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The Boostly Podcast
The Secret to Running a Scalable STR Business — Smoobu’s Strategy for 2025!
00:27:05
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- [00:00]
Mark Simpson
Welcome to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training, and most of all the confidence to go out there and get more direct bookings. We do a mini series on this podcast where we introduce you to softwares, people and all services that you need to know about as a host. Today we're shining the Boostly spotlight on Smuboo. We're joined today by Nicholas who is the strategy partnership manager at Smuboo. And we're going to dive into all the things, what that means and what Smooboo can do to help you get more bookings and more direct bookings especially. So welcome along. Nicholas. Thank you for joining me today.
- [00:38]
Nicholas
Thank you very much for the invitation. Very happy to be here.
- [00:41]
Mark Simpson
So first question is, what kind of mindset or tactic do you hope the Boostie listeners are going to take away from this podcast?
- [00:47]
Nicholas
Well, I hope that you have a great time listening to us and I would really like you to understand how crucial it is to, to get direct bookings and to maybe shine the light on some tools that, that can help you achieve and get more direct bookings. I think it's very important on this age to not be dependent on one or two platforms and to try to diversify your portfolio as much as you can.
- [01:12]
Mark Simpson
Awesome. I'm excited to dive in. Okay, so Nicholas, I think it'd be important if you can introduce yourself and tell us what led you to join Smuboo. And because I know you're, you didn't come from short term rental sort of background, what surprised you the most about short term rental industry in general?
- [01:32]
Nicholas
Yeah. Thank you. So, so I'm, I'm 35, I'm from, originally from France and, and yeah, my background is mostly in the, in the bar, restaurant service industry. And so for me the, the most impactful and surprising fact about, about short term rental, first of all is that hosts are nice people. I think it's a very something that you have to understand that hosts are usually people that are very open minded. But the thing that was really, really surprising when I started five years ago was still the freshness of this industry. Many, many people were still using pen and papers. Automation hadn't come their way yet. And smoobu being a tool that was and that is still directed to private hosts, allow them to use professional tools at the fraction of a cost. So the freshness of this industry is still something that amazed me, but still amazed me and we can really make a difference by helping them automate their business.
- [02:34]
Mark Simpson
Yeah. And I Think it's so important, isn't it, to automate and have these tools in place. And in general, I think just before we move on, we should just mention, because before we hit record, you mentioned you're in South America at the moment. So what's brought you across there?
- [02:49]
Nicholas
Yeah, I. I am, I am. So, so I moved to Berlin, Germany when I was 20, 21. I was, I was fairly, fairly young and. And to be fair, it was after co. When co hit Germany and it was for me, such a, such a weird time. I mean, for everyone, it was a weird, weird time. And by living in a big city, being stuck in your home feels like a, like a huge dichotomy. Right? Like you're, you're paying high rents, high prices to be stuck in your home. It was like just super, super weird. And, and then everything opened up and I thought, oh my God, like, time is short, things can change a lot. And I, my, my goal was really like to try to escape before the next lockdown, which never happened, fortunately. And I ended up in South America. It was a country I always, I mean, a continent. And then in Uruguay was country, continent I always wanted to discover. And after, it was just too hard to move back to Europe. It's just impossible once you've opened the door in your mind to come back.
- [03:51]
Mark Simpson
No. And I think that's an incredible story. And ultimately there's loads of people listening to this, where they go. Actually Covid was a big moment of change for a lot of people. I think that's been, I think in years to come, people, you know, children will study it in the history books and stuff like that because it's such a big period of change, especially in hospitality as well.
- [04:11]
Nicholas
Yeah.
- [04:11]
Mark Simpson
So bringing us back around to the, to Smooboo and how it helps hosts listening. The A lot of different PMSs offer opportunities for hosts to get direct bookings. How does Smuboo deliver on that promise?
- [04:25]
Nicholas
Well, I mean, first of all, by, like the technical answer would be by connections. I mean, we have you guys as a partner, we even allow for creation of direct booking websites, etc. I mean, the technical answer is pretty much the same all across the board. What I would say for the listeners today is what we do have and where I think maybe our competition is not as great as we are on, that is we have the educational part. And I think this is really, really important when, when people arrive and talk to us, we do tell them first of all, the importance of direct bookings, because many people will think that is this is an impossible task. And the first thing they're going to tell me or tell us will be I'm not going to compete with Airbnb, I'm not going to compete with booking.com or verbal. I'm not going to be able to be there on the search results. And so many of them will have this kind of attitude which will basically lead them to not even try. So first of all, what we do first is we try to educate them. We worked, I told you, with private hosts so we can have a big impact on their business because they are usually very keen on listening to advices and so on and so forth. And so we're not afraid to tell them. And we had not that long ago a full on webinar explaining to host. We had like a panel discussion, more like a discussion than a webinar and we were highlighting the necessity of having a direct booking website and small tips and tricks to help you climb on the search engines results and to have word of mouth do the rest, et cetera. So I think for us the educational part is huge and, and really we always put the spotlight on do not be dependent on one or two platforms. This is ridiculous. It would be for any business. It would be a terrible decision. So do not make that mistake and diversify as much as you can your portfolio. And for us it's crucial that host understand that message and of course we have the tools that allow them to, to do that.
- [06:37]
Mark Simpson
That's very cool and thank you for mentioning as well that Boostly is partnered and at the end of the day encouraging hosts to build their direct bookings. Now obviously we'd like it to be a Boostly one, but whoever's listening to this, if you haven't got a direct booking website, then make sure you are using tools like Smouboo, which allows you to have your own direct booking website because at the end of the day then you're able to take these direct bookings and to vary your booking channels which will then increase your chances of success. You know, if you've got all of the big OTAs plus direct and this we're not saying hey you, you can't be on these OTAs or, or you must only go direct. It's very much start with what you've got and just make sure you're visible in all these different places to maximize your, your success. And then over a period of time you can start to be more selective and more or marketing campaigns to grow your direct bookings, which is what we talk About a lot here on the YouTube channel. But what is one mistake that you see, Nicholas, that hosts make a lot of the time and they may not realize that they're making these mistakes.
- [07:45]
Nicholas
One thing that we do see at Smooboo is that hosts usually do not take enough time to use the software fully. And I think I cannot say like there is one mistake that everybody's doing and it's going to be unexionable for everyone. Obviously not. But many times we see that they're not using the software fully and most of the time it's not because they have a substitution, a product substitution, it's just that they do not really care or they haven't thought about it or they do not take the time. And I think that's mostly the importance is usually we try to tell them when you set up a channel manager, take your time because we offer many, many services. It's an all in one solution. But if you're not using it all, it might lose a bit of, of. Of of steam. You might not use it fully. I think we see a lot of people not using dynamic pricing or any kind of revenue management tool and this is where we usually see the most impact. So if you do great, if you don't wake up, it's 2025, all the competition is using it or most of of them would be using them. And we were talking about COVID right before COVID was tourism everywhere. And after Covid there was this weird time where cash flow was a bit of an issue and then some countries were open, some were not. A lot of money was then spent because people had a lot of cash. But then recession is a bit here. People don't really spend so much on tourism. We saw it with a decline of American tourists in Europe for instance. For us as a European company was a huge problem for Host. So be competitive. And revenue management tools are usually pretty safe in the sense that they pay for themselves. So get a look at them. We offer a lot of solutions in Smootu. We offer even in house solutions. So make sure you have this and then obviously look at your operational cost. Operation costs will kill your business, will kill any business. So look after this, after you've made a direct booking website and you have a revenue management tool, look at your operation cost.
- [09:54]
Mark Simpson
I like that, that's a great answer and you're absolutely right. There's. I now assume most people will have a direct book and tool of some sort. But it's because I've been in the, the industry a Little while for anybody listening who hasn't checked out a dynamic pricing tool. Definitely, definitely. Great, great tip there. So what hidden gem inside Smuboo is, is something that people love, but some hosts might not be using at the moment.
- [10:22]
Nicholas
I think we have, we have a flexible tool and we have a lot of hacks that people can use. And I think some might realize it, some people might not realize it, but for instance, we have a full placeholder system in Smootu in place where you can add up some placeholders to your direct messaging. But, but you can send these messages to your guests. Obviously that's the most obvious choice, but you can also do that to set up some reminders for you, some reminders for your team, et cetera. And I think people might not look at it because it's not called the task and management in a special category, it's just in the communication, in the messaging. But yeah, you can tweak some stuff. And I think people really like that about us. We're a small company still, and so our tool is fairly open and, and flexible. So that, that's one of them. And, and yeah, we also do have an open API. So I think that is something that really sets us apart from the competition because as a private host, you can also do your own scripting. And I mean, now with AI, it has never been easiest to, to, to, to code something, to ask the machine to do it for you. And because we offer an open API for our customers, I think a lot of people are taking advantage of it right now just to draw reports, export the data in a different dashboard, et cetera, to have access to more data. So this is something that a lot of hosts are doing and something that I encourage more people to do. ChatGPT is there like you can really code something very simple. And with an open API, it's amazing what you can do.
- [11:57]
Mark Simpson
That's cool. And like you say, the fact that you could set up reminders, I mean, one reminder that I set up as a host, whereas the internal message is after somebody's checked in, me and my team get a message just to say, hey, is there any availability where we could give them an extra day or a gap where we could sell it to them at the end? And without that reminder, I mean, I've got to be honest, you'd think like, hey, we're just naturally check. But we're busy hosts and having these reminders as a host are fantastic. Isn't it? So great, Great answer there.
- [12:29]
Nicholas
We've conducted on that one. I'm Sorry to interrupt but on that one we've conducted a research and what you just said, the ups when it was about upselling and this was the second most upsold item was extra nights. So the first one was early check in or late checkout. That is like the go to like do upsell this. You will be amazed. And the second one on the list as reported by a host was upselling extra nights. So setting up that kind of reminder is exactly what you need to do. For instance.
- [13:02]
Mark Simpson
Yes, that's very cool. So what are some of the future kind of integrations and things coming along specifically with Smoother?
- [13:11]
Nicholas
So right now the biggest one we have and we are actively promoting it is the smuggle dynamic pricing. So we are super, super stoked. This is a project that started back in 2023. I was the one initiating it within the company and with our partners and I'm extremely proud of this. And so now one of the things you can do is subscribe to an add on on top of your smooth subscription and you will get price recommendation all the time and this will be synchronized directly to your favorite portals. And this will be for us a game changer we believe for the host. Because right now you, we, we want to be the all in one platform and we all aim to do so. But at the end of the day you end up as a host having two, three, four, maybe five subscription and so just by having this on top of your smooth subscription, you know they start at the same day, they end at the same day. It's, it's a lot of relief. You don't have to deal with connection issue, it's all done in house etc. So we're super happy and yeah we hope it brings a lot of of revenues and extra bookings for, for our host.
- [14:26]
Mark Simpson
Very cool, very cool. So for this next question I'm going to do it so you can choose which direction you want to go in. So can you even tell us about what the people, the top users, you know, the top 1% of users of Smootu, what are they doing that others on or what are some of the wow moments that you've seen since you've been in with smubu? I'll let you choose which route to go down.
- [14:51]
Nicholas
Yeah, that's a good one. I'm going to repeat myself a little bit with dynamic pricing but this is really something that makes the difference. So the top 20% of hosts, so it's not really the top one but the top 20. We had a yearly report about that they're using dynamic pricing. The top 20 is using dynamic pricing. It's like when you're on the top 20, you have 80 chance to use dynamic pricing. So 20 don't choose it. So if you want to be on the top 20, it's almost, it's almost insured. You need that, you, you need that kind of tool. And then the second part, they are present on all the OTAs we offer VIPI and this is very, very important. They do not rely on just one platform to get all their bookings. And I think that's a lot of, a lot of people, they sleep on that. And if you're not successful on one platform, it is maybe interesting for you to lower your prices, have a different approach on that, on that platform to try to have to have it picked up by the algorithm. Because at the end of the day, if a platform thinks you're not worth it, maybe it's even worth starting over. You're not successful on Airbnb, you've created the account in 2020, you have like poor bookings. All right, just kill it. Create new one, make the new listing promotions. Airbnb offers like ton of things to get it started and try again. There is no such thing as a successful host on only one platform. And if there are, chances are they could be in very, very much trouble if that platform changes the algorithm, if that, if that platforms loses team at some point or if their reputation is damaged, whatever could happen. So yeah, use different platforms. It is very, very crucial for your, for your business.
- [16:40]
Mark Simpson
100 we even say here at Boostly that you're working for that platform. If you're just on that one, you're effectively just working for them because you're trying to, you know, you're giving them commission and everything like that. Whereas when you've got your own business and you're on different platforms, they become shop windows to show off your, your business, which is very cool. So you mentioned like AI earlier on, but is there and, and you can go down that route if, if you wish. But what do you think the future of the hospitality industry in general is going to look like, say in the next three to five years?
- [17:13]
Nicholas
I, I, I think it's, it's impossible to predict at this stage. We, we're seeing tremendous progress on AI at smubu. We're using AI internally for certain processes and we're seeing extremely positive results. Even the, like, you know, when you implement something, you're always like, okay, well if it does this, it's going to be a success, but it does this times two and we don't know if how to call it so and when we see that in six months ago that was not possible, what can we achieve in six months time, what can we achieve in 12 months time, etc. And so for us it's really, really difficult to predict what's going to happen. But we definitely know that AI is going to help at our level. I was mentioning before that we have the open API so that you can extract basically all the data you have on your Smubo account and you can feed that to an AI. You can have AI write your emails if you want. You can have AI receive your email and write them back for you, send it back via API to us. So there is many, many things you can do. I definitely think that AI is going to be a big, big thing. And Smoo's approach was not to jump into AI in 2023 when ChatGPT went out, we took our time, we took our. We are on a more skeptical approach at the beginning, not that we did not believe in it, but not. But because we didn't want to just slap AI on some feature and just call it a day, you know, like many did that fine, why not? But we're cooking some, some very, very interesting features that are going to be AI related. That's, that are going to go a step further. But as of today, I think, I think the business is about to change tremendously. I think the way we deal with reviews, the way we deal with communication, the way we deal with the description writing, it's all going to change. Like a B testing is going to be possible in a very, very simple manner. And also the way we interact with data. I think at this stage it's really important that people get to understand their own data and that they do their own learning. You can feed that to a machine via our open API and understand your business better.
- [19:31]
Mark Simpson
It's very cool and I'm excited about this. I'm excited about AI and I do think personally I think we're going to be, you know that the times when website and Internet first came about, when you had the businesses which some didn't go on the Internet and some did and those that did were usually more successful, obviously is always exceptions to the rule, but it's a bit like now. So if somebody listening to this isn't considering at least learning about AI or using some of the more commonly used features of or applications out there, ChatGPT and a few of the others than ultimately than you should be. Because this is going to be one of the differentiators in the next few years. And alongside that I also think that how we keep the human connection, which is what hospitality is all about. As we were talking about before we hit record, it's good to actually meet people and talk to people. So I really think that the hosts. There's going to be a challenge, isn't there, between the automation versus the human touch and it's going to be an interesting few years. Is.
- [20:37]
Nicholas
But, but on this side, you know, I had the same discussion five years ago with the smart locks and people were like, I'm never going to put smart locks. It, it looks bad. I do a personal check in, etc. I'm like, yeah, you, you can do both, right? You can have a smart lock and you can have a personal check in just in case, you know, maintenance people, they need to get in the room. You don't have to personally greet them. You don't do proper communication to maintenance people. Right. And, and the same with, with AI if you can automate and understand better in less time, then you have more time to communicate to people in person to have go get a drink. I mean, I'm French, so usually when we do check in or check out, it involves some wine somewhere. Well, now with AI, maybe you have a half an hour more to cheer your guests up. And so I think it's very important to get on top of this subject because as you said otherwise you might miss tremendously on a big, big, big thing.
- [21:31]
Mark Simpson
Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. So I think it's time that we opened up the mic and if you could just. If somebody's listening to this, they might be in a situation where they're, they're either without a PMS or perhaps with a PMS provider that they're currently looking at switching away from. Can you just cover why they should consider smooo and then where to go to find out more?
- [21:56]
Nicholas
Yeah, I mean if you consider us, great. If you do not consider any channel manager you need to automate, you need help. So if it's us, better, but if it's not, that's fine. The importance is that you get out of pen and papers. If you want to find us, it's smootu.com so S M O-O-B-U.com where you will have all the links in the description and you can do 14 days free trial, no credit card required. So it's really up to you to give us a go or not usually for you to understand, we are aiming at private hosts, let's say up to 20 properties. We're not really a tool for big property managers. We do not aim to, to be one. But we are very, very successful and effective with private hosts because we have a solution that is tailored towards them. So I think you will have a tremendous time with us. And I really believe that if you use the tool the way we built it, the way we intended it to be used, you're going to be tremendously successful. And we have a lot of resources. We work close with partners like booking.com or Airbnb. We put a lot of resources that will help you understand better why your listing is maybe not working well on Airbnb or booking.com and give you actionables to make it happen. I think it's part of being in a community, you know, like you're using a software. And it's the same with Boostie. You get part of a community as well. You get people you can talk to, you get people that you can relate with. And I think all in all, this helps you being a better host 100%.
- [23:38]
Mark Simpson
And thank you so much for, you know, covering on the Boostly podcast today and talking about all things Moobu. But also we've had some great chats about the future of the industry, different techs, the things that people aren't doing and should be doing, or things that some people are doing and other people should follow. So I really appreciate you coming on here. And for anybody who is listening to this on the audio, when it's safe to do so, as long as you're not driving, check out the show notes and you can go and check out Smoother. And that free trial is there. If you're considering trying out a PMS or switching pms, go and check out smubu. So to end there, Nicholas, what's one belief or mantra that's guided your work with SMUBU or smooth work with hosts?
- [24:23]
Nicholas
So I, I think we need to, I mean, the, the one thing is always the same as when you work in restaurants, right? You need to, to listen. And I think that's what we do best, is to listen to, to people and try to, to then extract the essence of the message that, that hosts are telling us. Because what we see is that host, they love their clients and they want to do better. But it's, it's, it's a business that's got hard, harder than in the past. I mentioned before COVID it was kind of blooming like you just need to buy an apartment, go take a credit. Banks were like, yeah, take money, go buy another one, put it online, bookings will come and, and all that. And I think the business got a little bit harder to get into. So we listen host, we build the products that they want. And, and I think you always have to be thinking about the guest. At the end of the day, we're working for the guest. And so when a host have a problem, sometimes it's because they want to solve. I mean it's always because they want to solve a guest problem, but they don't know how to articulate the problem itself. So they will try to solve the consequences, but not the cause. Right. And that happens a lot of business in a lot of areas. So our job is always to decrypt that message. So whenever I'm talking to host, I'm always thinking about the guest. I'm always thinking about the guest experience at the end of the day because whatever you do, wherever you put yourself in the chain, that could be the channel manager, that could be Airbnb, that could be the, the host. We all want the guests to come back. We all want that. And so, so at the end of the day, yeah, always try to, to go back to the roots. Will the guest enjoy his experience and come back and, and if you solve that, if you solve that issue kind of then, then you'll have a successful, successful business.
- [26:10]
Mark Simpson
That's great advice and thank you again, Nicholas for, for coming on here. This has been fun. We hope to see you again on the Boostly podcast. Maybe come back in the future and, and talk us through all the, the new things with Smubu. And thank you too for listening to this on the Boostly podcast or watching on the Boostly YouTube channel if you haven't already and you want to go and get more direct bookings, you can check out Mark Simpson's best selling book called the Book. It is a best seller on Amazon. This is cheap as we're allowed to make it. You can just Google that and go and find that and that'll tell you how to get more direct bookings. And if you enjoy listening to Smooboo and to our guests on these shows, please do consider subscribing to the podcast and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Bye for now. Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the tea.
- [27:01]
Nicholas
Is loose leaf Making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely.