Get Fully Booked

Here's a question most accommodation owners never think to ask: is your booking system actually working with your marketing, or quietly working against it?

Alison Carsley is a host, a property management system specialist, and someone who has spent years helping accommodation businesses untangle their tech setup so it stops costing them bookings and starts earning them.

In this episode, Sarah and Alison pull back the curtain on something that rarely gets discussed in the short-term rental world: the booking and property management system running behind the scenes, and why the right one is far more than a calendar.

They cover what a good PMS should actually be doing for your business: capturing the guest data that makes email marketing possible, firing off the automated communications that save hours every week, and creating a checkout experience smooth enough that potential guests don't abandon it halfway through.

Alison shares the automations that make the biggest difference (including abandoned booking nudges that can recover guests who got within touching distance of confirming, then disappeared), the data you should be collecting at the point of every booking, and the friction points that are silently killing conversions before a guest ever reaches your confirmation page.

They also get into channel management, integrations, and, perhaps most usefully, how to approach choosing or switching systems without ending up with something that can't actually do what your business needs. Alison's advice: write down exactly what you need before you trial anything. The surprises come later for hosts who skip that step.

Whether your current system feels like a paper diary, you're wondering if you've outgrown what you started with, or you're just not sure your tech is pulling its weight: this episode will give you the clarity to figure it out.

Key Takeaways

• Your booking system isn't just a calendar: it's the engine behind your marketing, your guest communications and your direct-booking journey. The right system captures data, automates emails and creates a frictionless checkout. The wrong one blocks all three.
• Collect real guest data at the point of booking: name, email, phone, address, party composition and marketing permissions. This is what makes future email marketing, segmentation and repeat-booking campaigns possible. Without it, you're starting from scratch every time.
• Build automated email sequences into your booking flow: abandoned booking nudges, booking confirmations, pre-arrival information, a check-in message, checkout reminders and a post-stay email with a review request and repeat-booking incentive. These save time and drive bookings without you lifting a finger.
• Remove friction from your checkout. Visible pricing (no hidden fees), a clear availability calendar, mobile-friendly booking and secure payment options are non-negotiable. Forcing a guest to create an account before they can see your prices is one of the fastest ways to lose them.
• If you're using iCal to sync across multiple platforms, switch to a proper API channel manager. iCal is slow, unreliable and doesn't pass guest data through: API connections give you real-time sync, guest details and accurate pricing across every channel.
• List your exact business needs before you choose or switch systems. What works brilliantly for a two-cabin glamping site won't necessarily work for a portfolio of apartments with dynamic pricing, smart lock integrations and multiple channels. Know what you need first.

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Find out more about Alison Carsley

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

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Do you have a marketing roadmap for your business?

No more winging it and feeling like you are in constant marketing chaos! Create your easy-to-follow marketing roadmap for the year ahead. My Direct Bookings Bootcamp is now available ON DEMAND! Let’s make this the best year yet for direct bookings! Head to my website for more info.

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Are you currently rely on Airbnb or another online agent (OTA)?

Take Sarah's FREE quiz here - it's time to give them the boot!

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Connect with Sarah:

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You've probably got reviews sitting on Google. Maybe some on Tripadvisor. Possibly a stack buried inside Airbnb or Booking.com. And if you're anything like most accommodation owners, you look at them occasionally, feel very pleased that guests love your place and then do absolutely nothing else with them.

This episode is the nudge to change that.

Sarah makes the case that your reviews aren't a vanity metric. They aren't there simply so you can admire your 5-star rating and feel smug, although, as she freely admits, we all do that. They're sales content. Real guests telling other potential guests: "Yes, it really is as good as the photographs. Yes, it's worth the money. Yes, you should book this." And most accommodation businesses are leaving that on the table.

She walks through three things every host needs to think about: first, a fundamental mindset shift, stop treating reviews as a score and start treating them as sales messages, including a practical exercise to mine your existing reviews for the phrases your guests use that you'd never think to say about your own property.

Second, how to build a simple, human system for consistently getting more of the right reviews without being pushy, robotic or, crucially, crossing the line into what Google and Tripadvisor prohibit.

And third, and this is the part most hosts miss entirely: where to actually put your reviews so they're working at the moment a potential guest is deciding whether to book.

Spoiler alert: a dedicated Testimonials page that nobody clicks is not the answer.

The episode ends with a three-step action plan you can start this week: mining your review bank, creating your review request system, and putting your best guest words exactly where they'll do the most selling.

Key Takeaways

• Stop asking "what's my star rating?" and start asking "what are my guests saying that could help me sell more stays?" Reviews are evidence from people who've already experienced what you're selling and that's far more persuasive than anything you could say about yourself.
• Go through your last 20–30 reviews and look for the language, not just the stars. Recurring themes, emotional words, things guests mention that surprise them, objections they remove without realising it: that's your free customer research and your best marketing material.
• Build a simple review request system and make it part of your guest journey. Ask at the right moment, when a guest sends a glowing message, says they don't want to leave, or shares a photo. Give them the direct Google review link. One click, done.
• Never incentivise reviews. Google prohibits offering anything in exchange for reviews. Keep your request simple, human and honest: ask for their experience, not a specific rating.
• Put reviews where the booking decision actually happens: next to the thing they're helping you sell on your website, near your booking call to action, on your homepage in actual words rather than just a star rating, in your social content and in your emails matched to the stay you're trying to fill.
• Respond to every Google and Tripadvisor review, including the difficult ones. Your response is visible to future guests and is another opportunity to reinforce a selling point or demonstrate how you handle things when something goes wrong. Potential guests are watching.

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To learn how to use your reviews to sell — why not join THE FULLY BOOKED BUSINESS CLUBⓇ? Learn more

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Do you have a marketing roadmap for your business?

No more winging it and feeling like you are in constant marketing chaos! Create your easy-to-follow marketing roadmap for the year ahead. My Direct Bookings Bootcamp is now available ON DEMAND! Let’s make this the best year yet for direct bookings! Head to my website for more info.

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Are you currently rely on Airbnb or another online agent (OTA)?

Take Sarah's FREE quiz here - it's time to give them the boot!

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Connect with Sarah:

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Facebook

LinkedIn

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If you've ever posted a photograph of your accommodation online and thought "I hope the right people see this" - this episode is a timely reminder that visibility can attract the wrong kind of attention too.

On 26th August, Sarah discovered that someone had taken photographs of The Hudnalls Hideout, her luxury couples-only treehouse in the Wye Valley and used them to build a completely fake holiday accommodation website. Different brand name. Random private residential address in Gloucestershire. Convincing booking page. Real guests handing over real money for a holiday that didn't exist.

In this episode, Sarah walks through what actually happened: how the scam worked, why it's more sophisticated than simply pinching a photograph and putting it on a blog, and why the fact that your marketing is working well can make you more of a target, not less. She's candid about the moment the situation shifted from "that's annoying" to "this is actually serious" and honest about the fact that she's far from alone. This is happening to more accommodation businesses than most people realise.

She covers exactly what to do if you discover it's happened to you: what to document, who to report it to, how to handle a guest who has been affected, and what not to say. And she makes the case firmly, for why the answer isn't to become invisible. It's to make your genuine business so easy to find and so obviously credible that any imposter version doesn't stand a chance.

The episode ends with a five-point checklist and a bigger marketing lesson that applies whether you've experienced image theft or not: visibility is valuable. Your job is to make sure that when people find you, they can tell they've found the real you.

Key Takeaways

• Don't assume being small means you're invisible. You don't need thousands of followers to become a target: you just need photographs or video content that a scammer thinks they can exploit. Sometimes that happens precisely because your marketing is working.
• Document everything the moment you discover it. Screenshots, URLs, dates, adverts, emails from affected guests: create an evidence file immediately, because fake websites can disappear fast and you'll need proof of what was there.
• Go upstream when reporting. Report to the website platform, the hosting company, the domain registrar, the advertising platform and search engines and where relevant, the appropriate authorities. One email is rarely enough.
• If a guest contacts you because they've been scammed, lead with empathy. Establish what happened, help them understand the legitimate booking route, encourage them to contact their bank promptly, and point them to the official fraud-reporting channels. Don't promise to get their money back.
• Strengthen your digital footprint, don't shrink it. A strong, consistent online presence (website, Google Business Profile, social media, reviews) makes it far easier for potential guests to identify the genuine business. Your website isn't just somewhere to take bookings. It's part of your credibility.
• Your photographs, videos and written content are marketing assets. As your business becomes more successful, those assets become more valuable and more worth protecting.

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Useful Links

If you discover a suspicious or fraudulent website using your images or identity, you can report it here:

• National Cyber Security Centre (UK)
• Report Fraud — England, Wales and Northern Ireland

In Scotland, report holiday fraud to Police Scotland. If you are based outside the UK, check the recommended fraud reporting route for your country.

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Do you have a marketing roadmap for your business?

No more winging it and feeling like you are in constant marketing chaos! Create your easy-to-follow marketing roadmap for the year ahead. My Direct Bookings Bootcamp is now available ON DEMAND! Let’s make this the best year yet for direct bookings! Head to my website for more info.

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Are you currently rely on Airbnb or another online agent (OTA)?

Take Sarah's FREE quiz here - it's time to give them the boot!

---

Connect with Sarah:

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Instagram

Facebook

LinkedIn

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To close out Season 6, Sarah is joined by one of her Fully Booked Business Club members whose results over the last two years have been, in her own words, impressive and whose approach to marketing holds a lesson every short-term rental accommodation owner needs to hear.

Joe Marshall is a heating engineer turned glamping and campsite owner. He and his wife Kimberly bought Prospect House Farm in Scarborough, North Yorkshire in March 2022 with a vision of living the good life and quickly discovered that keeping a farm, a growing campsite, glamping cabins, a plant nursery and a livery yard financially viable requires rather more than Big Dreams and good intentions.

Joe knew nothing about accommodation marketing when they started. He opened a five-pitch campsite in their first summer, added a glamping cabin that winter and has been building ever since.

By July 2026, Prospect House Farm now has 27 campsite pitches, two glamping cabins running at 90-96% occupancy, two more cabins due in September and a guest waiting list.

What changed?

Joe went looking for knowledge, found Sarah through a Facebook group reply, downloaded a free social media masterclass, joined her signature Direct Bookings Bootcamp, joined the marketing club and then, critically, did the actual work.

But the thing that has driven the most dramatic shift is something most hosts overlook entirely: obsessively tracking the right data and making every marketing decision from insight rather than instinct.

Joe talks through the live dashboard he built himself: pulling data from Google Analytics, Mailchimp and his booking system into a single view, so he can see at a glance his average nightly rate, year-on-year performance, which marketing channels are actually generating bookings (not just traffic) and where his guests are coming from.

He shares the moment he realised Facebook ads were consuming budget without producing results and how redirecting that spend towards a social media manager and a professional website transformed both his brand and his bookings.

He also covers the pricing shift that happened once he truly understood his costs and his demand, from discounting to stay competitive on OTAs, to confidently raising his rates because the data showed he could.

The headline numbers tell the story: when Joe started, he was 80% OTA-dependent and 20% direct. Today he’s 80% direct bookings, has switched off Booking.com entirely, and has Airbnb on standby for the occasional cancellation gap. For two consecutive months he hasn’t needed to enter a single Airbnb booking into his accounting software.

Joe’s top tip for any host who doesn’t yet know their numbers: start small, go on Google Analytics weekly, ask one question each time and use AI to help make sense of what you’re seeing.

The data stops feeling like gobbledygook faster than you’d think and once you know your numbers, the stress of running a hospitality business starts to ease significantly.

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Key Takeaways

• Going from 80% OTA to 80%+ direct bookings at 90-96% occupancy didn’t happen by accident: it happened because Joe committed to understanding his business data and making every marketing decision from insight rather than guesswork.
• Know where your bookings actually come from before deciding where to spend your time. Most hosts spend the majority of their marketing effort on social media but data consistently shows Google and other sources can drive far more bookings. Track your sources and allocate your energy accordingly.
• If you’re spending marketing budget on a channel and you can’t tell whether it’s working, stop. Joe ditched Facebook ads that weren’t converting and redirected that budget into a social media manager and a professional website: both of which made an immediate difference.
• Average nightly rate across the whole year matters more than peak-season highs. Once a date is sold, it’s sold: understanding your true average rate helps you price with confidence and raise rates when demand justifies it, rather than discounting out of fear.
• Know your full cost per stay before you price anything. Include cleaning, laundry, consumables, utilities….everything. Hosts who skip this step often discover they’re discounting below their own cost of delivery.
• If Google Analytics feels like gobbledygook, use AI to help decode it. Screenshot what you’re looking at and ask AI to explain it. Go on weekly, ask one question at a time, and build the habit gradually: it gets easier, and the insights it unlocks are worth it.

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Find out more about Prospect House Farm

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram

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Want more support on your marketing insights & direct bookings?

Check out THE FULLY BOOKED BUSINESS CLUB here.

---

Do you have a marketing roadmap for your business?

No more winging it and feeling like you are in constant marketing chaos! Create your easy-to-follow marketing roadmap for the year ahead. My Direct Bookings Bootcamp is now available ON DEMAND! Let’s make this the best year yet for direct bookings! Head to my website for more info.

---

Are you currently rely on Airbnb or another online agent (OTA)?

Take Sarah's FREE quiz here - it's time to give them the boot!

---

Connect with Sarah:

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Facebook

LinkedIn

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You asked AI to write an Instagram caption for your accommodation. It came back with something about a “tranquil haven nestled amidst breathtaking natural beauty where luxury meets comfort.” You deleted it immediately. Sound familiar?

In this solo episode, Sarah gets practical about one of the most common frustrations she hears from hosts: AI that produces bland, generic content that sounds nothing like their actual business. The problem, she argues, isn’t the tool — it’s the prompts. Most people are using AI like a magic content machine, typing “write me an Instagram caption for my Airbnb” and pressing enter, then wondering why the result could have been written for any property, anywhere.

Sarah introduces the principle of ‘garbage in, garbage out’: a computing concept that’s never been more relevant. AI is not unlike a new marketing assistant: hand them a vague brief and walk away, and you’ll get average work. Spend time giving them real context about your guests, your brand, your story and what makes your accommodation different, and the work transforms. AI amplifies the insights you give it. It doesn’t invent them.

She walks through three practical approaches that change the game: first, training AI on your business before asking it to produce anything and the concept of building your own ‘AI business bible’ that you can reuse again and again. Second, using AI as a creative thinking partner rather than just a writer: feeding in guest reviews, asking it to analyse emotional themes, or getting it to help you understand what questions your ideal guests are asking before they book. And third, the PROMPT formula: a memorable six-part structure (Purpose, Role, Offer, Market, Personality, Technical details) that gives AI everything it needs to produce content that actually sounds like you.

Sarah also shares a full worked example: a detailed prompt for a luxury treehouse in the Forest of Dean, so you can see exactly what a strong prompt looks like in practice and adapt it directly for your own business.

If you’ve been getting mediocre results from AI and assumed the tool was the problem, this episode will reframe how you use it entirely. The goal isn’t more content. It’s better content — content that sounds like you, connects with your ideal guests, and helps the right people find and book your accommodation.

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Key Takeaways

• Garbage in, garbage out. The quality of your AI content depends almost entirely on the quality of the brief you give it — vague prompts produce vague content, every single time.
• Before asking AI to create anything, train it on your business: your ideal guests, your brand voice, what makes your accommodation different, words you love, words you never want to see, and guest reviews. Build an ‘AI business bible’ you can paste in again and again.
• Use AI as a thinking partner, not just a writer. Ask it to analyse your reviews for recurring themes, identify the emotional reasons guests book your type of property, or audit your website copy for generic language — before you ask it to write a single word.
• The PROMPT formula gives every AI request the right ingredients: Purpose (what’s the goal?), Role (who is AI acting as?), Offer (what are you promoting?), Market (who is it for?), Personality (your tone and brand voice), and Technical details (length, format, CTAs).
• Your guest reviews are a goldmine. They contain the exact words your guests use to describe the experience — feed them into AI and it will immediately start producing content that resonates with the people most likely to book.
• AI is a first draft tool, not a final draft tool. Never publish without editing — add the human layer, the local knowledge, the details only you know, and always fact-check any specific claims or local recommendations it generates.

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Free Resource: AI Marketing Cheatsheet

Want the prompts and frameworks from this episode in one handy reference? Download Sarah’s free AI Marketing Cheatsheet — everything you need to start getting better content from AI today. Download your free AI Marketing Cheatsheet here.

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Do you have a marketing roadmap for your business?

No more winging it and feeling like you are in constant marketing chaos! Create your easy-to-follow marketing roadmap for the year ahead. My Direct Bookings Bootcamp is now available ON DEMAND! Let’s make this the best year yet for direct bookings! Head to my website for more info.

---

Are you currently rely on Airbnb or another online agent (OTA)?

Take Sarah's FREE quiz here - it's time to give them the boot!

---

Connect with Sarah:

Website

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Facebook

LinkedIn

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If you’ve ever felt isolated in your business, wondered whether you’re the only one juggling quite this much, or noticed that the people on the big industry stages rarely look like you, this episode is for you.

Lisa Roads has spent over 25 years in short-term rentals, starting with buy-to-lets at 19, building a holiday portfolio in Cyprus from the UK, and eventually running a fully managed property management business of 225 luxury coastal villas and apartments across three locations on the island, all operated remotely. She sold that business in 2021 and has since moved into consulting, coaching and speaking and more recently, into building something the industry was sorely missing.

Women in Short Term Rentals started in December 2024, born out of Lisa’s frustration at attending major industry events and consistently not seeing women on the stages or at the tables shaping the sector’s direction, despite the fact that 70% of hospitality employees are women, and that data consistently shows 82% of travel decisions are made by women. The community now has over 500 members, a Facebook group, WhatsApp and LinkedIn groups, and has become a delivery partner for the Host Planet Roadshow, taking industry education on the road to make it accessible to women who can’t always get to the big conferences.

In this conversation, Lisa and Sarah talk candidly about what women in the industry actually struggle with: imposter syndrome that strikes even after landing a £300,000 contract, the sandwich generation reality of juggling aging parents, children still at home, a relationship and a business, and the under-discussed impact of the menopause on women running businesses they simply can’t pause.

Lisa is refreshingly honest: her desk, she says, has seen everything from complete joy to floods of tears over 20-something years and she wants the community to be the place where that honesty is normal and welcome.

They also get into Lisa’s biggest business lessons from scaling to 225 units: why she always put systems and processes in place before growing, and why the best hiring decision she ever made was to recruit for aptitude rather than experience: a principle she borrowed from Richard Branson.

Whether you have one property or a portfolio, whether you’re just starting out or well into your hosting journey: if you’re a woman in short-term rentals, this community exists for you.

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Key Takeaways

• 82% of travel decisions are made by women, which means women running hospitality businesses have a powerful, innate understanding of exactly who they’re marketing to and what those guests are looking for.
• Imposter syndrome doesn’t discriminate by experience level. Women who project enormous confidence publicly can still spend the week after landing a £300,000 contract questioning whether they made the right call and having somewhere honest to take that matters.
• The ‘sandwich generation’ is a real and underacknowledged pressure for many women in STR: aging parents at one end, children at home at the other, a relationship and a business in the middle. A supportive community of people who genuinely understand the industry makes navigating that far less isolating.
• The menopause is a business issue, not just a personal one. Women running short-term rental businesses can’t simply walk away when they’re struggling — and having a space to talk about it without judgement is something the industry has been missing.
• Recruit for aptitude, train for skill. Lisa’s biggest operational lesson from scaling to 225 units: she never cared what a candidate had done before. If they were passionate about people and service, she would teach them everything else and those people stayed for years.
• You cannot scale on sand. Systems and processes come first, growth comes second and as a business grows, the leader’s job is to continually reassess what skills and people are needed for the next stage, not just the current one.

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Join the Women in Short-Term Rentals Community

A free, no-sales-pitch community for women in short-term rentals, whether you have one property or a large portfolio. Join via the link below:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1538537940121422/

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Find out more about Lisa Roads below:

Website

LinkedIn

Facebook

Instagram

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Do you have a marketing roadmap for your business?

No more winging it and feeling like you are in constant marketing chaos! Create your easy-to-follow marketing roadmap for the year ahead. My Direct Bookings Bootcamp is now available ON DEMAND! Let’s make this the best year yet for direct bookings! Head to my website for more info.

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Are you currently rely on Airbnb or another online agent (OTA)?

Take Sarah's FREE quiz here - it's time to give them the boot!

---

Connect with Sarah:

Website

Instagram

Facebook

LinkedIn

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Bookings are slower than you’d like, so you look at your website and think: “it’s not converting. I need new photos. I need a new booking system. I need a new website.” But what if that’s the wrong diagnosis entirely?

What if the real problem isn’t conversion at all, it’s that almost nobody is actually visiting your website in the first place?

In this solo episode, Sarah tackles one of the most common (and costly) mistakes she sees accommodation owners make: trying to fix a conversion problem when they actually have a traffic problem. She opens with the question she asks every client whose bookings have dropped: “how many people visited your website in the last 12 months?” and the answer is almost always silence or "I don't know".

Using a brilliantly simple high-street-shop analogy, Sarah explains why beautiful window displays and excellent service mean nothing if only three people walk through the door each day and why most hosts are obsessing over tiny website tweaks while sitting on a traffic problem ten times bigger. She runs the numbers on exactly why doubling your conversion rate often delivers far less impact than simply getting more people to your site in the first place.

Sarah then shares five practical ways to grow website traffic, from SEO and helpful content to email list growth, strategic social media use and the partnership opportunities most hosts overlook entirely.

And once traffic genuinely isn’t the issue, she walks through the conversion fundamentals that actually move the needle.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re guessing at your marketing, this episode gives you the exact three numbers to check before you spend another penny on your website.

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Key Takeaways:

• You cannot convert visitors you don’t have. Before changing anything about your website, find out how many people are actually visiting, what percentage enquire or book, and where that traffic comes from.
• The industry average website conversion rate is just 1%. If you’re only getting 100 visitors a month, doubling your conversion rate gets you 2 extra bookings — but increasing traffic to 1,000 visitors at the same rate gets you 20.
• Most visitors don’t book on their first visit. Guests compare, browse, save and return — so a steady stream of new visitors entering your world is the lifeblood of future bookings, not just immediate ones.
• Sarah shares five reliable ways to grow traffic.
• Once you have traffic, conversion comes down to a handful of fixable things: making it instantly clear who you are and what you offer, using strong photography and video, removing booking friction, building trust through reviews and FAQs, and giving people a genuine reason to book direct.
• Vanity metrics like likes and reach don’t pay the bills. Every piece of marketing should be designed to move people towards your website — that's where the real opportunity for bookings lives.

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Want my eyes on your traffic and conversion numbers?

If you'd like to get under the skin of your website traffic and find out exactly where your bottleneck is, a 1:1 Bookings Boost session is a focused 60-minute Zoom consultation built entirely around your business and your numbers. No fluff, just rapid, actionable advice you can implement straight away. Book your Bookings Boost session here.

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Do you have a marketing roadmap for your business?

No more winging it and feeling like you are in constant marketing chaos! Create your easy-to-follow marketing roadmap for the year ahead. My Direct Bookings Bootcamp is now available ON DEMAND! Let’s make this the best year yet for direct bookings! Head to my website for more info.

---

Are you currently rely on Airbnb or another online agent (OTA)?

Take Sarah's FREE quiz here - it's time to give them the boot!

---

Connect with Sarah:

Website

Instagram

Facebook

LinkedIn

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“SEO is dead.” “Google is finished.” “AI is taking over search.”

If you’ve spent any time online recently, you’ve probably seen at least one of those headlines. In this solo episode, Sarah cuts through the noise and gives you a clear, practical answer to what’s actually changing and, more importantly, what it means for your holiday cottage, glamping site, Airbnb or boutique accommodation business.

It’s true that the way people search is shifting.

More people are asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity full conversational questions instead of typing keywords into Google and Google itself is leaning more heavily on AI-generated answers at the top of results.

But Sarah’s take is refreshingly grounded: this isn’t a reason to scrap your SEO strategy. It’s a reason to understand a few important shifts.

First up, GEO: Generative Engine Optimisation - the new term everyone’s suddenly using. Sarah explains why she thinks treating it as a brand new discipline is slightly misleading and why hosts who’ve already invested in good onsite SEO are further ahead than they realise. The shift isn’t really about new tactics.

It’s a change in the question you’re answering: traditional SEO asks ‘how do I get found?’, while GEO asks ‘how do I become the answer?’

Sarah also makes a compelling case for one specific page that most accommodation websites massively underuse: the FAQ page. AI tools love question-and-answer content, and so do guests, which means every question you’re repeatedly asked by email, phone or in reviews is potential website content. From hot tub privacy to dog policies to mobile signal, she explains why hiding ‘obvious’ information is one of the most common mistakes hosts make and why it’s costing them visibility.

Finally, Sarah tackles the question everyone actually wants answered: how do you get ChatGPT or Google’s AI results to recommend your business?

There’s no magic formula, but there are clear, practical patterns and the good news for independent hosts is that the things AI tools are looking for (local knowledge, personality, genuine expertise) are exactly the things big chains struggle to compete with.

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Key Takeaways:

• SEO and GEO aren’t opposing strategies — if you’ve already built strong onsite SEO, you’re much closer to being AI-ready than you think. The fundamentals of helpful, accurate, well-structured information haven’t changed.
• The shift in mindset matters more than any specific tactic: stop asking ‘how do I get found?’ and start asking ‘how do I become the answer?’ — which means answering real guest questions instead of stuffing keywords.
• Roughly 15% of Google searches every day have never been searched before. People are asking full, conversational questions — your content needs to sound like a helpful host, not a keyword checklist.
• A genuinely useful FAQ page is becoming one of the most valuable pages on your website. Mine your guest emails, phone enquiries and reviews for repeated questions, and don’t be afraid to answer the ‘obvious’ ones.
• Consistency builds AI trust. Your business name, location and contact details should match exactly across your website, Google Business Profile, social media and directory listings.
• Independent hosts have a natural advantage here — local knowledge, personality and genuine expertise are exactly what AI systems are learning to favour, and exactly what big chains find hardest to replicate.

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Do you have a marketing roadmap for your business?

No more winging it and feeling like you are in constant marketing chaos! Create your easy-to-follow marketing roadmap for the year ahead. My Direct Bookings Bootcamp is now available ON DEMAND! Let’s make this the best year yet for direct bookings! Head to my website for more info.

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Are you currently rely on Airbnb or another online agent (OTA)?

Take Sarah's FREE quiz here - it's time to give them the boot!

---

Connect with Sarah:

Website

Instagram

Facebook

LinkedIn

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What actually happens when you want to move on from a business you’ve spent years building? And what does it really look like to take that dream of running a retreat abroad and live it out — with all the complicated, unglamorous bits included?

Kerry Roy is someone Sarah describes as glamping royalty and it’s not hard to see why. She was one of the earliest glamping pioneers in the UK, building Camp Couture from scratch on a 250-acre Yorkshire estate in 2012, growing it to 19 units plus pop-up bell tents, launching one of the UK’s most celebrated wedding festival venues, and running an annual campervan festival for thousands of people. All while planning her next chapter: an award-winning agritourism retreat in the mountains of Abruzzo, Italy.

In this episode, Kerry walks through the full arc of that journey: from the legal contract she insisted on from day one when the landowner wanted a handshake deal (a decision that protected her completely when it came time to exit), to the Covid timing that made selling Camp Couture both easier and more necessary than she’d anticipated. She’s honest about the financial realities of building on rented land: the high rent that meant weddings, not glamping, were what actually sustained the business, and the important distinction between selling a business and giving up an asset.

Then there’s Italy. Kerry is brilliantly candid about what running a hospitality business in a foreign country actually involves and it’s not the Dolce Vita fantasy.

From employment law that heavily favours employees (making hiring feel like a trap for employers), to bureaucracy that can’t be automated, quarterly financial reporting, bills still paid by queuing at the post office, and the sobering experience of having to walk away from a £40,000 legal dispute simply because she couldn’t fight a court case in Italian. She’d go back and do enormous amounts of it differently.

What’s particularly interesting is where Kerry has landed now: auditing her business forensically and discovering that 10 seven-night retreats would generate more profit than 900 individual short-stay nights, once costs and hours are properly accounted for. It’s a quiet but striking argument for rethinking the model entirely and a reminder that being ‘fully booked’ isn’t the same as being profitable.

If you’ve ever dreamed of running a business abroad, are thinking about your own exit strategy, or just want a genuinely unfiltered account from someone who’s been in this industry for 15 years and seen all sides of it: this one is unmissable. And if you’re dreaming of the Italian Dolce Vita and want to take on a ready-made retreat site in Abruzzo, Kerry might just have something for you too.

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Key Takeaways:

• Always have a contract — even when the other party wants a handshake. Kerry’s insistence on a legal agreement from day one meant her exit from Camp Couture was clean, protected and on her terms. The contract should include ownership of structures, exit clauses and right of first refusal from the outset.
• Think about your exit before you even open. It sounds counterintuitive, but building your exit strategy into the legal structure from the beginning — not as an afterthought years later — is what gives you real options when the time comes.
• The asset and the business are two different things. Selling the business doesn’t have to mean giving up the asset. Kerry’s model of leasing the business while retaining the property is a genuinely useful framework for hosts thinking about stepping back without losing long-term value.
• Running a business abroad requires deep cultural research, not just property research. Employment law, bureaucracy, banking, tax reporting and local staff expectations can be radically different — and those differences have real financial consequences that no amount of entrepreneurial mindset can compensate for.
• Fully booked isn’t the same as profitable. Kerry’s audit revealed that 10 seven-night retreats would outperform 900 individual short-stay nights on profit — once real costs and owner hours are properly factored in. Know your numbers before you optimise for occupancy.
• Building a business in a foreign country is possible — but go in with eyes wide open, not rose-tinted glasses. If you can’t conduct a legal or financial meeting in the local language, that gap will cost you, sometimes significantly.

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Find out more about Kerry Roy and Cerchio Del Desiderio Retreat

Kerry’s retreat in Abruzzo, Italy is available to lease — if you’re dreaming of taking on a ready-made Italian agritourism business, get in touch with her directly.

Website: https://cerchiodeldesiderio.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cerchiodeldesiderio_retreat/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063526805273#

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Do you have a marketing roadmap for your business?

No more winging it and feeling like you are in constant marketing chaos! Create your easy-to-follow marketing roadmap for the year ahead. My Direct Bookings Bootcamp is now available ON DEMAND! Let’s make this the best year yet for direct bookings! Head to my website for more info.

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Are you currently rely on Airbnb or another online agent (OTA)?

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Your About page. It’s probably the one you set up early on, haven’t touched since and don’t spend much time thinking about. But what if it’s quietly one of the most important conversion tools on your entire website?

In this solo episode, Sarah makes the case for why your About page deserves a serious rethink — and it starts with a fascinating piece of consumer psychology. Research by neuroscientist Paul Zak found that stories trigger oxytocin in the brain (the trust hormone), making people significantly more likely to take action. In hospitality, where guests are booking experiences and imagining celebrations, reconnections and escapes before they’ve even hit ‘confirm’, that science has very direct implications for how you write about yourself.

Sarah walks through why trust signals matter more than ever in an internet full of scams and AI-generated content — and why the corporate-sounding About pages most hosts default to (“Established in 2019. We pride ourselves on excellent customer service.”) are doing them real harm. Guests landing on your website are subconsciously asking whether they can trust you. Your About page either answers that question or it doesn’t.

Then there’s the bigger idea: people buy people. Especially in independent accommodation, where guests are entering a space someone actually created and cared about. Sarah talks about why the hosts who build loyal audiences and strong repeat booking rates are usually the ones willing to be visible — not in an influencer way, but in a warm, reassuring “we’re real humans who genuinely care about your stay” kind of way. If someone books through Airbnb, they borrow Airbnb’s trust. If they book directly, you are the trust factor.

And the most important question of all: why are you a host? Not “because it seemed like a good investment.” The real reason. The story behind the leap, the renovation, the vision for what you wanted guests to feel. Because in a market where there are now a lot of nice cabins with hot tubs, your story is often the thing that tips someone from “this looks nice” to “this feels right.”

Sarah wraps up with five practical About page quick wins you can act on this week — from the photos you’re probably not using, to the emotional language that converts far better than informational copy.

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Key Takeaways:

• Your About page is a conversion tool, not a box-ticking exercise — it’s where guests decide whether they trust you enough to book direct, making it one of the highest-value pages on your website.
• Storytelling is scientifically proven to build trust. Research shows stories trigger the brain’s trust hormone (oxytocin), which is why sharing your genuine story converts better than any corporate-sounding bio ever will.
• If someone books through Airbnb, they borrow Airbnb’s trust. If they book direct, you are the trust factor — and your About page has to carry that weight.
• Overly polished often feels less trustworthy now. Authenticity, real faces and genuine human detail reassure guests far more effectively than professional-sounding language and stock imagery.
• Your WHY — the real reason you became a host — is one of your most powerful marketing assets. Guests remember stories, and in a crowded market, your story is often what differentiates you from every other beautiful property with a hot tub.
• Think emotional, not informational. Don’t just tell people what the property is — help them understand what it feels like to be there, and why you built it for them.

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Does your website need fresh eyes?

If this episode has made you look at your website differently and you know it needs some work, my Website Audit service gives you expert eyes on your site and clear, actionable feedback on what’s holding your bookings back. Find out more here.

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Do you have a marketing roadmap for your business?

No more winging it and feeling like you are in constant marketing chaos! Create your easy-to-follow marketing roadmap for the year ahead. My Direct Bookings Bootcamp is now available ON DEMAND! Let’s make this the best year yet for direct bookings! Head to my website for more info.

---

Are you currently rely on Airbnb or another online agent (OTA)?

Take Sarah's FREE quiz here - it's time to give them the boot!

---

Connect with Sarah:

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Facebook

LinkedIn

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