May’s monthly meetup, coordinated by the Education Committee was super inspiring and left attendees with the tips and tools they need to launch successful direct booking strategies. If you missed the event, you can watch the video here and enjoy my recap.

Host and Host2Host co-founder, Debi Hertert, asked lots of helpful questions of panelists Anthony Rallo, Kim Fitzpatrick, and David Boe who all offer the opportunity for guests to book directly with their properties in one way or another. She also made sure folks felt included and that everyone had the opportunity to participate in the casual, but educational conversation. 

Topics included key reasons to offer direct booking, how to accept money, minimizing your tax burden, reducing risk, cancellation policies, minimum age requirements, rental agreements, rate strategies, and direct-booking incentives. Whew!

It was packed with helpful information and a ton of useful tools for hosts to employ as they manage their businesses:

• Avalara - municipality tax filing assistance
• Beyond Pricing - rate strategies
• Houfy - no fee direct listing advertisement
• MarketMySTR - client relationship manager
• OwnerRez - channel manager for one-stop marketing edits
• PandaDoc - document signature tool for rental agreements
• RentalFormsCenter - state compliant rental agreements
• Safely - damage waiver and reimbursement service
• SignNow - document signature tool for rental agreements
• Stayfi - wifi access tool collects email addresses for all occupants in a rental