How to Get Over 52% Direct Bookings with an Automated Rebooking Funnel

In this episode of the Hospitable Hosts podcast, our special guest is Jeff Usner, founder of STR Digital and a successful short-term rental host. Chatting with Miles, Jeff shares his journey into the world of vacation rentals, highlighting the challenges he faced and how he overcame them with the help of Hospitable. The conversation also covers how Jeff's company, STR Digital, empowers other hosts with automated messaging and repeat booking funnels to achieve remarkable growth.

Press Play now to discover how Jeff uses Hospitable's features to manage his diverse portfolio, maximize direct bookings, and streamline his operations. We also cover how he has grown 3 of the top 11 revenue properties in PA, including the #1 revenue property, in less than 2 years.

If you prefer to read the highlights, we've got a summary of the key takeaways below.

How Jeff Got into the Short-Term Rental Industry

At the beginning of the conversation, Jeff notes that his background is in digital marketing and that he has owned and operated different digital businesses as a serial entrepreneur and investor. He started with short-term rentals about 11 years ago after buying a property in Pennsylvania where he could stay with his family in the summer. Then, he rented out this property on Airbnb and started to learn about the short-term rental industry.

Now, Jeff has a brand called Luxury Rentals.com, and PA Luxury Rentals is the core geographic brand. There are five nice properties with luxury amenities, and three of them are in the top 11 revenue properties in Pennsylvania, according to AirDNA. Their target guests are families and corporate retreat clients.

Why Hospitable?

Jeff explains that he started using Hospitable about three years ago when he wanted to scale and needed software to help him do it faster. He compared many tools and chose Hospitable because it's user-friendly and the price was right, so it was a no-brainer for him.

Hospitable helps Jeff reduce manual work while communicating with guests via messages and create a fantastic experience for them before and during their stays. "One of the biggest things I would say about Hospitable for us was the Unified Inbox. And the ability to set up automated AI messaging," Jeff points out. Jeff’s team takes advantage of Hospitable's integration with smart locks that allows them to automate all their check-ins and checkouts and save time while improving guest experience.

Hospitable also helps them get more positive guest reviews with automated review requests. "People just leave us five-star reviews without us having to follow up," Jeff underlines. He also likes that Hospitable helps them increase revenue by automatically upselling gap nights.

Focusing on Direct Bookings as a Strategy

Jeff thinks every short-term rental owner should have a direct booking strategy to diversify their revenue streams and become less dependent on OTAs.

"If I just rely on Airbnb, one day they're not here, or they say, "Hey, we don't want you here" or whatever the thing is, right? Stuff happens in life. Now the business would disappear. So, it's important to build direct bookings," Jeff emphasizes.

He says direct bookings represented about 51% of their revenue last year compared to about 25% from Airbnb and 24% from Vrbo.

What Does STR Digital Do?

Jeff explains that STR Digital was created when they started to grow their brand with luxury vacation rentals. It helped them build an automated post-booking marketing funnel to increase their direct bookings and rebookings.

"We built a marketing funnel to do a year follow-up for people who visited our properties. It's automated with texting, emails, and voice drops. Our funnel will follow up through multiple channels, a genuine omnichannel marketing strategy," Jeff clarifies.

Jeff also gives hosts some tips on starting with post-stay marketing to drive repeat bookings and creating and using viral video content to take advantage of word-of-mouth.

Tune in to the full episode of the Hospitable Hosts podcast to find out how Jeff managed to build a successful luxury vacation rental brand focusing on a direct booking strategy.