Jon Bell:                               00:00                     In this episode we’re talking about when to add that second or third booking channel.

Julian Sage:                         00:07                     Vacation rental machine helps hosts just like you learn how to start grow and scale your short term rental business. The show’s all about creating systems that help you automate your business, give any more time and money freedom. If you’re ready to start living the vacation rental life then, subscribe to this podcast today, come and join us on our Facebook group, the host nation where we’ll be talking about starting automating and scaling a short term rental business. Now onto the show.

Jon Bell:                               00:34                     Welcome back host. I’m here with Juliane Sage and we are talking about when to add in that second to third channel after you’ve mastered whatever you need to master within Airbnb. You’re ready to just deploy and just dominate the entire market. When are you ready to do that? Julian, I know it’s probably a good question for you because you’re still at that point where you know you’ve got your listing going and you need a little bit more juice for the low season. When would you think it’s a good time to actually deploy out to a multiple platform?

Julian Sage:                         01:09                     So Jon, you’re right. I’m actually at that point right now because I’ve been following along with the vacation rental machine model and at this point I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with Airbnb. I actually have another client that I’ve taken on. So now at this point I’m ready to start marketing on different channels. So it really comes down to your comfortability level. I don’t think that people just starting off should be so worried about getting listed on multiple channels and using channel managers. It really is not something that you should be worried about from the very beginning because it is a lot more because now you’re talking about integrating other calendars and you have to train your cleaning team on how to use those things and you have to import different settings and there is a little bit more and that’s why we left incorporating a channel manager towards the end of VRM because it is something that is more for optimizing your listing.

Julian Sage:                         01:54                     So now that we’re coming up on a slower season, I’m really looking for other ways to be able to market my properties and one of those things would be like furnished finders. Furnished finders, for those that don’t know, it’s where you can find traveling nurses and being able to advertise on a site like that and then incorporate it onto a channel manager where all of your calendars are sinking up between a HomeAway, booking, Airbnb, all of these different sites. That’s what your channel manager is really going to help you with is being able to list it on multiple sites, but then also integrate your calendars so that you’re not getting double bookings.

Jon Bell:                               02:27                     Julian, you hit the nail right on the head in that comfort level. Let’s go back. I mean I’ve said it in a few episodes back, but Airbnb was designed for this. Similar to Uber was for the person that just wants to get out and drive, right. Everything is already thought of. Everything is already done. It’s really easy, but once you master it, now you’re able to go on to some of the complex booking channels like booking.com where it’s not so easy where you kind of have to process the credit cards through some type of external system. Pmss, channel managers, the ones that do a lot of those things all in one, they can handle all of that for you.

Jon Bell:                               03:07                     So it’s really important to when you get to that point, when you want to spread out that you have the good channel manager in front of you. That’s either going to be Lodgify or Hostfully or whatever it is, get it, use it. Make sure you got it integrated good with Airbnb because you have an established booking channel that you’re booking through consistently, then go ahead and reach out and install to link up to all of those other booking channel like HomeAway, VRBO, whether it’s TripAdvisor or whoever you want to go to next, add the men, make sure they’re sinking properly and in once they are, get used to some of the processes that they have. And then add the next one. That way we’re not dependent on all of these different channels. Will it be a pain point for most? For most, yes, it will be some pain because it’s different having to process credit cards and then you run a card and it gets declined or it says something like an error, now you’ve got to go back to this person. You’re probably frustrated because you want to be booked, but it’s something that you wouldn’t have to deal with if they really booked through Airbnb.

Jon Bell:                               04:18                     Airbnb takes a lot of that off of our shoulders. But going in, getting out to those other channels is key because again, we want to make sure we have more inquiries. Then we do availability. We want to make sure people are seeing our site. People are seeing our listing and just want to book with us. Right? So that means you might have to spread out on different platforms. It’s not a bad idea. Don’t be scared to go off of Airbnb and that’s when you need to say, Hey, I don’t have an Airbnb business. Right. We have a short term rental business that what that means. We’re not enjoying everything on Airbnb. We don’t care. We just want to use them as a marketing channel similar to just posting an ad on Facebook and hoping people like our page. That’s exactly what we want to do. It’s we’re just not dependent on all of those things.

Julian Sage:                         05:10                     So question or the day, what’s your second booking channel? Is it HomeAway, VRBO, booking.com. Leave it in the comment section down below. Until next time, host nation. Keep on hosting.

Julian Sage:                         05:24                     Hope you hosts found value in this episode. If you did, please go on over to iTunes and leave us a review because that would greatly support the show. If you’d like to connect with Jon, the community, and I then go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation. Talk to you hosts in the next episode. Keep on hosting.