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Are you making safety a top priority for your Airbnb or short term rental? You are taking responsibility for your guests, and that goes beyond cleanliness, amenities, and standing out.

Justin Ford is director of safety and certification programs at Breezeway, a software company that makes it easier to manage property care and maintenance operations. Justin focuses on the operations side specifically, helping property managers and owners maintain the safety of vacation rental properties and short term rentals.

It is easy to only look at the bare minimum of safety, such as smoke alarms and fire extinguishers, but there is so much more to keep in mind and many pillars of safety that may not be on your radar at all. We’re going to go over why safety needs to be at the top of your list.

Why does safety tend to get overlooked?

Safety is overlooked because we are comfortable and familiar with our space. It’s easy to assume that everyone else...

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Letting down your guests sucks, but when it happens (and it will happen), what do you do next?

We’re going to share the experiences we’ve had and how we bounced back. You are not alone if you’ve made a mistake. No matter how good you are, things are going to happen, and what matters in those moments is how you handle it.

When something goes wrong, here’s what you need to do to bounce back:

• Commiserate with someone who will understand: If you know someone who also runs a rental, share the experience with them. Tell them the story of what happened, and get feedback on what you should do.

• Take care of the customer: The first thing you need to do is make good on your guests. Assure them that you understand their frustration, apologize, don’t make excuses, and do what you need to do to make it right. You need to go above and beyond the inconvenience caused to them in order to make it up.

• Create systems to prevent this in the...

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We’re going to talk about rental arbitrage. That sounds like one of those terms a sleazy businessman would use to sell you on some kind of scam, but it’s really not! Arbitrage is an important concept to understand, and leveraging it correctly could allow for HUGE growth potential in your business!

So what exactly is arbitrage?

Essentially, arbitrage is purchasing something in one market and then introducing it in another market where there is higher demand for profit. For example, you could rent a location from a landlord (long term rental market), furnish that location, and rent it out on Airbnb (short term rental market). The goal is to take home more from the short term rentals than you are paying in rent.

Why should I do retail arbitrage?

With retail arbitrage, you could potentially scale up your Airbnb or short term rental business faster. If purchasing a property isn’t necessarily in the cards for you, this allows you...

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What kinds of things could you learn from chatting with a former Airbnb employee?

Well, Danny Rusteen is a former Airbnb employee, and this has opened a lot of doors for him! After working for them in accounting for two years, Danny was fired, but he saw this as an opportunity to try something different.

Airbnb was running a promotion to get $500 Airbnb credit for every referral, and this was enough to get his attention. He did some interesting, creative things, and ended up referring 36 hosts. The company took notice and hired him back temporarily in a marketing role where he referred hosts.

Working in this role, he noticed all the little things he could do to a listing in order to get a booking. He would tweak headlines and photos and see when more results started coming in. When he left that role, he started “Optimize My Bnb” as a service to help people get more bookings.

Need to make some optimizations to your listing today? Here are some...

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Do you have burning questions about starting up your first short term rental? What if your tenants throw a big party? What if someone gets hurt? The questions are endless!

We had the pleasure of meeting Jesse Gross, CEO and co-founder of Makomi, which is a short term rental management company. He has so much experience, because they manage properties from all over.

We’re going to talk about the “What If’s” that could happen to your property, and hopefully put your mind at ease!

What if you get a call from a neighbor and there’s a massive party?

• Call the police. This is something that happens outside of Airbnb as well, and you don’t want to go there in person and try to break it up yourself. Put safety first. The police report will also be a key part of your claims process.
• How can you prevent or minimize the chances of this happening? Screen your guests. Be wary of people with 0 reviews or strange profile...

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How do you keep up high occupancy rates? You have to market!

Kelly Rauch is a marketing expert. We want your short term rental to be the best that it can be, and offer the best guest experience it can, and for you to have high occupancy rates. Marketing your property is going to help keep your occupancy rates high.

We’ve talked with Kelly before on social media marketing and having your own website, but today we’re going to be talking on of the most tried and true marketing methods: building an email list. We’re going to talk about some of the best ways to get those emails and then what the heck you should send them!

Collecting Emails

If you don’t have an email list already, you need to get one started. You can post on social media asking people to join, include a sign-up on your website, and capture the emails of previous Airbnb tenants to add them. You can also include a message at check-in or check-out asking visitors to...

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We are big believers in hospitality when it comes to being a host. Whenever I’m talking to potential hosts and the first words out of their mouth are about all the money they could make, I get a little defensive. Hospitality has to be at the core of this, and living your dream will come after this.

That’s why we were so excited to read about our guest, Joseph Michelli, on the Airbnb blog. He’s an internationally sought after speaker, author, and organizational consultant who transfers his knowledge of exceptional business practices in ways that develop joyful and productive workplaces with a focus on customer experience.

In his latest book, The Airbnb Way, Joseph delivers proven methods for increasing customer engagement, loyalty, and referrals that can be utilized in any service setting and industry. It gives an inside look into how Airbnb and its host community create dynamic  customer experiences and create brand loyalty in the...

Have you ever said to yourself, “Our weekends are rocking, but how do I get that weekday occupancy up?”

We are all about the guest experience, but we are still trying to run a profitable business. Unless you’re in a big vacation spot, you’ve probably got some work to do to take advantage of those weekdays and make yourself some more money.

We’ve got some great strategies you can use to keep your property booked all week long!

Take advantage of dynamic pricing

Change up your weeknight rates! You can take advantage of a third-party app like PriceLabs or Beyond Pricing to help you automate you get the most bang for your buck, or you can create rules directly within Airbnb.

Talk to the people who are already booking

Be aware of people who have booked your Airbnb on weekdays and try to create more of an interaction with them. If they come often, you may be able to give them some special pricing as an incentive to be a regular.

Give people an opportunity to...

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This episode is all about the importance of booking all guests — including your mom, your grandma, and regular corporate clients — through the app, whether that’s with Airbnb or another platform.
Sometimes hosts are tempted to take cash, PayPal, or Venmo bookings, but trust us — it’s way more trouble than it’s worth.
Reasons why you should keep it legit and always book through the app include:

• Insurance coverage
• Your payment is guaranteed
• It keeps your finances straight
• It keeps you in integrity with co-hosts, partners, taxes and the booking platform
• There’s no risk of double-booking
• It doesn’t cause problems if you use an automated management system for cleaning, messages, etc.

This is not to say that we don’t do special rates for repeat guests or family. You can even charge relatives a token amount, and that way you can still review each other. 

Sarah does actually have a repeat guest that she...

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A few weeks ago, Kelly Rauch taught us about how we can utilize Instagram and Facebook to market your short-term rental — go check that episode out if you haven’t already — and today she’s back to share how you can leverage a personal website to grow your short-term rental business

You might be thinking, well, why do I need a website if I’m using Airbnb? While Airbnb is doing a LOT of the hard work for you, they’re not going to advertise you or help your SEO on Google. But creating a website just for your space can help you get your eyes on your location, ultimately driving more people to book your Airbnb listing and increasing your revenue!

Resources:

• Connect with Kelly on IG: @kellykrauch
• Check out the website for the property that Kelly is managing: www.casapalmar.com
• Check out the property on IG: @casapalmarsayulita
• Learn more about Local Everywhere: www.golocaleverywhere.com