whatever it is saying, you're well, you're due on next Friday, please click here to pay your bill.
Get them to do the work. Or if they haven't, you can just have it that you go in in [00:29:00] the morning and just press a button to take the money. So that means that the whole business of getting the money, taking the money isn't something you're having to scrabble around and do for 20 customers. on a Friday when everybody's checking in at the same time.
And also as well, just keeping a track of who's actually paid. I can't tell you how many times I have a conversation with, with a property and they're like, I can't tell whether they've paid or not. And I'm like, well, you haven't told the system that they paid. So yeah, I think. The other one is as well, depending on the nature of your business and how big, big your business is, the housekeeping side, if you've got people doing your housekeeping, whether you are running a load of AirB&Bs or you've got a pub or a hotel, or you've got someone that's coming in just being able to run off a report, right?
Who's in, who's out? Who's got special requests, who's allergic to feathers, who's bringing dogs, who wants flowers in the room? All of that just being printed out, A lovely big list for you. All these little [00:30:00] things they all add up to a lot of time saved.
So going back to payments and this may not be a fair question, so I'll edit it out if you don't want to answer it. But a lot of people might be interested and there's a lot of discussion on seeing this in our Facebook group is, do you see any trend of when people do take payments now at B& Bs? Is it on arrival or is it before arrival or, or traditionally at the end of the summer? So two things I've definitely seen again, going back to the olden days we used to have to take deposits. Because it was the only way that we could guarantee that somebody would turn up was actually to get some of their money in advance, normally in a check or a backs payment or something.
Now that we've got all this technology where we can get the card, check the card, store the card, pre authorize the card, the need for deposits has diminished. And I think after the whole COVID thing where a lot of people got their fingers burnt, they'd taken all these deposits from people. And whilst we all know and accept that the [00:31:00] deposits should have been kept in a lovely separate bank account, never touched, people did and were in the habit of using those deposits to fund refurbishments over the winter, pay for their heating oil, whatever it was.
And then they had to give it all back. And that caused a lot of people, a lot of problems. So there was, there's, there's now quite a lot of aversion to deposits. And I think now, certainly within our system, you can get the card, check the card, store the card, you've got a card that works and you can charge it.
There's also a secondary thing where four days before arrival, You can now pre authorize that card so you can check does it still work? Do they have sufficient funds to pay for the the bill? And you can ring fence that money so they can't spend it anywhere else. And the four days normally ties in with most people's cancellation policies.
So most people would be saying, right, if you cancel within, 48, 72 hours, you lose the full amount. So given that you've already ring fenced it, you can recover it. So the deposit thing seems to have really diminished now outside of [00:32:00] say self catering, they do still tend to stick with deposits. The second trend that I've seen is the, again, back in the olden days, it used to be pay on departure. So quite often people would turn up to a B& B and it was quite unique because there was no other kind of accommodation that did this and you would pay at the end.
That now has stopped. Stopped because there has been a lot of cases of people absconding. And now it's much more common for people to take the payment either in advance or on arrival, but very rarely on departure. Okay. So I don't see that hardly at all now. Yeah, I certainly remember those pre COVID days.
So I ran my B& B on my own with three rooms at, well, four rooms at , my largest capacity and trying to cook breakfast for one set of guests while another was trying to leave and trying to deal with credit card machines and that sort of thing. So, I think customers are used to turning up and it's already paid.
I mean, quite often you get people that put their card in and then you say, right, do you want to pay? And [00:33:00] they're like, well, I thought I already had. Yeah. So I think, they're just used to that now. It's pretty much what happens everywhere else you stay. It's interesting , to see how that trend has changed over time, really.
I mean, there's also things that you can do in your setup. You can set it that if somebody books within a certain time before arrival. So if they book within a week of arriving, you can say, right, those customers have got to pay it all upfront now. Okay. So you can do that. There's also date range policies that you can put in.
So, for instance, let's say you were near Cheltenham race course. You can have a policy that says if you book for gold cup week, I don't know if the gold cup is at Cheltenham, but let's pretend it is. If you book for that week, all bets are off. It's full payment upfront, non refundable. You can't cancel and if you do you lose your money.
So you can have specific policies that protect you at peak times. Going back to online travel [00:34:00] agencies your booking. coms and your Expedias why would a property want to use an online travel agency on one of those very rare properties that never did?
I think a lot of this depends where you are. Yeah. So there'll be some parts of the country and I'll, I'll stick to the UK. So let's take the Isle of Skye, St. Ives, for example. Those properties in those areas, certainly for a large proportion of the season would not need an online travel agent because you can't get, you can't get a room for London money.
It would be perfectly feasible for those properties to just have direct bookings, maybe Google, maybe visit Scotland or something, but they're not using online travel agents. If you're in Blackpool, where you're competing against 3, 000 other accommodation providers, it's very difficult to get yourself in front of the customer.
So you can't deny that Booking. com do give you visibility. They do get you in front of people and they do generate you bookings. [00:35:00] You've got some people who are quite anti OTA. I, I'm on the fence with it. , I've used them and I've not used them. I think with the online travel agents.
It's how you use them, and , it's all about controlling them. If you let them just help themselves to whatever they want in your diary, just book whatever they like, they will take the place over, and you will be paying a lot of commission, and your direct customers won't be able to book because they won't be able to , get in.
And I think , that's sometimes where people make the mistake is that , they just give them all the control. Your booking engine should, So, I can go in and I can say, right, July and August next year, 2025, don't let anyone from Booking. com book that yet. I'm only going to let my direct customers book it.
And then if they haven't booked it, only then am I going to let Booking. com sell it. And I think this goes back to how it all began. When Booking. com first came out, when we were doing it. [00:36:00] It was sold to us that they would get rid of the stuff that we couldn't sell. And now what's happened is the property is selling the stuff that Booking.
com can't sell. Right. And you need to flip it back to where it should have been, which is, let's give you your direct customers the opportunity to book it. And then let's let them sell it. afterwards. So it's all about, controlling what they do, but also having a bit of a reality about what they do.
So, if a customer books today for next August, the likelihood that they will honor that booking is probably about 50, 50. They'll probably end up canceling it. So the property has got to weigh up. how it makes them feel to have a booking in for next August, yay, versus that being blocked for 11 months and then getting cancelled four weeks before the date.
How many times could they have sold that room if it had been available [00:37:00] to other bookers? I think I seem to remember seeing statistics some time ago that there was a 50 percent chance of Online travel agencies bookings getting cancelled compared to direct bookings? It depends how far in advance they're made.
Okay. So if they're booked about a year in advance here, you're probably looking at about 45, 50 percent chance that they'll get cancelled. Yeah. The ones that cancel the least are the ones that are booked. last minute. So, four to six weeks before the date of stay. So, quite often when I'm speaking to customers and , we're going through how we , can increase their direct bookings and reduce their commission bills.
, it's trying to get them to get the confidence to say, no, I'm not going to let them have July yet. And it's not forever. I think this is the thing. , it's not that you just cut them off from July forever. It's until we and you might be ready in May. But at least you've given yourself the chance to let the direct bookers have a [00:38:00] go at it.
So what you're saying is you just need to be more strategic about it rather than just saying booking. com or Expedia have everything, you've got to look at your diary and think well, Yeah. And also I think it , depends what you're buying. So obviously you're starting up a new bed and breakfast.
Now it might be something you've started from scratch. It's never been a bed and breakfast before. You're going to need the exposure. You're going to need to be on booking. com in order to get , those customers through the door in the first place. So year one, you're probably going to have to put everything on.
Booking. com and everything else, just to get yourself out there. If you're buying a, a bed and breakfast, that is a going concern, then it's going to have some presence on the internet. It's going to have an existing , a customer base. It's going to have some history that you can, you can plan on. So you, the way that you manage thing in that scenario is going to be slightly different.
Also as well, going back to the seasonality my bed and breakfast, I couldn't sell anything in January. It was, I was in [00:39:00] Scotland, it was freezing, people were only staying with me maybe because they were working in the area or visiting relatives. So quite frankly, I was grateful for anything I got.
And if I got it through booking. com, I didn't mind because I wasn't getting anything and I needed the money for my heating bill. But in, in January, July and August. I didn't need them and nor did I want them. We're still very similar here. It was almost like someone turned the , the B& B booking button off at the end of October half term and turned it back on again at the end of February half term if you were lucky and that sort of slipped into Easter.
Even with, I think I had 70 percent repeat business by the time I shut my B& B. And even with all those repeat guests, I could not get them to come and stay during the winter months. So it's about understanding that, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, there's also other things that you can do to, to try and persuade people to book directly.
I mean, one of the things we've got this thing called an OTA surcharge, which is where [00:40:00] you can load the prices that we send to booking. com. So if your price. for your direct customer is 100 a night. If they book through the website, we can load that price by say 15%. So when they book through booking. com, it's 115.
So if the customer finds you on booking. com comes to your website to do a price comparison, they'll see that it is cheaper to book direct and then hopefully they will. Okay. And that's, one of the questions that gets asked quite a lot because booking. com guarantee. Or sorry, the OTA is quite often guarantee a lowest price promise.
Yeah, I don't believe that has been enforced or is enforceable. It's certainly not enforceable in Europe. I think it's actually illegal in Europe. Right. So yeah, I mean, there's, there's various ways that you can manage that situation, but it's not something that's troubled. Anybody for a long time.
Okay. Parity called it was a parity. Yeah, I think they're normally more [00:41:00] worried about what Expedia are up to or what Bookit. com is up to less worried about what you're up to. Yeah. So, I mean, there are ways around that aren't there offering a slightly different service or product. Yeah. I mean,
, some properties will say if you book direct, the breakfast is included. Whereas if you book through booking. com, it's not. Yeah. The cancellation terms might be different. So you might get a more generous cancellation policy when you book direct your minimum stay restrictions might be different.
There's , all sorts of things that you, you can do. And, and in any event, everything should be better when you book direct. Right. Yeah. Everything. So they should never have the best terms, the best prices, the best anything. It should always be better direct. Okay. So that's one thing you should, if you're setting up a B&B or you're buying one, it's something you should be thinking about , is what is the, I guess the VIP service that you're offering to people who book direct as opposed to coming through the online travel agencies.
Yeah. I mean, there's, there's [00:42:00] all sorts of things. I've got properties on the Isle of Wight, for instance, if you book direct with them, then you get money off of the Isle of Wight ferry, which is extortionately expensive. I've got people in Scotland who do afternoon tea on arrival when you book direct.
There's all sorts of things that, that people do. Parking is another one, but there's properties in Blackpool, if you book direct with them, you get free parking. So, yeah, , it's, there's , lots of things you can do. I guess I do need to mention that there's something called the I think it's the travel package insurance.
You just need to be a bit careful when partnering up with other businesses just in case the other business becomes insolvent. So people just need to be aware of that. , if they're offering packages, let's say, I guess one thing you might do is offer a free evening meal.
It's a local restaurant. So, it's just been , aware of that. And that's in the pink book, the Visit Britain pink book.
We've talked about what a booking engine actually is and the sorts of Functions and facilities you should be looking at when you're thinking about a booking [00:43:00] engine. Let's move on to how we go about finding the right one for your business. .
What steps should B& B owners take when researching different booking engines, because there are a lot out there, aren't there? There are literally thousands. So, I mean, the first thing I would always say is if you know anyone who's in the industry, someone who runs a bed and breakfast or a hotel, I would speak to them first because they've probably been through them all before they found the one that they're happy with, or maybe unhappy with.
So I would always go to somebody in the industry first just to see what they think, who they would recommend. A lot of our new properties come via recommendations. It depends whether you're. sort of coming from within the industry or without whether you'll actually have those contacts. If I would also say I would look not just in the area where you're buying, but I would [00:44:00] look at other properties.
So what are they using on their websites? So find properties that are similar to yours. They've got the, the same quality as you the same kind of offering as you something that you would admire that you'd want to, replicate, see what booking engines they're using. You can normally see at the bottom of the page or in the URL.
what the booking engine is I would also always test the actual process of booking. Because going back to what we said at the beginning, the whole point is, how easy is it to book? So you might find a fabulous place that you really like, find out that they're using such and such booking engine and then you go to use that booking engine and it's just torture to book on.
So obviously, we don't want to be using that. There's also, I think you've mentioned your own Facebook group, but there's lots of Facebook groups, lots of social media now. Unlike, when we were doing it, there's a whole town square full of people chattering about everything to do with hospitality.
And there's Facebook groups that are specific for bed and [00:45:00] breakfast, for hotels, for AirB&Bs. And I would go in those groups and I would see Who are they talking about? And I think it's, it's a question that probably gets asked on a weekly basis of people saying, what BMS do you recommend? The thing I would say though, is caveat what they're saying.
So if a campsite is telling you to use such and such, and you're not a campsite, then it's possibly not worth listening to what they're recommending. So you want to take recommendations for properties that are again, similar to yours. I'd I would also as well, if you can work out what business it is they're running, so sometimes when you look at their Facebook profile, you can see that they are the owner of such and such B& B.
Go and look at their website and see if it's any good. And if their booking engine's any good, because if they've just recommended something and then you go on their website and that is a bag of nails, then clearly, that's not something that you want to use. So definitely do that. Online reviews for sure.
Most booking engines are reviewed on Trust [00:46:00] Pilot and Google. I would say Google's probably a little bit more reliable because you cannot get a review off of Google for lovin the money, whereas Trust Pilot. I do believe that you can appeal against those reviews sometimes if they're not great and you can get them removed.
And also as well, I would. And obviously speak to the booking engines. Yeah, because some of them you can't actually physically talk to that for me would be a red flag straight away I am still have a generation I want to be able to pick up the phone. I want to be able to speak to the person. But yeah, I think, you probably, once you start speaking to them, you'll get a feel for whether or not this is the kind of company that you're going to want to work with.
And in your bed and breakfast life, you are going to be dealing with a lot of faceless tech, whether that's Facebook, Google. booking. com, it's going to frustrate the hell out of you for your entire B& B life is that you cannot speak to a human. Your booking engine, [00:47:00] being your second member of staff, you need to be able to have human contact with them.
Okay, yeah, that's a really good point. And so, I guess another one of the really important points for a lot of B& B owners or aspiring B& B owners actually is, is the different pricing models, booking engines. It can seem quite complicated and I think there can sometimes be hidden charges you're not aware of.
So what sort of questions are you asking there? Oh, again, first and foremost, Get a spreadsheet, that would be, I'd say, before you do anything, start a spreadsheet because yes, it is all different. So you're going to get some booking engines that charge you annually. So they'll say, right, it's an annual fee of X and that will include your online booking system, your channel management, your payment system, etc, etc.
You'll get others that will , charge you a monthly fee based on possibly the amount of units you've got. And then you'll get others which are pay as you go. , [00:48:00] we're more on the pay as you go side. So yeah, it is a bit difficult because you're comparing apples and pears and whatnot. I think a lot of it, again, will do with the, the nature of your business.
So if you're seasonal, then being committed to paying a monthly fee every month. that possibly you'll be paying for four months when you're not earning any money might not work for you cashflow wise. So I think you, you need to be looking at the nature of the business and then what you can actually afford to pay.
Some of the annual ones, that is a full payment upfront. You might be paying 1500 pounds straight out the traps again, from a cashflow point of view, some properties just can't afford to lay out that kind of money. in one go. But yeah, , it is difficult and , I do appreciate that. What you need to be looking at is what are they publishing?
Do they actually publish their prices? On our website you can go and see exactly what you're going to pay. I think if you're not [00:49:00] publishing your prices that then says to me are we just making them up depending on what they think they might be able to earn from me? I don't know. And whatever you do get, Get it in writing so you're absolutely clear on what you're paying for.
Are you going to be paying 50p every time you put a booking in your own diary? Are you going to be paying 1 percent on top of all your online travel agent bookings? Are you going to be paying transaction fees? Just check that everything is on that, that email that is confirming exactly what you're going to be paying.
And then obviously if they do hit you with things that you weren't told about, you can point to that document. If you want to argue that you've been missold the booking system in any way. Some of the booking systems will also offer you. free things like they might say, right, you'll get the booking system, you'll get a free website.
Now you might be getting a free website, but the free website might not actually be that free, i. e. it's going to cost you money because it's not going to generate you the amount of bookings that you need [00:50:00] had you had your own website with SEO and all the wonderful things. It can also be a sort of golden handcuffs arrangement because obviously now you've got your booking engine.
And your website with the same company. If you want to change your booking engine, you've now got to change your website and vice versa. You're wedding yourself to this company now for possibly a longer period than you'd want to. I'd also be looking at the contract terms as well. What you don't want is that you've signed up to a booking system and after two months you've realised it's not really what , you needed something different, but you're stuck with it now for a year. because you're in a contract. So I think if there's any doubt or the nature of your business might be changing or it's brand new, because again, what you think when you are planning to open your business versus what you think three months after you've been running your business are two very different things.
So the booking system might not actually [00:51:00] fit the business that you've ended up running rather than the one you dreamt of running. Great answers there about, what questions you should be asking around pricing. So what are some other key questions that you should be asking the booking engine provider?
Just on the subject of pricing, it's a question that I get asked all the time by people. And I think, yes, of course, pricing , is important. Yes, of course, how much you're paying for your booking engine is important, but ultimately It's about the quality of the booking engine, the support you're getting, the functionality.
So, I save, I don't know, 200 pounds on my booking engine, but I don't have the ability to restrict what I give booking. com. That's going to cost me thousands. So I think it's better to look at it in a bigger picture rather than just concentrating on, pennies of, how much is each booking engine?
What is it actually going to allow you to do? How much is it going to let you control? [00:52:00] How much can you do versus how much can they do? I think there's also things to do with gatekeeping. So some of the booking engines will gatekeep information. So for instance, you should be able to run all sorts of lovely reports out of the system.
Now, some of those reports in some booking engines are only available within the booking engine. Can't download them. You can't put them in Excel. You can't take them away. You can't manipulate them. Part of that is so that you can't download all your bookings because that information could be used to import into a competitor booking engine, should you choose to leave or it might be given to your accountant so that they can upload into their accounts package, which means you don't have to use what they're offering.
So you want to make sure that they're not gatekeeping the reports, which is then preventing you from doing what you want and need to do, whether it's, leaving or your accountant or whatever it is. I think before you do start any of [00:53:00] this, it's key to get used to the terminology. So we've talked about PMSs, channel managers, OTAs.
Before you go into these conversations with these booking engines, you need to know what all these things are, because otherwise you'll just get blinded by it all and confused by it all. So just make sure you're familiar with all the terms before you start speaking to them. I would make a list.
before you start speaking to them of exactly what you need that booking engine to do. You'll be shown lots of lovely flashy gorgeous things when you're on these sales calls with people and it'll all look marvelous. But are you running a hundred bed hotel? Do you need it? You need to be clear from the outset about what you actually need in your property versus all the glittery bits that are on the outside that probably you don't need.
Yeah, that's a good point. And it's easy to get overwhelmed because you think you've got that sort of FOMO. You're thinking, Oh, I better have that. Don't be talked into signing up to [00:54:00] things as well. Don't be pressured. Into taking stuff, if you're not sure, you should be given the opportunity to walk away, have a think and come back and any decent, honest booking engine is going to let you have that , don't make the decision on the call, go away and think about it.
You're not definitely not. I deal with people who are leaving booking engines, obviously. And what I hear a lot is that they were told and sold. a lot in the call. And then the minute they got set up, they couldn't speak to anyone ever again. And they couldn't do whatever it was that they needed to do or were promised.
And that's why they've left. They've left in frustration because they didn't get what they thought they were getting. And I think, this is where things like, demos always have the demo. If you can get to use a version of it before you sign up to it, do that. Again, a Freetobook, you can sign up to it, you can use it, you can play with it, you can play with it for two years if you want to.
You're not being forced to sign up to something. [00:55:00] Sometimes you'll be offered like a 30 day free trial. So you'll have 30 days to play with something. And then it flicks over into a contract. Obviously, what they're hoping is that you'll waste that 30 days and then you'll just end up in the one year contract.
Don't. If you've signed up for a 30 day free trial, make sure that you've turned it off before you roll into that, that one year contract. And it's, it's easy done. I know people who've done it. I mentioned earlier about the whole OTA thing about blocking off the availability. Not all booking engines let you do that.
So I would be asking any booking engine that I'm looking at, can I restrict what the OTAs can have? And how far down can I do that restriction? So you can either do it by date, by rate plan and by room type. So obviously getting down to room type is a real sort of, nitty gritty level of doing it.
[00:56:00] So again, in our system, I can go in and say, right, they can, they're not having the doubles. They're not having the twins, but they can have my quads and families. You can also restrict the change, the minimum stay for an online travel agent. So this is quite detailed. Some of the booking engines will only let you do it by date.
They either get the stuff or they don't get the stuff. And a lot of properties need to be a bit more nuanced than that. Similarly the OTA surcharge, can you add that percentage to the prices that are getting sent to the online travel agent? I would say that's essential now for all properties.
So you need to be asking, does your booking engine let you do that? The, the data, as I say, can you extract the data? What data can you get out? You want to get an example of the kinds of reports that you can get. Can you run a reconcile payments report? Can you run a full booking report? Can you run a report that gives you all the customers that have opted into marketing?
Because obviously all this information is going out, so you should be able to get it out. And then, I'm going to say [00:57:00] lastly, but it's actually firstly, what is the support? Yes, I work for Freetobook now, but I was a bed and breakfast donor. And when I was running my B and B, I am not a technical person.
I'm not a technical person at Freetobook. I train people at Freetobook. But I needed help when I was a property owner. I still need help even though I work for Freetobook, but there needs to be people that you can go to. Does this booking engine offer telephone support? If it's offering telephone support, is it charging you for that telephone support?
Are you ringing a premium rate phone number? Because that's happening. Are there online requests answered by humans? Because obviously this is a new development now, is that you go online, you ask a question of your booking system, and it's AI that's answering it. Now, sometimes, possibly, the answer could be the answer that you were looking for.
In my experience of those things, it's never the answer I was looking for. But is it, is it staffed by humans? Is there a human being actually [00:58:00] reading your message? Is that a human being responding to it? Do they have any online support, like a Facebook group or something? So, we've got a Facebook group for users, and it's somewhere where you can go and get help from other Freetobook users.
Might not even be a problem to do with Freetobook, it might be something, maybe you've just had a scam email and you want to check, is it a scam? Has anyone else had it? I don't know, you might be looking for a new washing machine, who knows? But , is there a place that you can go where you can talk to other users?
And also, I think this is a really interesting thing is, can you actually physically meet the people? Can you meet your booking engine? I, I think, I, I've never been out and met someone from Google for all the things I've ever been to. I've never met anyone from Google. But there are events all over the country in the UK, certainly whether it's the Expo West show in.
In Cornwall or the lakes show up in the Lake District where you can [00:59:00] actually physically go to these trade events and physically see and meet your booking engine. And I, again, I'm old school. I think , there's nothing better than looking them in the eyes.
So one of the really important elements , of running any business , is keeping records for tax. Legal records, like having to keep data for a certain period of time on your customers. So how would a booking platform help you with that? The first thing I would say is always use your booking system as designed.
If you've got bookings that you're taking over the phone or regulars or whatever that they go into the system as a booking. Again, I've come across properties who just put all their own bookings in as closeouts. that records nothing. You don't know who they are, what they are, what they paid, when they came, when they went.
There's no data to, to, to get out of the system. So I would always make sure that you're using the system as designed and all [01:00:00] your bookings go in as bookings. Now, assuming you've done that, you should on any booking system. be able to generate any number of reports. Certainly for accounting, you definitely should be able to book your reports, payment reports, reconciliation reports,
I think there's that old adage, isn't there? Rubbish in, rubbish out. Yeah. And I think that's the, you just got to make sure you're not putting any rubbish in your booking system. But again, I, I said about earlier about the gatekeeping of reporting, just check that your booking system isn't gatekeeping that information, which is then preventing you from providing that information to your accountant.
Some of the booking systems will have reciprocal arrangements with their preferred accountancy package. It's better to make sure that you can get that information yourself into your preferred accountancy package. Definitely. Okay then Heather. How would people contact Freetobook or you, if, if, [01:01:00] if they were say, setting up a brand new to B&B or brand new to booking systems?
If they go onto the Freetobook website www. freetobook. co. uk they can Book a demo call there. They can see a lot of information and videos about the system. There's a phone number on the bottom of the website there. They can call us. We've got a team in Glasgow customer services team there.
They're all very capable, very lovely. And We've all been with Freetobook for years. So if we don't know, nobody knows. Okay. And the other question is if you are an existing B&B owner, but you're not happy with your current booking engine. I think that the thought of actually taking all your bookings and swapping to a brand new booking engine will be a bit overwhelming.
How, could Freetobook help? I think a lot of that is sometimes when they've set up their current booking engine, it was so traumatic and arduous at the time that they think it's going to be just as bad to switch. It's not. I again, talked about gatekeeping [01:02:00] information. We can actually upload all your booking data.
Into Freetobook. So once you've got the Freetobook system set up we can transfer a vast amount of the booking data into our system, assuming you can extract it from the one that you're with the booking. com AirB&B and Expedia bookings. We basically import them directly from them when we do the connection.
So it's normally only the direct bookings that we're bringing over from the existing system. And all the OTA bookings would be brought over when we're doing the connection at that point. So , it's normally the bookings that is the biggest headache. That's the bit that people stress about the most.
I would say that timing is also key. Really what you want to be doing if you're looking to switch is looking to do that as early in the autumn as possible. So starting sort of back into September, beginning of October with a view to switching mid October.
That way you don't have a huge amount of bookings to put across into your new booking system and it's just [01:03:00] an easier transition. I wouldn't recommend doing a switch. in July. That would be nervous breakdown material for sure. But honestly, it's not as torturous as anybody ever thinks it is. You can set up your booking system in the background.
It's all offline. No one can see it. And we don't let you go live. We don't even start the imports until we're happy that everything's been done. Everything's in place. Okay, that's brilliant. Well, thank you very much for joining me today, Heather. Have you got anything else you think people need to know? I think we've covered an awful lot there.
No, I think Just in my experience of, the job that I do where I'm obviously helping people setting up booking systems, I think so much of it is people are scared of the technology. And I think the thing to remember is it is here to help and support your business. The booking engine that you work with should also be there to help and support your business.
So don't be frightened to ring them, [01:04:00] get their help, get their support. And if you are you know, exceptionally technically challenged. Maybe in your previous B& B life, you didn't have much to do with technology. In the winter when it's quiet, get yourself on a course, go on Technology for the Terrified, or, Silver Surfers, or whatever it is that your local college does, or an online course.
just so that you can get a bit more confidence, because I think once you get the confidence, then you can start to embrace all the technology that can actually help you. And there is so much of it. And I think it's such a shame , that people , are , plugging away at the sort of old tried and tested ways, when there's all these wonderful things that can help you.
That's really good advice. Thank you very much, Heather. And thank you for joining me. I know you're extremely busy talking to B& B owners. So I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today. And thank you. So, bye. My pleasure. Thank you.
[01:05:00] Thank you very much to Heather for joining me today. I'm sure you found that podcast as useful and fascinating as I did. For many more blogs and also a growing library of podcast episodes, please head over to my website, B&Bacademy.
co. uk, where you'll find my main online B& B course, How to Set Up, Run and Market a B& B, and also my mini workshop, which is the first steps of running a bed and breakfast, which is for those of you who aren't sure whether running a B& B is for you yet or not, or if you are just setting out on your B& B journey.
If you are listening to my podcast on Spotify or Apple, I would really appreciate it if you could hit the subscribe button. Thank you very much and enjoy the rest of your week or weekend whenever you are listening. Bye for now.
