We recently chatted with Brian Nash, Lead Product Manager at BookingSuite, to discuss the company's mission to provide effective property website solutions for accomodation partners, and how they leverage Yext's technology to help their customers grow their businesses and brands.
1. Tell us a bit about yourself, BookingSuite, and your role there. What are the company's current goals and focuses? Where do you see BookingSuite headed?
I'm one of the Lead Product Managers at BookingSuite, responsible for the performance of our products and the systems that enable that performance. BookingSuite is dedicated to helping accommodation partners grow their businesses and brands through cloud-based software solutions. Right now, our focus is on providing property website solutions. We continuously improve our software solutions to meet the complex digital marketing needs of our partners. In the coming years, BookingSuite will offer even more solutions to help properties better run their businesses.
2. What kinds of services do you offer? How do you offer services — in bundles, in tiers, in packages?
We currently offer two property website options–WebDirect and WebComplete. WebDirect is designed for properties that need a sophisticated web presence quickly and easily. WebDirect only charges the partner 10% per booking, which presents very little financial risk. WebComplete is ideal for properties that need a complete and robust digital marketing solution with greater content options. This offer comes with a monthly subscription fee, which is pretty standard for a SaaS-based business.
3. How does Yext fit into BookingSuite's product/service offering? How does it help your hospitality customers do their jobs better?
Yext is helping us scale our offering to hotel partners and in our current phase of business, that's our biggest challenge. We help thousands of accommodation providers of all types in dozens of countries reach and service their guests in 42 languages. Our client list grows faster every month (much faster than our team is growing), so being able to make a significant impact for their businesses in a way that's very simple for us to manage has been a big part of why Yext works so well for us. For our hoteliers, it represents a crucial time-saver over managing those channels by hand themselves, and as any small business owner knows, time is their most precious asset.
4. What does Yext make it possible to do that you wouldn't have time for otherwise?
Since more than half of our hotel partners launch their first ever website with our help, their domains have no online authority and can be nearly impossible for guests to find. Our Yext partnership kickstarts these brand new sites both by creating digital authority (backlinks and such) and also by making them discoverable in the directories and social channels where guests are seeking them out. The websites that we launch with Yext start to show real value for our hospitality partners within the first 30 days!
5. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your satisfaction with Yext? Why?
I'm extremely happy with our Yext partnership and would rate it a 9, because I want to leave a little wiggle room for the Yext team to wow me without it breaking the scale. 🙂
6. Do you have any wishlist items for Yext? Are there any specific areas that would want us to focus more on?
I would love a professional services team that could provide technical resources for tasks such as building out or making updates to our Yext API integration. Having technical folks that understand the Yext system very well would accelerate those projects and internal resources are always so over-committed that we can't move as fast as we'd like. Also on my wishlist is a Yext Seattle office, just because I enjoy the team a lot and would like to see them in person more. Come visit us, I think you might like it here! 🙂
7. What are the top 5 mobile apps you use on a day-to-day basis? Which is the most "fun" one?
The first page of my iPhone is nearly all about productivity apps. Currently I am heavily using Glass (a calendar/productivity app with an innovative design approach), YouMail (transcribes my voicemails into text messages because I hate listening to voicemail), Evernote (as an information packrat this is my best-friend-slash-enabler) and Buffer (for strategic social media simulcasting), and I happily pay the premium fees for great apps like these. Lest you think I'm all business, I'm also in the Electric Objects app every day – a Kickstarter project I backed that's creating a digital art store – browsing new artists and swapping the artwork on my EO1 display. You can see what I'm enjoying in realtime here.
Brian is a Lead Product Manager at Booking.com (a division of the Priceline Group), overseeing product development for BookingSuite's Advertising, Lead Generation and Analytics products. You can follow him on Twitter @schuss.
Check out BookingSuite's website for more information about what their company is doing in the local search space.
