Get Fully Booked

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.---Key TakeawaysGoing 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.---Find out more about Prospect House FarmWebsiteFacebookInstagram---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:WebsiteInstagramFacebookLinkedIn---

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.---Key TakeawaysGarbage 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.---Free Resource: AI Marketing CheatsheetWant 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.---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:WebsiteInstagramFacebookLinkedIn---

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.---Key Takeaways82% 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.---Join the Women in Short-Term Rentals CommunityA 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/---Find out more about Lisa Roads below: WebsiteLinkedInFacebookInstagram---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:WebsiteInstagramFacebookLinkedIn---

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.---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.---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.---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:WebsiteInstagramFacebookLinkedIn---

“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.---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.---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:WebsiteInstagramFacebookLinkedIn---