Avery: Hey guys, welcome back to the short term show. Today, we have Mark Simpson. I’m really excited about interviewing Mark because this comes at a time when I’ve kind of taken our first little dive into the direct booking website thing.

The reason for that is, you know, just up until recently, there weren’t—or I don’t want to say there weren’t a lot—but now, more and more of the different property management software has build-outs for direct booking websites. You know, before, I was like, “I don’t want to mess with all that,” but now there’s a lot of options to make it a lot easier. So, we’ve definitely taken that step forward.

For my personal information, I’m super excited to interview Mark today. So I’ll let him introduce himself. How’s it going, Mark?

Mark: No, first and foremost, thank you so much for having me. I’ve been listening; I’ve been tuning in for what you’ve been going for about a year now, right, with the podcast?

Avery: Yeah, yeah, it’s been amazing. So, I’ve been listening to Rachel’s episode and Rob’s, and the last one I tuned in was with Kenny’s from SDI Insight. So, I do love what you’re doing, so it’s a pleasure to be part of it. Thank you.

Mark: Much for having me, I think. I’m the first British guest. Is that right?

Avery: You are. Memories. You are independent.

Mark: Yeah, we’ve been across the pond, so amazing! Thank you so much for having me, looking forward to digging in and answering any questions that you may have on direct bookings.

Avery: All right. So, we’ll start at the beginning. So I’ve got a couple of short-term rentals. I’m a random person, and I’ve been doing all right with Airbnb and Vrbo. Why do I need a direct booking website?

Mark: Yeah, no, it’s a great question. The more I get, I guess, the more well-known in America, it’s a question that crops up a lot because I assume the majority of the listenership will be with Airbnb, maybe also venturing into Vrbo. But the last sort of thing that they’re thinking about is doing it themselves.

And my argument is, even if you’ve got one property, you need to have a property management software. You need to have something behind the scenes to help you power it all. I always say that.

When you start this business, there’s either one or two categories. Number one, it’s a hobby, or it’s a side income. It’s not your main income. It’s just something you’re doing on the side, or it’s a hobby or whatever. Then there’s the other side, which is the business owner as in, “This is going to be your main career, the main thing that you want to do.” And if you fall in the first one, it’s fine. Just do what you need to do.

But if you’re going to fall on the second one, where it’s a business, this is what you’re going to be doing. If you’re going to just rely on Airbnb, let’s just say Airbnb for your bookings, then you’re building your property business on someone else’s land. You’re literally playing in someone else’s sandbox.

Now, in this industry, which I class as hospitality, we’re very lucky because there’s no other industry that I know of where you can start a business, take a couple of pictures, upload it to a website, and be pretty much guaranteed to have revenue come in. It’s a blessing because there’s so many in-demand opportunities.

It doesn’t matter where you are in the world. It doesn’t matter what the restrictions are, and what the circumstances are—we’re in a very in-demand industry because we’re creating memories. Now, it’s a blessing because it’s very easy to get revenue coming in. I mean, we do website design at Boostly; there’s not a website that I can go and list our services on and get revenue, so we are very lucky.

But the curse is that, because it is so easy, you can become over-reliant. It just goes, “Alright, I’ll just get my bookings through Airbnb,” and then you become overlapped because you could become lazy and just think, “I’ll take care of it.” But when you’ve become so over-reliant, you’re literally dependent on somebody else running your business.