How Data-Driven Marketing Turns Travelers Into Direct Bookings
The Boostly Podcast
Mark Simpson
5.0 • 302 Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, we’re joined by Amber Knight from Bookings Cloud to discuss how vacation rental managers can move beyond reactive marketing and start building a stronger, more profitable direct booking strategy.
Amber shares her experience across the short-term rental industry and explains why guest acquisition can no longer be treated as an afterthought. We dive into the difference between boosting posts and running effective Meta ad campaigns, how clean property data can improve ad performance, and why your website and property detail pages are critical assets for converting qualified traffic.
Amber also breaks down the data points that many operators overlook, including booking pace, booking-source dynamics, OTA fee impact, revenue per property, and profit per property. She shares a real example of how a North Carolina client increased RevPAR by $60 while the wider market declined by 17%.
Whether you manage one property or a large portfolio, this episode offers practical advice on preparing your listings, improving website trust, and using marketing to drive higher-quality bookings instead of simply filling last-minute gaps.
Learn more about Bookings Cloud at http://bookingscloud.com/ or connect with Amber Knight on LinkedIn.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Okay, everybody, welcome. We are here with another episode. I've got the fantastic Amber Night with me from Bucking's Cloud. Amber, welcome. Thank you very much for joining us. |
| 0:11.2 | Excited to have a discussion today about marketing, which is always a popular topic on the podcast. But before we get going, can you please let us know a little bit more |
| 0:22.1 | about your journey, about Buckins Cloud, and what you'd like for the users and listeners today |
| 0:27.4 | to get out of this episode of the podcast? Yes. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm |
| 0:34.8 | Amber Knight. So I'm Amber Knight Knight and I've been in this industry |
| 0:39.5 | for probably, I think, 12 years now. So I've kind of done the full gamut of vacation rental, |
| 0:46.9 | property management and software. So I've done corporate development at Vakasa, LiveRAS and Inhabits, launching revenue management services |
| 0:59.1 | with rented. |
| 1:02.1 | So kind of working through a lot of that. |
| 1:03.6 | And so right now, really what I'm excited to do |
| 1:06.8 | is to kind of look at that next frontier |
| 1:09.0 | of short-term rental management, which is driving demand. |
| 1:14.3 | Right. |
| 1:15.1 | So essentially at Bookings Cloud, we're launching this business. |
| 1:18.5 | We help vacation rental managers turn traveler demand into direct bookings by matching what guests are searching for with the exact properties that are ready to book |
| 1:29.0 | and then sending that traffic directly to the property detail page on the website. |
| 1:33.6 | Yeah. |
| 1:34.6 | And who are the sort of the people that you normally work with? |
| 1:38.5 | Where are they based? |
| 1:40.1 | Like what sort of portfolio do they have a mix up? |
| 1:43.1 | How does like, how would you describe like your |
| 1:44.4 | ideal customer and who would you say like the most common one that's coming across your doors |
... |
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