Episode 94: Are You Automating Too Much?


 

How to build an Airbnb business: Are You Automating Too Much?

Who is booking your Airbnb? Do you really know? Well if you don’t then you might be communicating in a way that will earn you less than stellar reviews. Airbnb started as a very personal way to rent a property; a “Host” put their property online and used to meet with a guest, hand over the keys, give them a tour, and wish them a great stay. Most of that has changed! As we know, there are an incredible amount of automation tools available these days and with that we lose that “human touch” that we used to have. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t add it back in relatively easily. This week we’ll uncover if you’ve lost your human touch and what you can do if you have:

  • What type of guests do you have staying with you?
  • What happens with too much automation
  • How to easily add in human touches
  • Can you keep the human touch while scaling?

 

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Click Here to view Transcript
 
In the short-term rental riches will discuss investing in real estate with a specific focus on short term rentals quick actionable items to wire. Scale your portfolio I’m your host Tim Hubbard.

Welcome back to the short-term rental riches podcast I’m excited you guys are here hopefully your portfolios are doing awesome and you’re growing and you’re scaling I just got back from our live event recently and it was a blast it was such a blast it’s always awesome meeting a group of people from all sides of the U. S. at different points in their real estate journey some that we’re just getting started some that were interested in getting started and some that had dozens of properties already but there’s so much value in coming together in a group like this because we really do that there’s so many things change in this industry so quickly and we cover a ton of and also the US I got to check up on some properties into 3 different states visited family went into contract on some new properties and back in Columbia now so I hope everyone’s doing well and thanks for tuning in again this week we’re gonna talk about something that’s kind of reverse of what I normally talk about which is scaling and growing in an automating and operating our properties remotely from Columbia or anywhere in the world where you are this is a bit of a flip but there is such a thing as too much automation so that’s what I want to talk about we didn’t see this long time ago there may be you know an Airbnb started it started as a host renting their property and many times this is like before automated locks you know someone met the gas there maybe the traveling from the other side of the world it was fine it was interactive we got to meet lots of people on that we had on the keys we showed him our on our property we gives recommendations verbally maybe and we wish him a good stay. We checked in with them more often and but now things really change right we have recognized how much money we can make with these properties for 5 or more times what we’re making long term rents and so a lot of investors myself included have jumped in and we’re scaling and without scaling naturally we’re losing a little bit of the human touch but that doesn’t mean we have to lose all of it and that doesn’t mean we can’t get great reviews so I want to talk about the main points here hopefully just as a reminder to you guys to check on a few things to make sure that you’re not automating too much so before we can decipher whether or not we are automating too much we need to know what type of gas or staying in our property or our avatar you could call them vacation rental where families are staying for a week is gonna be different than some probably tree house tiny home out in the forest which is gonna be different probably than some guests staying in an urban city places although I would say that as you guys well know the demand and the visibility of short term rentals it’s just growing exponentially so we will start to see people of all ages traveling at all types of properties we have a really wide range of people checking into our property so we have to try to set up our automated messages to accommodate as many people as possible but sometimes let’s just say it’s an older gas they’re the ones that are gonna call us more often so you need to make sure that we can still provide that human touch so we need to know what types of gases or checked in or properties and try to accommodate as many of them as possible with our automations and with our gas messages. Sometimes we’re gonna be too automated and how do we know well it’s going to show up in our reviews one thing I’ve noticed is that you know as I’ve scale that created my own company to manage my own properties this is more specific to Airbnb because booking.com that’s traditionally been like hotels and Airbnb M. B. R. B. I would say you know there’s still quite a lot of people out there that are looking for and they’re expecting a personal experience you know maybe even like handing keys over if they were using Airbnb along time ago they’re expecting more human interaction so we’re gonna we’re gonna realize if we’re not meeting that buyer reviews and if were a management company manage all of our properties will some people get turned off by that some people are going to book your property if they see it’s managed by a property management company so occasionally it’s not very often but we get some. Reviews of one set of like bad it’s just that some one wishes it wasn’t a management company they’re expecting that personal touch which is a lot of it’s gone away. Hey Hey just want to ask you guys real quick favor if you haven’t already left this review if you wouldn’t mind heading over to iTunes or Spotify wherever you’re listening to the podcast and just leave us a quick review we really really appreciate it and if you know someone that you think would find value in any of the episodes that you’ve listened to you could just take a screen shot send it over to that’ll help them but it’s also going to help us grow a little bit too and lastly we’re on YouTube so if you prefer you to you can head over to short term rental riches and you can find us there as well thanks for listening in and thanks for all your great feedback. Let’s jump back in. So instead of us advertising over properties as you know my company name and that’s the picture of the logo on there I’ve got a picture of my face all my properties and yes it’s not me sending all the messages I talk with my team about this all the time but I am behind a lot of these processes and everything so it still allows a little bit that personal touch and I do have a bio on Airbnb profile so if you don’t have a bio on there put one in for sure mine says I love traveling I love traveling it says you know I like to stay active when I can and just a little bit about me I like real estate investment so just talk a little bit about yourself and if you’re doing this with your spouse or significant other have a picture both you guys with your dog or whatever it is a nice friendly picture will help out a little more of the human touch that’s the first step is just having a little profile bio that says the person behind these properties is actually a real person but we can also add in some human touches with our guide books and our recommendations so yes our digital guidebook is automated if you haven’t already go back and check out our podcast on host fully host fully that’s what I use for guide books but this can add a personal touch in an automated type way because I’ve got my favorite restaurants on there I’ve got some recommendations in a city that I’m very likely more familiar with than the gas that are coming right so put in some little notes in there you know I I really love this back alley Corinne barbecue place you will not find a better one and you wouldn’t know it was there unless someone told you so those little things add a lot in again that’s kind of automated but still a bit of a personal touch another thing that you’re gonna want to do and I recommend this for any gas coming in it’s just ask them why they’re coming to town we want to know that anyways if someone says Hey I’m coming in for my. Bachelor party in Sir my 20 friends full you more not gonna come hit that right we want to know anyway but in that response we can find out a little more are they coming to to meet a family member they haven’t seen a long time and we can offer legitimate response you know I hope you have a great time with your great uncle or whatever it is so it’s just a little more personal that’s not an automated we can make that automated question but it be nice to have a legitimate response you know if you’re not the one sending these messages then you’ve got to have a receptionist on your team or multiple receptions that are helping you with this just add a little bit of personal touch of course we need a phone number we need someone that can be accessed at all times so we don’t have to ask too many questions you know there is such thing as being too personal right so we don’t want to ask too many questions if the gas isn’t writing a whole lot well then we should write a whole lot back in response we should try to match how much they’re communicating with us and that’ll help that’ll go a long way to you can add little things like welcome cards in your property and have your housekeeper add the name of the gas coming in each time so that’s kind of a nice touch too it’s a little more personal easy to do you can get a ball box welcome cards off of Amazon and if you’re using property management software which I always recommend you can easily share the guest’s name and contact with your housekeeper so that no that advancing don’t need to add it in so those are just a few things that we can add in amongst all this automation but we still are going to have a lot of automated messages right I think that it’s a good idea for some of them like I we have one for example that follows up it goes out for 6:00 hours after check in it just says Hey I just wanted to make sure that you checked in okay you’re enjoying the space and below that you can put in easily please. Note this is an automated message but we’re monitoring it full time so if you do have a question let us know and we will respond right away so by adding a note in there that is automated message that can help too so someone knows are not communicating with the robot so that said there’s a few touches in there I’m a big believer in automation it’s better for our gas to because you’re getting things timely but we need to have the other end of that we need to have someone they can respond if we need to and just add a little more personal touch in this naturally as we scale becomes harder and harder to do but it’s not impossible right the big hotel chains of the world they save notes on our gas so we can save notes on our gas and our property management software one of the things we do when our gas checking in as we check to see if they stayed with us before and we can welcome them back another little touch so take a look at your automations how they’re set up are you guys getting negative feedback because there’s not enough personal touch well then let’s just make a couple changes to make the guests experiences better as can improve our reviews that’s very likely and improve our revenue and occupancy and then we can keep on keepin on so until next time I hope that Caviezel inside and I hope you’re doing very very well out there take care. There’s so much money to be made the short term rentals but it all starts by having the right property if you guys haven’t yet seen my free ebook on our website rest methods.com head over there and get a copy it’s going to break down what I look for in a property in some great short cuts so that you don’t have to spend hours and hours researching at over rest methods.com and you can grab your free copy there if you want a crash course in everything I’ve really learned to short term rentals in over 5 years managing over 15000 Gasol recorded on our last live event and I’m happy to say we broke it down really nicely into a bunch of different modules that you can watch at your own pace it takes you from start to finish from finding a property we talk about analyzing the property but then also some of the more important pieces how to find your team and how to set up everything so that you can run your operation is passively as possible and free up your time you can find that it rests methods.com forward slash virtual.

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