Putting Your Property on the Map: Listing Unique Accommodations on Niche Sites with Alex Wilson

00:00:32 - Jenn Boyles

Hello and welcome to another episode of Direct Booking Success podcast. I'm your host, Jenn Boyles. And today I have Alex Wilson of Host Unusual here with me today. Hi, Alex.

00:00:44 - Alex Wilson

Good morning everybody. How are you doing today?

00:00:47 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah, good. The sun is shining.

00:00:56 - Jenn Boyles

So could we start by you telling everyone a bit about who you are and what you do?

00:01:01 - Alex Wilson

Yeah, sure. So I'm the co-founder of the travel website Host Unusual. Yeah, we had a little discussion before about how you define our business. A lot of people refer to it technically as an accommodation directory, but I think that sounds a little bit dull. So we like to refer to ourselves as a showcase of unusual places to stay. An exciting accommodation.

00:01:22 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah. I use the term niche listing site because I think it sort of describes it. I think the confusion is some people call OTAs a listing site, but they're not, they're an online travel agent, they're taking a commission.

00:01:39 - Alex Wilson

Yes. So our site isn't transactional, so we're technically a directory, so we have listings for properties on our website and people will then after researching a property, they will click through to the properties website directly. We are all about promoting direct bookings, which seem like a good fit to be here.

00:01:57 - Jenn Boyles

That's it, that's why you're here. Now let's go back to the beginning about how Host Unusual started, because just to find out where that idea came from and your sure.

00:02:11 - Alex Wilson

Yeah. So my co founder is a lady called Dawn Crawford, and we've been friends with teenagers. She actually has another business, which is an online vintage clothing business, so she's always been very much a vintage enthusiast and she even enjoys staying in mid century accommodations. So she approached me one day to say, I've got this idea because I find it hard to find these properties and I think there could be a market there for a listing site or directory of these places to stay. So, because I've worked in the travel industry marketing for nearly 20 years, she approached me and asked for my advice and I said, I think it's a really good idea. But I had also been seeing in my line of work a trend towards experiential travel, including accommodation tree houses or glamping, all sorts of weird and wonderful types of accommodation. So I said you could make this a broader concept and have categories for unusual accommodation and it doesn't seem like there are many people sort of nailing that concept so that's kind of how it started and it evolved from there.

00:03:15 - Jenn Boyles

And what year was that that you started?

00:03:17 - Alex Wilson

2016. So we're just coming up to our 7th birthday next week.

00:03:21 - Jenn Boyles

Oh, great. Well, congratulations. No, that's great. So she was thinking it would be sort of a place that she wanted to stay in sort of the mid century.

00:03:31 - Alex Wilson

Type vintage and retro property. She had a friend with a property that was themed in that way. So I think that's what started it. And that was the original category. That was when the first property on Host Unusual was in this vintage and retro category, which remains one of our popular categories on the site. But it kind of evolved and we found so many different weird and wonderful types of properties that we felt didn't have this niche platform to present them.

00:03:59 - Jenn Boyles

Well, that's it. And we know in marketing, you being a marketing professional as well, you need to have some kind of something that's interesting, something that's unique. A hook. Yeah, exactly. Some kind of hook that people want to come and stay with you. So I think it sounds like it was a perfect time to start this, as the short term sector of hospitality is sort of starting to boom.

00:04:24 - Alex Wilson

Yeah. And as I said, I've been seeing this trend of experiential travel when I've been to trade shows as part of my job, like Pure in Marrakesh, which is all about experiential travel. And I'd seen this industry trend and so it seemed like it was a sort of logical thing to try and set up.

00:04:41 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah, well, I'm really glad you did because I think it's a great idea. I really want to know the weird and wonderful that you've got on the site, what are sort of the most out there properties that you've seen?

00:04:58 - Alex Wilson

Yeah, so we have a category on the site for wild cards, which are properties that we feel are kind of one offs that we don't really see other people doing. So people can have a look on the website and find that category. But yeah, some examples are we have a giant boot in New Zealand, which is yes, giant boots in New Zealand.

00:05:17 - Jenn Boyles

Oh, my goodness.

00:05:18 - Alex Wilson

South island. Yeah. We have a bunker in Cornwall, so it is very unusual. We've got a couple of bunkers, actually, but the first one was in Cornwall. We have UFOs, so we have a UFO in America and we also have one in Wales. So, yeah, there's all sorts of weird and wonderful things on the site. There's even a giant rabbit and chicken in France.

00:05:39 - Jenn Boyles

What? I don’t know what to say to that!

00:05:44 - Alex Wilson

Exactly. Yeah, we felt the same when we found it, but there are some real, really unusual things out there if you look at them.

00:05:51 - Jenn Boyles

I was expecting UFOs because I know I've seen a picture on your website and I'll put all the links in the show notes, but I wasn't expecting food or chicken. Seriously? A bunny? Now? How would that even work?

00:06:05 - Alex Wilson

Well, it's just a converted structure that's into a holiday accommodation. It's on a site called Jeffy Planets in France, and they also have a giant mushroom. I think they have a lot of families there, so you can imagine their kids love it.

00:06:20 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah. I don't even know what to say that has left me speechless for that. So I love the story about how it's come to be, and I love one thing that drove me nuts. I won't have a big rant, but was it last year when Airbnb came out with their categories?

00:06:40 - Alex Wilson

Yes.

00:06:41 - Jenn Boyles

And it was such a big deal. This was groundbreaking. And it was like, well, actually, it's.

00:06:47 - Alex Wilson

Not people doing it already.

00:06:50 - Jenn Boyles

Yes. And you are one of those people.

00:06:53 - Alex Wilson

Yeah, as I said, our wild card category is about places that can't really be pigeonholed. And we now have this OMG category, which is pretty much the same thing. But we started out seven years ago.

00:07:06 - Jenn Boyles

Yes. So I think they were actually pretty late to the party getting these categories out because there were other people as well, as you said, doing them. So what are the other categories you've got? You've got your wild I know you've got boats.

00:07:20 - Alex Wilson

There are many. Yeah, exactly. So we have boats and boat houses. We have an A to Z of different properties. But for a property to be listed on the site, it has to fall into one of these categories. So we have anything from, as I said, bunkers, to underground to underwater. But there are ones, broader ones that people might be more familiar with, like tree houses, clamping, churches, windmills, lighthouses. There's a real range of different categories on the site.

00:07:47 - Jenn Boyles

So the idea is that it's just not a house or an apartment.

00:07:51 - Alex Wilson

Yeah, exactly. It's got to be an unusual accommodation type, and it has to be one of the categories that we've predefined to sit on our website.

00:07:59 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah, no, I think it's great. I love just going and perusing your website and seeing all the weird and.

00:08:05 - Alex Wilson

Wonderful yeah, that's the plan, to encourage people to browse and discover things that they wouldn't have found.

00:08:11 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah. So let's talk about accommodation directories, niche listing sites in general and why it's a good idea because we're talking about direct bookings. Okay, so listing site, accommodation directories, they're a place to showcase your property, but then the booking is done by your own website. So let's talk about why finding a listing site that would work for your property is such a great idea to fuel your direct bookings.

00:08:45 - Alex Wilson

Yeah, sure. I mean, we would be providing you with a niche audience, so we would be driving targeted leagues across to your website. So these are people that are specifically searching for something unusual. Most people find us via Google. We've worked hard to have good rankings on Google so people would be specifically googling for unusual places to stay or boat accommodation. UK in your example, where we're normally number one, definitely top three. So people will be specifically searching for these accommodation types so you can't get much more targeted and the audience really will then be sent directly to the boats landing page on our website where they can view a full list of properties that are relevant to that category. Once they've found property, they will have a look at the listing and we have very descriptive listings. We have a professional writer who creates these bespoke for each property that's listed with us and hopefully the idea is that they'll be inspired and then we have a button on there to visit the property website and it will take you directly to the owner. So it's all about advertising a property to a targeted audience and then sending that user across to the property owner to their website.

00:10:02 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah. And from an owner property manager's point of view, we're using your marketing. We're almost piggybacking on the marketing you're doing.

00:10:12 - Alex Wilson

Yeah, I mean, I would say we're kind of like a complement to property owners' own marketing and own strategy. We're here to help. It's not like some other sites. You just get listed there and they'll take a commission cut and be pretty anonymous. That's the opposite of what we're trying to do here. We're trying to help people find your property who are interested, or would be interested and send them your way.

00:10:35 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah. And the people that you're sending to the different websites, to your website, to book, they've already gone through the product. They're further down the process definitely, than somebody who just stumbled across your website.

00:10:50 - Alex Wilson

Yeah, I mean, we get different types of people, obviously, that are visiting our site and get people that might just find us by accident and then they'll go down a rabbit hole and browse the website or find something. But like you said, we'll have people that have already considered what they want and then they're going directly to our site to find it.

00:11:09 - Jenn Boyles

That's great. And worldwide, aren't you?

00:11:12 - Alex Wilson

Yeah, so we started the first few years we were just in the UK and we've since expanded to feature worldwide properties. The bulk of our properties are still in the UK and that's where our audience is predominantly. But it's nice to feature a variety of accommodations because some accommodations you'll only find in one country, for example, like truly in Italy, for example, we have a category for that on the website, caves. You find a lot of caves in Andalusia, so being international opened up even more categories and accommodation choices for us.

00:11:46 - Jenn Boyles

And I guess traditional, like windmills and that in the Netherlands.

00:11:50 - Alex Wilson

Yeah, we have a few there as well as the UK and other parts of the world too.

00:11:54 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah. So, yeah, there are property types that are maybe unique. Well, they're unique in their own country, but they're even more unique outside of their country.

00:12:03 - Alex Wilson

Exactly, yeah.

00:12:05 - Jenn Boyles

Oh, good. Let's talk through how it works. If you were coming to your site as somebody who wanted to partner with you to list their property, somebody who's got a more unique property, an interesting place for people to stay, how does the process work?

00:12:22 - Alex Wilson

So, normally they will approach us, so they will go to the actual property section and they will contact us via that way, we will gauge the property for suitability. So we will check to see if it fits in one of our categories on the website. If it fits within a category on our website, then we will contact them and discuss the listing options. We have two different options. We have a basic listing package and a premier listing package. And then once we agree to list sourcing information for our professional writer, the professional writer will go away and create a bespoke listing draft. We send it across to the property, we request a few bits of information to be able to list, and then it usually takes about up to ten days. And then we will work in the background to get the listing live and send it across to the property for their approval. And it's always a collaborative effort, so we're always asking the property owners for their info during the process as well, to make sure they're happy because they need to be as happy as we are.

00:13:19 - Jenn Boyles

Great. So you've got the professional writer writing that you bespoke unique copy of the owner managers providing their photographs.

00:13:27 - Alex Wilson

Yeah.

00:13:28 - Jenn Boyles

Professional photographs, hopefully. And this because it's not an Ota, we're talking like it's an annual subscription, isn't it? You're not taking commission?

00:13:39 - Alex Wilson

No, we don't get involved in commission because we don't get involved in bookings. So not being a transactional side. So yeah, we work on an annual subscription basis.

00:13:48 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah. So this is why it works so well with the marketing that owners and property managers are doing. It's another channel, a marketing channel, really, isn't it? That's how I would yeah, absolutely.

00:14:01 - Alex Wilson

Yeah. It's a marketing channel, an advertising platform to help you with exposure and to bring the right audience.

00:14:10 - Jenn Boyles

And there are niche listing sites out there for different niches. Don't despair if you have a cottage or if you have an apartment. There's other things that there's one yeah.

00:14:22 - Alex Wilson

They're friendly, for example.

00:14:24 - Jenn Boyles

Dog friendly.

00:14:25 - Alex Wilson

Friendly. Different sites for that too.

00:14:28 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah. I think yours is just so interesting because it's full of these interesting and unique, unique places. That's really thrown me, though.

00:14:42 - Alex Wilson

It's got to be engaging as well. Like you said, it's got to have a hook and it's got to be arresting and get people's attention.

00:14:48 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah, that's it.

00:14:50 - Alex Wilson

That's what we wanted to achieve with the site, so hopefully it does that.

00:14:53 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah. And you told me something earlier today about what you've actually got is a tried and tested thing that you do with some yes.

00:15:03 - Alex Wilson

Throughout our blog, Host Writer, we have a separate blog page with its own identity and within that we like to sort of vary the articles. We've actually won an award for our blog before Best Travel Blog so we're very proud of that and the content. We like to vary as much as we can. So we have different areas of sections of the blog for Tried and Tested where we stay at our property and we do a campaign around our stay which includes a descriptive blog piece on a stay. We would then promote that via social media as well. Across our channel newsletter we also have Meet the Owners, which is another nice idea, where we do a Q and A session with the property owners to find out their background, their intentions with their property and what they're looking to achieve. So yeah, there's different ways. We promote properties and we do a weekly newsletter anyway, so we have a different theme and we like to vary those. We've recently had one on electronic charging points and where you can find those for cars. We like to find things that are quite niche as well, different topics and topical things to put on the blog.

00:16:08 - Jenn Boyles

It's a partnership, isn't it?

00:16:11 - Alex Wilson

Yeah, for sure.

00:16:12 - Jenn Boyles

And I love that you're helping property managers and owners build trust.

00:16:18 - Alex Wilson

And also we know that some years are a bit of a struggle, so we'll do call outs to properties to be included in newsletters promoting last minute availability for the summer holidays, for example, things like that, where we can help when there's a need period or some dates that are still sitting there OT. So that's what we also like to try and do.

00:16:38 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah, to me it's just a win-win partnership and it's so different from an Ota that just takes their commission.

00:16:48 - Alex Wilson

And has your yeah, exactly. We like to think that one of our biggest USPS is we're personable and you always know if you're going to contact Host Unusual, you'll get to speak to me. It's only Dawn and myself, we have writers and people that help with content, but in terms of the first line concept and it's us too, so you'll always get to speak to someone who's involved in it.

00:17:09 - Jenn Boyles

Oh, I love it. I love that personal attention to detail.

00:17:14 - Alex Wilson

Yeah, absolutely.

00:17:15 - Jenn Boyles

Great. So how many do you have an idea of how many properties are on your site right now?

00:17:20 - Alex Wilson

Yeah, so we have just over 1500 at the moment. Wow, not bad for, you know, it's been a very busy seven years, but.

00:17:30 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah, throw a pandemic in there, but yeah, exactly.

00:17:35 - Alex Wilson

We had quite a lot of interest from people wanting to join. I think people took the time to plan new units and new opportunities during the pandemic. So we had a lot coming out of the pandemic. People wanted to join us, which is good.

00:17:48 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah. I think a lot of people took the time to take stock, didn't they?

00:17:53 - Alex Wilson

Definitely.

00:17:54 - Jenn Boyles

What was in their lives and what they wanted. I know I did, I changed, I changed the course of my life during the Pandemic and I think a lot of other people did as well. And I knew a lot of people then built tree houses or people that.

00:18:11 - Alex Wilson

Had land and we had the staycation boom, as you know, because of the lockdowns. So people saw the opportunity, they saw that they had land there or other people doing the same thing. I've got this land, maybe I should build a treehouse or a Hobit house. These are quite buzzy, sort of new foundation types to add. We saw a lot of people wanting to join during the Pandemic.

00:18:33 - Jenn Boyles

That's good. Hospitality is an exciting industry and seeing all these great places to go, it makes your mind just open up, doesn't it?

00:18:44 - Alex Wilson

Definitely, yeah. There is a lot out there, but a lot of people don't realize what is out there. So that's kind of one of the purposes, guys setting the site up. A lot of people, when I tell them about what I do and what I set up with dawn, they didn't realize it was there. So that's the whole point.

00:19:02 - Jenn Boyles

Well, I'm so glad you came on today. I know that you are a little bit nervous, shall I say?

00:19:09 - Alex Wilson

Yeah, it's going out of my comfort zone doing something like this. I'm not used to it, but hopefully I've been okay.

00:19:14 - Jenn Boyles

No, you've been brilliant and I really wanted to bring you on because I think there's some misconceptions out there about accommodation directories or niche listing sites and I think it's a great partnership to have for your business, but I can't let you go. And before I ask you the big question, what does a Direct Booking Success mean to you?

00:19:38 - Alex Wilson

So I would say I'm not coming from a property owner's perspective, but I'm someone who works with property owners and what we try to do is help their direct bookings so that we can contribute to their bottom line rather than eroding it when you're on other listing sites that take a commission cut. So that's what it means to us.

00:19:57 - Jenn Boyles

That's great. It is, it is a partnership. Great. And you've got so the website is hostunusual.com, I will put the links in the show notes to your socials and whatnot. And you have a new member joining offer, don't you?

00:20:16 - Alex Wilson

Yes, we do. So if you head to the home page and then add your property, then you'll see the different package levels that we have for Basic in Premier and what they both include and you can contact us that way. But we do have a new member joining offer, so yeah, please do. If anyone feels that they have a property that's relevant to us and would fit well, then we welcome them to get in touch.

00:20:38 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah, and like I said before, too, if you have a property, you're like, oh, I just have a cottage or an apartment or whatever it is, don't despair. I think I even said those words before, but there are other ones out there. Go out and research accommodation directories niche listing sites. I know of a dog friendly one that some clients of mine use and have great success with because it doesn't matter how many bookings you've got, it's an annual fee.

00:21:06 - Alex Wilson

Yeah. And also they're probably finding that website by searching specifically for dog friendly accommodation or dog friendly holidays and that's how they're finding it. So these are as warm leads as you can get, really?

00:21:18 - Jenn Boyles

Yes, that's exactly it. And you're taking advantage of all the marketing. Your annual fee is paying for all of that marketing that they're doing.

00:21:28 - Alex Wilson

There's other things as well. The way I see it is you can pay a PR company X amount of money, but that's a service that we also include as part of the subscription. We're in regular contact with journalists, so we're always pitching our accommodation partners to the journalists and we've been in the Times, the Guardian, Telegraph in the past six weeks. There's lots of different ways we can.

00:21:50 - Jenn Boyles

You're almost becoming with your tried and tested offer and that you're almost becoming an influencer.

00:21:57 - Alex Wilson

Yeah, maybe I won't go that far, but I don't see myself doing any Instagram lives with my mug on. It's about trying to find more creative ways to promote properties that we work with. Yeah, we actually have some quite good brand partnerships that we've worked on this year. We partnered with Direct Booking Success, part of Paint Revokes.

00:22:22 - Jenn Boyles

Oh, cool.

00:22:23 - Alex Wilson

We've got a collaboration coming up with Gandhi's ethical Travel Accessories. They have a couple of retail outlets and they're really nice. They're a really nice brand that aligns well with some of our eco properties. So, yeah, we're always on the lookout for brand partnerships and ways to collaborate with people, but also bring properties on board with that as well.

00:22:44 - Jenn Boyles

Yeah. Well, brilliant. Thank you so much Alex, for coming on today. I'll put the links in the show notes. Thank you.

00:22:52 - Alex Wilson

Thank you so much. Take care.