Pierre Bay (3:01)

Thanks for having me.

Liam (3:02)

So, Pierre, what do you want people to get from this episode, this spotlight episode?

Pierre Bay (3:07)

I'd love to get folks to know what we do here at directo. I think we created a platform from the industry for the industry to basically help get more direct business, which I think is kind of the holy grail and what's something that, you know, aligns us all. And yeah, I'd love to get, you know, folks to be aware of what we're doing and give us feedback, test it out and, and keep us, you know, busy in growing the platform.

Liam (3:31)

Excellent. And people are going to be eager to find out what it does. But just before we go into that, can you just give us a bit of background on Directo and, and who you guys are?

Pierre Bay (3:41)

Sure. So directo is a new search platform that allows travelers to find direct deals and the new bit of it, if you want. The thing that makes it very different is that it's something that travelers install in their computer, in their browser. They do it once and then every single time they search anywhere in the web, we're going to try to help beat that search and find the direct deal. So let's say they're going to one of the OTAs and look for, you know, a property somewhere in a destination they're looking to book in. Well, on top of their search will overlay information to let them know if a property is bookable direct somewhere else. So if you want, it's a way for operators and whether they are, you know, hotels or short term rentals, because we do everything to be promoted out there and find a way to drive attention to Their to their direct brands. So that's in short what we do. It's called director. You can Google it straight away on Google and you find the first result or direct extension if you want to go straight to it and you install it in one click in your browser and then you've got it. Every single time you search on any of the major platforms, you'll have the direct links on top music to our ears.

Liam (4:52)

I mean, anything like this and this technology progresses. I've been excited about this for a while because I haven't seen anything quite like this. And I've trialed your platform or trialed the plugin and it is really exciting to, to see. So is before we dive more into how it helps, is this really designed for people who are wanting to travel or is this designed more for us as hosts, or is it equally beneficial to both?

Pierre Bay (5:20)

It's a little bit like a marketplace, right. So we need, you know, this is like the chicken and egg dynamics, if you want, we, we need travelers to install this and then we need suppliers to be present in there. Otherwise, you know, there's nothing to search for. Right. So we can have solved for that. We've got already a lot of inventory listed. One way we solved it is we let travelers themselves post the direct website when they found it. Right. So if, if you're a user and you're interested in helping the next guy you know that will use the platform and you find a direct deal, you can post it and then eventually our team validates it and it gets list. So that way we were able to list hundreds of thousands of properties around the world and eventually, you know, the more user we are, the better the data is and then eventually the more information about where are the direct deals and how good are they as available to everyone. So it's really good for the entire.

Liam (6:09)

Ecosystem and I'm excited about this. How long has this concept been born and what made you come up with it?

Pierre Bay (6:16)

Yeah, so we basically three founders. I joined the team earlier this year. The idea has been, you know, sort of in the making for a few more months, but it's really still in its infancy. You know, we're in the, in the early days, I have to say. There's been attempt in the past, but really nobody managed to nail the product or the acquisition of user. Right. Because this is only as good as the audience that you have. Right. Like if nobody use it, there's no point in being listed and it really doesn't, doesn't work. So there's been attempts in the past that haven't worked out. And we think we, you know, we wanted to take a crack at it because we thought we had some, some good ideas of how distribution works in the space and how to connect to industry players and also how to acquire users. And that's why we give it a try. And now it's been, what, 14, 15 months since we launched, and it's looking pretty positive. We're adding about 20,000 new users to the platform every single month, where we just hit 200,000 users. So it's an exciting milestone for us. It's still small, you know, in comparison to other big platforms, but to us it feels like a great achievement. And the best thing of all is that they use it a lot. Like our users search for travel content a lot and book a lot. And this is very encouraging to us. Right? That's probably one of the biggest learning we had. We'd expect people to travel less often than they do or search for less, you know, less often than they do. And looking at the data, about 17% of. Of our user base every single month will use directo to find direct deals. And that's, that's a lot. You know, if you compare to retail products, similar products in retail utilization is actually lower than this. So travel is nothing to be shy about in terms of, you know, of utilization and how frequent travelers book online.

Liam (8:05)

One thing we've, we've always said here at Boostly is that we need to be educating our guests to learn to find this in the best possible way. And obviously all the tactics and that side of things, which we've been training that to our audience and to people who are listening to this podcast. Ultimately, if there is a piece of tech which kind of like cuts the work down, then we like it as hosts. If we can get more direct bookings, it cuts out that OTA online travel agent fee, and it just means that we retain more of the profit. But obviously from the guest point of view, it's a big win for them because if they can save 10 cent, 5%, whatever it is, based on the fact that they're able to book direct, but the biggest barrier to them is that they just can't find somebody to book direct. And that's really how this brings us hosts together and the guests, because it solves that problem. But can we dive into how that works? So what does that look like from a customer journey? Where do I start my search?

Pierre Bay (8:58)

Basically, right, so in general, customer hear about us, you know, via, you know, either PR or, you know, Social media or a number of different marketing channels that we use. Right now, for instance, we're running campaign here in Spain and subway stations for instance. So we do a number of marketing actions just to get known. The magic really with our platform is that we just need their attention once because once they install the plugin in their browser, from that moment on, basically we're going to be with every single search that they do in the future. So that's if you want the very appealing side of the extension plays that you need just to acquire a user once and then you're with them, stick with them all the time, right? So that's very important. Then the user is going to just do their search like they usually do. They can search on Google, on a metasearch, on an ota. Wherever they search will be present on top. Because if you were in the passenger seat of their browser, we see what they see and every time we see something that's bookable direct, we'll let them know, we'll say look, do you know that this is bookable direct? And in general you get better deals. One cool thing there is when we take them to the direct website, let them know, we give them the opportunity to rank the deal. I don't know if you use Waze, you know, this app to sort of like find your route. It's like a Google Maps or like one of these map system. They have a really cool feature where you can let people know when there's an accident or if there's still a car parked blocking the road or whatever. So it's kind of like user based, user generated content there. So we did something similar and when we you to a direct deal you can let know the next traveler whether this site gives good deals on their, on their direct brand. So that helps if you want the, the next traveler be aware that you know by clicking somewhere they are likely to get a good deal if they book direct. So there's a whole ecosystem that we are creating around, around loyalty and you know, booking direct and educating customers. Because for a lot of travelers, you know, they just don't know that it's, it's better to book direct. They just think that you know, going on booking.com is the cheapest thing, right. Or is the most. And you hear that a lot, right? So educating is a big part of also what we're doing.

Liam (11:10)

And worse still they even think that booking on booking.com is booking direct. Sometimes it is the worst thing. Whereas I mean the great thing about this is that if we can get guests to come, especially to people, our listeners, they will be saying, hey, you should always book direct, always, always come back to us. And it's interesting what you're saying about your personal putting information out there on social media because that's exactly how our founder Mark Simpson found you guys. They saw something on social media and obviously has spoken to our community, our internal group and now obviously we're having this podcast to let everybody else, the wider public know what we've discovered. But what was obvious from the, the test that I've done, I've, I've signed up for it. So if you're listening to this thinking, well, you know, it's, it's all good, well and good them talking about it. But, but would Liam, would Mark sign up to it? Well, I actually have, it's actually it, it's amazing to see. I've got the plugin on my extension and it's amazing to see. The test that I done actually is for one of our Boostly website purchases, customers who purchase their website and you could easily, we were using one of the well known OTAs and we were searching on there and you could easily see that as soon as it came up that you clicked the extension and it came up with this person's website, click on the website takes them straight through. And this is the great thing from a host point of view, we don't know that they found us via Directo necessarily, do we? But ultimately or would we know as.

Pierre Bay (12:35)

A host you actually know. So first thing, thanks for subscribing and taking membership. I had no idea you were part. So that's great actually. Every time we send a traveler from somewhere else, you know, whether it's an OTA or a Google search or whatever to your site, we put a little utm. So UTM is a little tag in your URL so that you can look easily for it in your Google Analytics. If you use it, you can just search director and you will already see the traffic we send you. So that's a very easy way to track, you know, actual traffic coming from us. And then there's a number of ways we could do that as well. We could build reports for you because we know obviously who we send to your, to your platform or to your, to your booking engine. And in that case we can report it to you as well.

Mark Simpson (13:21)

This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Hostfully, the leading property management software in the short term rental industry. Now according to Hostfully's research is property managers who upgrade From a basic PMS to top tools like Hostly, see at least an 11% boost in revenue. That's because Hostfully saves you time, letting you focus on growing your business with features like channel management, free listing on Google revenue management tools, and discounts on integrations. But don't just take my word for it. Hostfully has plenty of success stories. A property manager I know in Manchester saves about a day's work each month thanks to their advanced owner report generator. Another in Liverpool has cut guest communication issues by a third. And somebody that I know in Miami went from six properties to 50 in just a year. Now, you listening to this podcast and you being part of my world, you get a special deal. When you sign up. All you need to do is go to www.hostfully, which is spelled H O S T F U L-L-Y.com forward/boostly. There'll be a chat box. Start a chat, mention that you're part of the Boostly world, and you'll get a unique discount. Now, I recommend Hostly to many, many, many people and we've built over a hundred integrations with our websites into them. And I know firsthand how much people love working with them. I love working with them. I'm so proud that they are sponsoring this podcast. So I would encourage everybody go and check it out. Www.hostfully.com forward/boostly. Right, let's get back on with the show, shall we?

Liam (14:54)

That's really cool. I mean, I hadn't even thought about that, but yeah, I use Google Analytics. I need to. Need to check it out.

Pierre Bay (15:00)

You'll find us in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanted to bounce back something you said which is interesting because you say it's. You should always book Direct. So it's fun, a fun thing that we learn, you know, by doing the survey to our users. And this is really data that speaks by itself, right? We ask user, like I said, whether they like the deal or not when we take them to direct website. And 60% of the time they say, yes, the deal was better, but 40% of the time they say, no, the deal was the same or worse. So it's not that direct is not always better, right? Some of them is the same because you've got parity or whatever reason. And in that case, a lot of time the third party will win because they have the branding that you might not have. But sometimes the deal is actually way worse. And that's something maybe as an industry we could think about on fixing because, you know, there's really no, no reason to leave a, you know, worse deal on your own channel than on an ota because, you know, just by the friction of the commissions that doesn't make really sense, right. Unless you just don't want to bother with the payments or for some reason, you know, punctually you just don't want to take the booking on your own site at the moment. But it still happened 40% of the time, right? So, so we were amazed by that. And the good thing is we keep tab on who's, who's got this sort of worst rating and hopefully we can have a conversation at some time and maybe shed some lights on those lost opportunities to convert a loyal customer. But yeah, it's not always better and.

Liam (16:29)

Honestly it's not shocking to hear, but it is one of those things where a lot of hosts out there still don't know how important direct bookings is. And although we're trying to educate people and often it's for one or two reasons. One, they either just don't know the benefit or even worse, they do know the benefit and they're just priced wrong. You know, they're just priced wrong on the website, which is incredible not to know your own pricing on, on there. So it is, is something that we need to change as an industry. And ultimately like you say, there is no reason, I can't think of a single reason why I'd be, you know, there's only one and that would be for certain, certain places get points if they book on that platform. So it might beneficial, let's say the price is cheaper still.

Pierre Bay (17:16)

Still the, you know, the points need to be paid somehow. Right. So I think, I think the ways that there, there are some reasons where it's technicalities like there might be a discount, the punch discount that pops up somewhere else to be ranking up higher in the ranking that I get understand, you know, like you want to increase conversion on the channel where you, you might be low in the ranking, you drop a. So that happens punctually. Right. But not 40% of the time. Right. I think that's the sort of interesting thing. There's also what's perceived value versus, you know, the actual true comparison. A lot of times on your site you may have the deposits or you know, a number of things that show up earlier and maybe on the other, you know, channel that the traveler is looking at that will be diluted or posted out later and that happens with the taxes and a number of other things that may, you know, trick the user to thinking into oh, this is cheaper here but really it's not when you put all together, right?

Liam (18:09)

And sometimes, I mean, this is what we've found, this is why we want to educate people listening to this is that if your website isn't easy for people to book, then it might just be, they might just look at it go, do you know what I found the direct price, it is cheaper but it's just not very easy for me to book. And so the ota, that's so true.

Pierre Bay (18:28)

Like we see, and we see conversion. Like we send, we send, you know, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of travelers, you know, every month to, to direct sites and we see conversion. You can't see the number is crazy different. You go from 0% to double digits. You know, I've got partners, they convert 12% of what we send them. It's great. And like large partners, right, with large volumes. So you get, you got to see there's a big, big, you know, impact of how good your website is, how ready it is, how, you know, how much trust does it relate to the, to the, to the consumer. That's a big, that's very big part of it, right? And then, you know, there's a lot of things you could do to improve conversions. Eventually there's two things that matter, right? Is volume and conversion. Here a director, I can help with volume because I'm going to bring you some new travelers that wouldn't find you otherwise. And then I can help a little bit with conversion because I can. For instance, one of the things we do is we drive the traveler to your booking engine, to the right property. So let's say you've got 12 properties. We'll send them to the right one that they were looking at, not your landing page. Once we work together, then I'll parameterize your booking engine, for instance, I will make sure that the user is looking at the same dates with the same search params so they don't have to redo it again, which is not a great experience. And conversion drops and I can throw a few pop ups here and there. I can say look, the price you used to look at was higher and this is better. Or for instance, I can let them know other travelers have booked here with us finding this was a better deal. A number of things that will drive momentum, maybe give some scarcity impression and just help convert. But a lot of things is still on your website. If your website is only in Japanese, that's not going to help, you know, like and we, and we've got that right. So there's a number of things you could do, you know, showcasing your reviews and, you know, a number of obvious things, right, you could do to help conversion. And you guys are the experts, I believe that.

Liam (20:26)

So, I mean, it's one of the things where I was looking earlier on this week and somebody still had broken links and the image wasn't displayed, you know, like, as in, you look at it, you just go, there's no way that I would give that. And these are considered purchases, you know, like people aren't just buying like a small thing like from a shop and just think, you know, I'll buy it. They're spending hundreds, if not thousands of pounds or dollars. And that needs to look, right? And that's. That's number one. Like you say, reviews, making sure that there's no broken links, making sure the layout.

Pierre Bay (20:55)

It's not easy. You guys know, you guys know about it. It's not easy, right? One thing Lamb that I, I like to do, and we do this as well, is sometimes to just, you know, put, put yourself again, you know, at risk and make sure you test from scratch is just get a hold on someone that has never seen your website. And everybody can do that. We do it sometimes just get a hold on someone new. I don't know, you could just meet someone at a event or whatever, just take your phone out and give them your website and ask them to browse through it and say, what do you think this website does? And sometimes they get it wrong. They say, oh, this is a realtor. No, that's not what we're doing. So you know, something is wrong, right? Or okay, once they know what they want as the first question, what do you think we do and say now, okay, now that you know what we do try to do to perform the action you would like to try. So try to book a property, for instance, and then you'll see a lot of time they get lost in buttons and just, you know, click the wrong place and you, and you just, you know, the, the hard thing at that time is just to not say anything. Just let them go through the painful process of getting lost on your website. But you learn so much by doing so. There's huge fixes that you could do with very little effort by doing this exercise from time to time, right? And I think it's a good one to do.

Liam (22:12)

And that's exactly why people need to sign up to direct O and to come and speak to us at Boostly, because this is exactly what we love discussions about, is to talk about how to just improve what you just said about the conversions, the volume and the conversions. That is two things that I talk about all the time. Because people are going, hey, I'm not sure if this converts. I go, look, the number one thing you need to do, generate more traffic. And then you can see where things aren't converting, because without that traffic, you don't know. You haven't got the data to be able to judge what's stopping people from, from booking, which is why it's so important to.

Pierre Bay (22:47)

And, and you have the data. You know your, you know your, you know, your partners, how they convert, right? So, which is great because you could probably help, you know, your, your clients understand, you know, I'm doing 1% conversion. Is it good? Is it bad? Well, it depends where you are, depends the type of property. But it might be great, it might be terrible. You know, I think, I think benchmarking conversion is something we should all do, and it helps a lot. Even, you know, us sometimes we just, we just don't know whether our performance is great. And I talk to a lot of other extension makers out there just because I want to know, is my utilization great or not? Like, you know, this is something keeps me worried all the time. And benchmarking is the, the best way to, you know, calm your, your anxiety.

Liam (23:28)

Comparing it to last month, last week, you know, like, as in looking at the, the previous. Because like you say 1% is, would be bad, but if it was on zero or, you know, half a percent, then this is a step in the right direction, isn't it? But it's just how, exactly how you're measuring. But I want to obviously share with people how they can, they can find out more about directo. But just before we do, what is the future? Where do you see this going in the next, say, 12, 18 months?

Pierre Bay (23:55)

Well, you know, what we're trying to do is really in the intersection and search and loyalty. So it's probably towards that direction that, you know, the platform will evolve and eventually we just need more users and want more people to use this because it works. We drive direct business to a ton of companies out there. And the more people know about it, the, the better it is for everyone, really. So really we see this as a marketing co op, right, where, you know, people become members and help us outgrow and eventually speak about it to their guests and eventually, you know, more guests join and we'll book somewhere else and then, you know, your, your guests will join and book somewhere else and eventually it's good for everybody. So we, we Hope we can continue driving these dynamics and, you know, become a few million strong and, and become a variable source for direct bookings going forward.

Liam (24:44)

I look forward to it. So how can we come and sign up? What do we need to do?

Pierre Bay (24:48)

Yeah, it's simple. So you could search getdirector.com that's our website. There's a host and hotel segment on the top side and then there's a membership that you can sign up for. So it's on purpose, not very expensive because our audience is still growing. The price will go up over time. So the idea is that, you know, the early adopters get a better rate and, you know, the next hundred guys will need to pay a little bit more because we're a little bit bigger and eventually the, the person who will enter, you know, very last will have to pay more than everyone else. But that's how we are thinking about it, just because that's how we can create the network effect that we need to get more, more and more, you know, backers so we can go and acquire more users. So that's how it works. I have to say. There's, I believe, Boostly discounts where we throw in two months off. There's, there's a default one month off on the website, but we'll throw an extra month off for the Boostly members so we can maybe share that separately. I think there'd be an email or a message sent out in your group.

Liam (25:45)

Yeah, this podcast as well. And Pierre, thank you for that. And if there's one thing I could say that people should be doing, especially I mean, as we record this with December 2024, if you really want to get ahead of your competition, you're listening to this, thinking, oh, I do want to make sure I have a great 2025 or even if you listen to this in the future, it is a case. You just need to go there, sign up for that. There's no reason not to at the prices that Pierre is charging for this. You can afford to take the punt on this, sign up and get more direct bookings.

Pierre Bay (26:18)

And there's nowhere. There's also no worries. It's important to say because there's just so much tech out there and so many things to connect to and be aware of. The good news with us is just you don't have to do anything. You just will map your properties, we'll list them and we'll send you traffic. That's it. You don't have to do anything else than that. There's no connectivity. It's all down from us. So I think that also takes some weight off because I know there's a lot of integration, API, you know, software, AI, hundred things going and this is just not one of these.

Liam (26:48)

So and the important thing is for this is first mover advantage, right. If you're on the platform before your competitors as hosts, I'm thinking if you're on that platform first, well, people are going to find you a bit quicker than perhaps the competitors the earlier you are on there. So it just makes sense for everyone.

Pierre Bay (27:05)

Listening and, and also it's, it's, we found out it's a great way to showcase to your, you know, your owners, if you work for, you know, third party owners that you're smart about what you do and you're promoted as one of our premium partners there, there's a number of ways we could do that. So that also helps, you know, convince your owner that you know a few things that the authors don't and tell your owner to install directive for their own travel. So we get more users as well. You know, it's all a positive, it's all a positive ecosystem.

Liam (27:33)

It all works. I like that. That's a really good tip actually is there's owners that I'm speaking to this week myself in short term rental who I will, hey, check this out. You know, so it's, it's a really good point. So you know where to go. If you're listening to this, you know where to go. Get directo.com if you're listening to this on the audio and it's safe to do so you can look at the show notes and you can click the link within the show notes. So that's, that's it from myself and Pierre. But before we go, as we usually finish, Pierre, can you give us a motto or a mantra which has helped you on your journey? Can you share it with the audience to take us out?

Pierre Bay (28:09)

Sure. So you know, there's one thing we try to do always, and I've been trying ever since I started my entrepreneurship journey, is to fail fast. Right? So I said my motto is try to fail fast. Because there's nothing that hurts more than, you know, trying too hard, something doesn't work and spending too much energy on an ideas. Whereas a lot of time you just can cut straight to testing it and getting it out fast. So there's probably a hundred things we test and there's maybe two or three that remains. And our idea is just don't want to waste too much time on the 97 Things that Won't work and I think that's one of our motto here is just to make sure that we can test and ship things fast so we can fail fast and discover what actually works and keep growing. So one of my motto resonates with.

Liam (28:54)

Me because I see so many hosts who are so they get stuck in analysis paralysis and they're just analyzing different softwares and they never take the jump onto one whereas the minute you go forward and you try one and if it doesn't work it's not a problem, you can always switch, you can always go to a different one you know like and failing forward fast makes sense to me. So thank you for sharing that Pierre. That's it from the Boostly podcast. Thank you so much Pierre for coming on and we'll come and find out more about your product and hopefully we'll have you back on in the future as the product anytime. Thanks so much.

Pierre Bay (29:29)

Pleasure. Thanks so much. Bye.