Today we’re gonna tackle something that comes up quite a bit in our world. If a bad guest checks out of your property, should you leave that guest a bad review? The answer is a little more nuanced than you might think. I’ve got some information for you for both sides of the question.

Stay tuned as we jump on all that on today’s episode of the Short Term Rental Riches podcast.

Welcome back to the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast. I’m happy you’re here again

Before we get into the details of exactly how you should be responding, let’s just talk first about how Airbnb’s review system actually works

First off, neither the host or the guest is going to see the other side’s review until both of them have left a review or the 14-day window has passed

This is intentionally set up this way, of course, by Airbnb. It’s a blind review system so that when someone leaves a review, the other person can’t see it and retaliate

This blind review system isn’t perfect, but it is better than a lot of review systems out there. Essentially, neither side can leave a review that’s retaliating. Yes, some guests could do this in advance of what they think the host might write, but the reality is it’s actually a pretty fair system. It makes it so that each side is leaving a review independent to what the other person is writing

And so when it comes to leaving a review for a guest that was less than ideal, maybe they just really ticked you off, maybe they broke stuff, maybe they were incredibly difficult to deal with, all of those things are frustrating.

What do you actually do though when you have a bad guest stay at your property? There’s really two sides. Do you just be fully transparent and tell it like it is? Or do you kinda clean it up a little bit? Let’s talk about the first case, the case for the host community.

Of course, the most obvious one here is that if you’re fully transparent in that review of your guest, then it warns all future hosts, let them know, “Hey, you need to be really careful about letting this person stay at your property.”

Reviews travel with guests. Whatever you say in your guest review is going to live with that guest profile for the life of that profile. Of course, this really helps out the community

And this isn’t retaliation, this is just being transparent, just being honest so that you can warn future hosts

The reality is though, a lot of hosts don’t do this, or maybe they just don’t leave a review at all

We’re gonna talk about the best way to write your guest review in a second, and really a framework for whether you should even write it or not. But before we do that, let’s talk about the other side

If you leave a negative review for your guest, well, it shows up on your profile and future potential guests can read your profile. So you gotta be really careful about how you explain the situation, how you talked about that bad guest

We gotta put ourselves in the guest’s shoes and just read through the lines here. If we see a bunch of negative reviews about other guests, then we might be concerned that we’re gonna stay at your property, be perfectly clean, follow all the rules, but we might not just fit with your perfect guest profile, and that’s really not going to lead me to wanna book your property

So this isn’t a reason not to leave a bad review for a guest, but it is definitely a reason to make sure you know the best way to leave a review for a prior guest.

So what’s the best way to make sure that we can still leave a review but also have one that doesn’t jeopardize future bookings? Well, the first rule is just be factual

Don’t have generalizations in there like, “This guest was terrible,” or, “They were awful to deal with,” or, “They never stopped complaining,” or whatever it happens to be. Just be factual.

Maybe you got a noise complaint from the neighbor at 11:00 PM. Just tell the facts. Just be transparent

Of course, we wanna stay professional, so there is no excuse for writing a bad message these days. With ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, pick your favorite AI tool. They can recreate any message you want in a really nice way that’s not going to jeopardize your profile

Focus on what future hosts need to know. Maybe they brought too many guests, maybe they brought pets when they weren’t supposed to, and don’t make it personal

And just another note on this, I know it’s not easy to not make it personal. If you are managing your property yourself and you put in a lot of love into getting your property ready and someone doesn’t treat it the way you want them to, which is bound to happen, believe me, then it becomes personal and you really need to just take a second.

Don’t respond when you are upset because if it doesn’t come out right, you’re not gonna have the chance to edit it.

If that’s something you just can’t do and you want a little help with it, well, our team at Corsi would love to be that support for you. We’re working in over 50 cities now with hundreds of properties. We’ve managed over 100,000 guests. We’ve learned a lot, and we can be that barrier between you and a potentially bad guest.

We’re also gonna be that person that helps prevent that bad guest in the first place. That’s the real way to go about it. So a couple tips on writing your review, and remember, this isn’t the review response.

This isn’t a response to a review your guest left. We actually have a full separate episode on that. I’ll give you the brief summary. We always recommend having the sandwich method. What is a sandwich method? Well, if a guest left not… a not so great review about your property, you again wanna address the facts, but you wanna start on a positive tone.

You wanna address the facts in the middle for future guests, so when they’re reading your review, they know that, hey, the AC was fixed or whatever the issue happened to be is not going to be an issue for them. And then you wanna end your review response with something positive again. “We’re glad you really enjoyed the pool,” or, “We’re glad you enjoyed our private lakefront.”

Whatever it happens to be, it leaves it on a positive tone, So future potential guests can envision themselves in a really great space with a really great host

So when should we be leaving a bad review for our guest, and when should we just forget about it? Well, if they broke the rules, if they damaged something, that’s clear grounds, and you wanna make sure that you’re warning future hosts. So if they broke a rule, make sure you leave a response

If they didn’t necessarily break a rule, but there was just maybe they sent a lot of messages or something sort of subtle, well, I’d really recommend that you think that through before you leave a response because again, future guests are going to be looking at your profile and it can affect your bookings

When in doubt, just ask yourself the question, “Would I want to know what I know now after hosting this guest if I was another host?” And if the answer is yes, then help out the community, be transparent, be professional, get a nice message down, but don’t jeopardize your future profile.

Hosting isn’t always easy. Sometimes we have to deal with difficult guests. That’s just part of the job. I hope this episode gave you a little bit of insight. If you’ve been finding value in the channel, I’d really appreciate just a quick thumbs up or subscribe if you haven’t already. Until next time, I hope you have a fabulous week.

I get asked all the time, “Tim, should I add a spa to my short-term rental?” “Tim, should I add a fire pit to my backyard?” “What about a pool? I know they’re expensive, but is it worth it?” The good news is you don’t need to guess when it comes to wanting to add an amenity to your short-term rental. There is data out there that helps us make that decision, and today we’re gonna walk through that whole process to help you identify if you should be adding amenities to your property. We’re gonna break that all down on today’s episode

welcome back to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. I’m happy you’re here again. There’s a lot that has changed in the short-term rental industry. It used to be you just threw up a property and people rented it. I know those days are gone. And now what people are doing is they’re making their short-term rentals a destination.

They’re adding all kinds of amenities. They’re spending lots and lots of money. But does spending all of that money actually make sense?

Maybe. It depends.

Today we’re gonna break all that down. Let’s just go ahead and get started, and it starts with the numbers, as it pretty much always does when it comes to investment decisions

There’s lots of data tools out there. Take your pick. AirDNA is one of the industry standards. It could be trusted, you could say, more than some of the others. But really, the trust from data comes in a mass amount of data. If you only have a couple pieces of data to compare something to, then you can’t trust it as much as 1,000 listings worth of data.

So that’s one of the first things you need to consider. If you have amenity that you’re planning on adding, let’s just say it’s a pickleball court, but you don’t have a whole bunch of other properties in the area that already have pickleball courts to compare their potential revenue with yours, well, then you’re definitely, I don’t wanna say risking, because it could be that you have, uh, a really good potential there, but there just isn’t a lot of factual data to go off of

But when it comes to more standard type amenities, there is a lot of data to go off of. So let’s say you’re considering adding a pool, or you’re considering adding a spa, or even a fire pit.

All of these are available as filters on AirDNA. So what do you do? You pull up a market on AirDNA. It doesn’t cost a whole lot for you to get this data, and it’s definitely worth it if you’re planning on spending thousands of dollars to add some sort of amenity. Pull up your comp set and filter by the properties that have these amenities and the ones that don’t We had a partner join us recently and he said, “Tim, should I add a spa?

I know there’s a few other properties in my area with spas.” And I said, “Okay, let’s find out really quickly.” So I jumped on AirDNA, I plugged in his address. I saw that there were over 120 listings for his area. I clicked the little spa amenity filter, and over 100 of those fell off the comp set, meaning there was only roughly 20 out of the 120 properties that had a spa.

And when it came to the revenue, this is for active properties, you want to make sure that you also check that box to make sure you’re not looking at properties that aren’t actively listed throughout the year. But when it came to this specific property, the properties with spas were earning almost twice as much

So that’s the first point. You need to find the data first. The more potential listings you have to pull from, the more you can trust that data. If it’s amenity that doesn’t show up with these data tools like AirDNA, well, then you need to go manually through Airbnb or VRBO and find other properties in your area to compare with

You can then find those same properties on AirDNA to get an estimate of their revenue. And even though it’s not highlighting that specific amenity in AirDNA’s built-in features, you know that that property already has the pickleball court or already has the private lakefront dock

From there you can run the numbers, you can get the potential revenue lift. And that brings me to point number two. Once you’ve found the potential revenue lift, you need to compare that with how much the cost of the amenity actually is. Let’s say you were thinking about adding a pool because adding a pool would add around $10,000 a year to your annual revenue.

Well, if that pool costs you $100,000, then that’s gonna take 10 years to pay that back. Is that really an investment you wanna make?

That of course depends on your finances. There is a little side benefit to adding amenities aside from a potential revenue lift, and that is that you may have some potential tax deductions. Check with your CPA. And you’re also adding value to your property, right? A property with a pool is usually worth more than a property that doesn’t have a pool

So run the numbers. The numbers always tell us what to do. There is a lot of variation between prices out there, though. So in our example, when I was speaking with Kevin and said, “Hey, I think you should add a spa because you can earn almost twice as much based off a pretty good sample set of data,” it doesn’t mean that Kevin needs to go out and spend $20,000 on a spa.

Remember, if you have an amenity that checks the box, well, then it checks the box. And if someone’s looking for a property in a specific area with a specific amenity, they’re gonna check that box, and then if you show up, you’ve got a good chance. Now, we need to make sure we’re setting the right expectations, though, right?

If someone checks a box for a spa and they show up and it’s a little kiddie pool that’s inflatable, that’s a lot different than an actual spa, right? But I think we all know there’s a big variation in cost, especially the, the more expensive the amenity gets, the more variation there is in cost. You can have an above-ground pool that you put a deck around, for example.

Maybe it costs you $20,000. Or you can go all out and have an in-ground pool with landscaping and water features, and you could spend $200,000. It really depends on your budget

But keep that all in mind before you actually add that amenity expecting that potential revenue lift.

A third thing you wanna consider, and something that I think most people are probably leaving out of the thought process, and this is really, really important. This is how much value that amenity could add to your photos, not to your property, not to your potential revenue lift, but to your actual photos.

Some amenities might be a lot less expensive to put in, but they make for a really great photo. So think of a small fire pit, and maybe that’s literally just some paver stones around in a circle and a few chairs. But at night with some stringing lights and a nice flame coming out, that makes for a really good photo, and that might sell your property even though the amenity itself doesn’t cost that much money

a fourth thing you wanna consider in your market before you decide to add an amenity is how many people already have that amenity? In other words, is this just an amenity that people are going to expect when they rent my property? I just recently invested in a property in Orlando, Florida. It happens to have an in-ground pool, but guess what?

So does basically every other property in Orlando, Florida. So is that really giving me an edge? No, not really.

If you look at the numbers on AirDNA, you’ll find that basically all the properties have pools already. And so if you were to add a pool, you’re not gonna be earning substantially more than the other properties that already have pools, right? It’s really just something that the guest is already expecting

Now, if you’re in a mountain area and everyone’s expecting mountain views, but then you also have a pool too, that’s when you can probably find some really good potential revenue lifts.

So in other words, is the amenity that you’re looking at a baseline amenity? People are already expecting it

If it is, it’s probably not gonna move the needle too much

So I know there’s a lot of data out there to help you really decide what makes the most sense. Let’s kind of break these amenities down into tiers. First of all, there is a tier that you actually can’t buy unless it already came with your property in the first place. I’m talking about amenities like an oceanfront view, right?

You’re never gonna move your property from three blocks back to oceanfront. But you could have spent four times more money for the oceanfront property, even when the properties three blocks back are only discounted 10% when it comes to their annual revenue. So make sure you run those numbers. That’s often the case.

I’m down here in southern Brazil currently, and we live very close to the beach, but we don’t live right on the beach because I didn’t want to spend an extra 20 or 30% to move over 50 meters. Now, up to you, but again, as an investment, you gotta look at the numbers. The numbers most always tell you what to do So that’s the first tier.

It’s, it’s a tier that you can’t really buy unless it came with the property.

The next tier would be the high cost tier, things like putting in a theater in your garage or adding in a pool, things that really cost a lot more. Again, consider if they’re adding value to your property, but make sure you know the potential revenue lift so you can calculate your ROI or the amount of time it’s gonna take to pay back that purchase

Tier two, this would be things like hot tubs, maybe putting in EV chargers, checking some of those boxes that are a little less expensive

Remember, there’s a range to these things. You could spend $10,000 on a fire pit, or you could spend $500. And the last tier would be the low-cost tier

Maybe you add some outdoor furniture. Maybe you add a little welcome gift basket. Maybe you add some cornhole. Maybe you add a little putting green that you put in manually. Again, you wanna make sure your expectations exceed whatever the guest is expecting, but you don’t always have to spend an arm and a leg on these types of amenities that, again, could stand out and really help you be different in your photos

I hope this episode gave you a little bit more insight. And remember, don’t just go off gut feeling. Use some data, which is easier than ever to come by, to help you make the decision as to whether you should be adding an amenity or not 

Welcome back to the Short Term Rental Riches Podcast. If you’ve been following along over the last six plus years, well, you’ve heard a lot about my journey. I’ve grown from my personal portfolio to now managing hundreds of properties in over 40 cities with my team. This growth definitely has not come without challenges.

And so I want to talk about a couple of the breaking points today, specifically the difference between you hosting maybe an individual property or even up to five versus. A portfolio of 10 to 20 units. There’s a lot of differences that happen there. There’s a lot of breaking points, and so if you’re planning on scaling, I want to give you some insight into what that’s going to look like and how you can make sure that you stay successful with your short-term rental operation.

Before we break down this scaling process, I wanna talk about just a couple sort of mindset shifts before you start to scale.

The first one is that you have to be willing to let go a little bit. You have to be willing to delegate tasks. Managing up to 20 properties yourself is a ton of work, and if you’re trying to do it all yourself can almost guarantee that there are certain things that are getting overlooked.

Part of scaling also requires that you have a team that goes back to delegation, and then for those of you out there are like, Tim, how the heck am I supposed to scale my portfolio? I don’t have any more money. Well, this is a big part of scaling a portfolio as well. If you’re coming from the investment side of things, well then there’s a lot of options.

You can partner with people. For example, you can raise money if you’ve been successfully operating short-term rentals for a while, well then you have credibility and there are people out there that will invest in you.

And if you’re going the property management route, well then everything we’re about to jump into is gonna save you from a world of hurt when you start to scale your portfolio.

Okay, so I’ve got eight sections here and I can’t go into them in extreme detail because this podcast episode would be hours and hours long. Before we get started, where is our experience coming from? Well, if you’re new to the show, my team and I have managed over 60,000 guests, hundreds of properties in over 40 cities, and also multiple countries.

And so we’re speaking from real world experience here and we’ve already gone through these growth phases and these bottlenecks.

Let’s start with operational processes. If you’re in the group of one to five units versus the 10 to 20, what it’s very likely that you either don’t have a lot of SOPs, standard operating procedures set up, or you actually have zero. If we think about it, you’re getting four times fewer reservations, so you’ve had four times fewer chances to create those systems that you know work Instead, what happens is an issue comes up, you rethink how you handled it in the past, and maybe that wasn’t even the optimal way, and then you do that again. So it’s a lot more exhausting versus having these procedures in place, which you will definitely need to have if you scale up to that 10 to 20 unit size.

My next point is on technology. When you have a really small portfolio, you’re very likely not using a lot of the industry leading tools. Or maybe you’re using one or two, but you actually don’t know how to take full advantage of those software tools versus the little larger portfolio up to 20 units.

You’ve had more repetition, you’ve had more practice.

And you have a better idea of how they work. Now, that doesn’t mean that you have them set up in an optimal way. It depends on the size of your team. If you’re handling everything yourself with 20 units, then you’re probably overlooking some things.

We also know that using software makes the guest experience better, or it can make the experience better, I should say, because it helps you stay more organized. And if you’re less organized, well then that’s gonna show up in the way you manage your guests.

if you have the small portfolio, well, you’re probably not on all the OTA platforms. You may not even be using dynamic pricing, where when you jump to having a larger portfolio, these tools become crucial. And if you’re not on all the OTAs, then you have exponential losses there, right? If you’re missing out on a whole bunch of bookings from booking.com, for example, but you have 20 properties instead of five, well, there’s way more revenue that you’re leaving on the table.

All right, next up. Let’s talk about housekeeping and maintenance. If you only have one property, well, it’s a lot easier to keep an eye on that in terms of maintenance and housekeeping. If you have 20, well then you have to have multiple people working with you, especially if they’re all in the same area.

Imagine 20 single family homes all checking out on a Sunday morning. You have to have multiple housekeepers. You have to have backup housekeepers, and you have to have an easy way to manage all of that and to confirm that things are getting cleaned accordingly.

next up, guest communication. A lot of this comes back to the fact that you just have far fewer reservations if you have fewer properties. And so the one to five portfolios, they’re probably doing a lot of guest communication themselves. Unfortunately, we know that short term rentals are really busy around the holidays and all the times that you probably want to take that off.

We have to have a really quick response times When it comes to our short term rentals, we know that’s a huge factor in our review scores, so you’re probably doing a lot of this yourself if you have the smaller portfolio, but if you have 20 units. You basically can’t, right? You need to have some help or you’re going to start slacking.

Your responses aren’t going to be as good, or they’re probably going to be delayed. Yes, we have a lot of AI tools available now. We have a lot of automations, but even with those in place, we know from managing tens of thousands of guests that the things that actually take a lot of time are usually not just the guest communication, it’s the issues that arise during a guest day.

Maybe they need to change their reservation. Maybe they had an issue checking into your property, whatever it happens to be, it’s the issues that actually end up taking a lot of time and not the typical guest communication, like sending check-in instructions.

All right, number five. Let’s talk about the differences between these portfolio sizes when it comes to revenue management. Well, five or less units versus 20. Again, there’s the scale thing going on. If they’re all in the same area, though, you have a pretty good idea of what your market’s doing. But what we find is that the smaller portfolios are not really fully understanding all of the aspects of a dynamic pricing tool, and there’s a lot of guessing going on there.

Maybe there is a note in the back of their head that said last year on New Year’s. This is what I did, and so I’m gonna try to get that. But maybe with that smaller portfolio, they’re not really looking at the market data. When you get up into the 20 unit portfolio, you have to make sure that you’re looking at all of these things because again, you have many more properties and if you’re losing revenue

and if you’re lagging behind with one property and you multiply that by 20, it adds up to be a ton of money that’s getting left on the table. Now, unfortunately, with both sizes of portfolio here, it doesn’t make sense to hire a revenue manager, right? That is an expensive position, and that is a position that requires a lot of skill.

In fact, in the hotel industry, after the general manager, which is the highest paid position. It’s the revenue manager that makes the most amount of money because assuming you have a good guest experience and your listings are advertised in the right place, they can tremendously underperform if they’re not priced right.

So if you’re in the larger portfolio side, it’s very likely you’re using a dynamic pricing tool. We use Price Labs. We also recommend Error DNA or Key Data. If you’re in the smaller portfolio size, do not rely on Airbnb’s smart pricing. Make sure you get a different tool.

If you’re in the larger portfolio size, getting up to 20, a lot of people are going with revenue managers, but unfortunately, there’s a bit of a disconnect there. If you have someone just managing your pricing, but they don’t know how your reviews are doing, or they’re not actively looking at your listings, well then they’re not seeing the whole picture there.

All right. Next up, when it comes to staffing and delegation, if you have that smaller portfolio, you’re probably trying to do everything yourself, and you’re probably doing a good job with your guest communications and your guest experience because you’re more hands on, but, .

It is probably unlikely that you’re actually optimizing that property’s performance. Now, I know there’s a lot of you out there that do a really good job, but if you’re not constantly looking at all the market data and you don’t have the luxury of having so many reservations come in to learn from, then you don’t have access to all the data.

So while we see the average review scores for these smaller portfolios are a lot of times higher than the larger portfolio, like a 20 unit, it doesn’t necessarily mean that those properties are all optimized.

Now, if you’re in the 10 to 20 unit range, you have to start delegating. Otherwise, you’re gonna be doing everything yourself and you’re very likely gonna be overlooking some things.

You’ll, you’ll want to consider having a virtual assistant. If you’re new to the show, you can go to t riches.com. We have tons of free eBooks that we’ve put together after thousands of hours in the industry. Learning things that you can do to help you scale your portfolio. To make the right decisions and to learn from our mistakes.

But hiring a VA is one of those first steps, but unfortunately, you can’t really stop there, right? If you’re hiring one person to try to replace a lot of the things that you’re already doing, it’s hard or it’s not realistic to expect that they can be an expert revenue manager, that they can handle expert guest communications, and that they can be available 24 7, right?

If you’re asking someone to be on call. 24 7. That’s not a super desirable position, right? And it often leads to some churn. So that size portfolio, I don’t see any other way around it. It is pretty difficult because you need more help. Now, shameless plug, Cosley works on the back end of your short-term rental operation.

That is our company we partner with. We’ve partnered with hundreds of properties around the US If you want us to take off the backend operations for you, but everything still stays under your name and your accounts. Well, we’d be happy to chat with you. I’d love to hear more about your properties.

You can go to scr riches.com. There’s a little partner with us button. We can jump on a quick call.

All right, number seven. When it comes to portfolio performance, a lot of our performance is based on our reviews. And if we’re scaling without help, without delegating, without using tools, then that shows up. In our reviews, we see those smaller portfolios typically have better reviews, but it definitely does not mean that they’re optimized.

So it’s hard to say who’s really less optimized, the larger portfolio or the smaller one. What we do know is the more properties you have, if they’re not completely optimized. Then you’re leaving money on the table, not just on a few properties, but on quite a bit more. So the impacts every little impact of things or changes that you make, like going on Google vacation rentals or adding your own direct booking site, or offering upsells or upselling gap nights or extending your average length of reservation.

All of those little changes are not impacting five properties, but they’re impacting 20, and so it makes a really big difference.

And to wrap things up, I want to come back to the mindset that you need to be able to manage these portfolios truly in an optimized fashion. Whether it’s the five units. Or it’s a 20.

The reality is that there are a lot of moving pieces in the short-term rental operation. If you have a full-time job, if you have family, well. The more properties you have, the more likely it is that some of these things are getting overlooked. I hope this channel’s helped provide some insights. I hope it’s helped optimize your properties in a lot of different ways.

Again, we have a ton of free eBooks on our website@sstrriches.com. Things that we’ve learned over the years.

And if you’re in a place where you’re just overwhelmed and you’re stressed out and you’re looking for other options, you of course have a full-time property management option, but you also have a virtual solution like working with us at Corley, and I would love to chat with you personally.

Again, you can head tot riches.com. I hope this episode gave you a little bit more insight and. Kind of the differences. It’s basically with your larger scale, everything gets magnified, and what we find is that a lot of people are not delegating, or if they are delegating, they’re not spending the time to train those people to truly be experts in those tasks that they’ve delegated.

Till next time, I hope your portfolio continues to grow, and I hope you have a fabulous week. 

Imagine waking up in a glass pod suspended from a cliff, or going to sleep under an icy glacier ceiling in Greenland. Today we’re diving into some of the world’s most extreme short-term rentals They will definitely push your limits, but also gets you thinking of what’s possible or maybe a potential trip in the future.

Stay tuned as we disconnect just a little bit and take a look at what some of the world’s most extreme short-term rentals have to offer.

Welcome back to the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast. I’m happy you’re here again. If you’ve been tuning in for a while, or if you’ve been in the short-term rental industry for a while, you know that there is a massive range of types of properties available. We have imit, we have Lakeside, we have Oceanside, but we also have a lot of extreme short-term rentals today.

And we’re gonna break down some of the world’s most extreme. But before we do, why is it that people are wanting to stay in these properties, and why is it that they can charge so much money? Well, the [00:01:00] first thing is because they’re in extreme locations, it makes it really difficult for a big hotel chain like Marriott or Hilton to go in and actually do that development.

The cost would just be too high, and so. That’s why it’s usually left to individual units. Why are people booking these? Well, they’re looking for new adventures. They’re looking for a digital detox.

Lots of guests just wanna unplug and reconnect with nature and off-grid, short-term rentals, give them the opportunity to do that.

Before we dive into some of the handpicked ones that our teams found across the world, I wanna give you a personal story of one of the most extreme Airbnbs I ever stayed at. This was deep in the jungles of Columbia, and if you’ve been tuning into the show for a while, you know, I spent a lot of time over the last decade living in Columbia.

In fact, we’re building a boutique resort there, but this property I booked for my birthday. I had a [00:02:00] Jeep there at the time. I wanted to get away, I wanted to disconnect, and so we headed out of the city. I was with my currently wife, girlfriend at the time. This was years ago, and we got out of the city and then we finally got off road and I’m following the instructions that were in the Airbnb, but they’re down a dirt road, a rocky, a bumpy road that needed four wheel drive.

I had four wheel drive, so I was prepared there, but I was not prepared for the rain to start pouring down, and then also eventually the sun to go down, and there were no streetlights out there. So it may get into this short term rental, incredibly hard. There was actually a point where I thought we were gonna have to turn around.

We were sliding down the mountain, going back and forth and back and forth, but there was so much rain that I just couldn’t make it. Luckily, a Colombian came by on their motorcycle from who knows where, and offered to push, and so [00:03:00] I’m there in the Jeep just shooting mud everywhere, unfortunately, over this poor Colombian ’cause he’s, he’s behind us, right?

There was no other way to do it. He was wearing a poncho, luckily. So he’s helping me get up, but we still cannot get up. And then out of nowhere, I swear another guy shows up on a motorcycle also in a poncho because the rain’s pouring down and Colombians are so nice. If you haven’t visited the country yet, you really need to check it out.

It’s highly recommended. And so I have two Colombians Complete strangers I’ve never met in my. Behind my Jeep, helping to push it up the mountain. And I’m just shooting so much mud over them. I swear we’ll have our editor put in some video clips. I know my wife was recording and taking photos as we were trying to make it up the mountain, and eventually we did.

I feel really bad though, because I couldn’t stop. If I were to have stopped, I would’ve slid right back down the mountain. And so of course I wanted to pay them for their support. Uh, but I couldn’t. So we took off. Finally we [00:04:00] made it to the short term rental, which was truly beautiful on the side of the mountain, in the jungle, super peaceful jacuzzi.

It was very nice, but it was a really hard time getting there, and so that affects your review score. Stay tuned. I’ll tell you how I actually reviewed this property in just a second,

But before we get to the details on that review and why I left it, let’s break down some of the most extreme short-term rentals our team could find.

One of our top picks for most extreme off-grid short-term rental. This one happens to be on a floating glacier in Greenland.

For those of you tune into podcast only, well, you can see all the beautiful photos, the videos if you tune into our YouTube channel at short-Term Rental Riches. I’m on this website for this property right now, and you can tell right away that this property offers an experience.

And by the price tag, you could expect it to be a pretty good experience. Well, north of $1,000 a [00:05:00] night, remember, the higher your nightly rate, the more expectations your guests are going to have.

This property has some amazing photos of people standing underneath glaciers of the sort of yurt looking, uh, tents, but very luxurious inside, floating on top of the water helicopters taking off, I mean. This is definitely an experience and this is what people are looking for. A lot of people, I should say, they’re looking for adventure.

Quick side story, my partner, Justin, who you’ve probably heard on the podcast, if you’ve been tuning in for a while, sent me a message not too long ago, earlier this year and said, Hey, Tim, something last minute came up. I’ve been wanting to do this trip. I’m heading to Greenland to do it. Get this an 80 kilometer hike through the snow.

I was like. Dude, are you serious? Uh, and you’re going by yourself like, that sounds pretty crazy. Uh, he ended up having an amazing experience. He stayed in [00:06:00] several different accommodations. It turned into a dog sledding adventure. He met people and that’s why people are looking for these types of experiences because they’re never going to forget them.

So we’ll see if we can find some clips from his journey and include them on this video as well.

Next up we have the Sky Lodge Adventure Suites, and this is one, I have to confess that. I might not even want to stay out because it is so extreme. This is a property suspended from the side of a cliff.

In order to get to it, guests either have to climb or take a zip line. Obviously, there’s a lot of liability that comes along with this type of property. The ones that we’ve picked for you today are around the world, and so insurance requirements and all those things change depending where you are.

This one happens to be in Peru, and it definitely offers some upscale amenities like gourmet meals and wine, and it reflects in the price tag as well at [00:07:00] over $600 a night. And for a property in Peru suspended on the side of a cliff, that’s a pretty high price tag. I gotta say. I don’t think I would probably want to stay in this one.

I got a little, little fear of heights.

But I would say if I ever did stay in it, I definitely wouldn’t forget it. ’cause I probably wouldn’t be sleeping.

Next up, we have a yurt in Mongolia surrounded by National Parks, lakes, and waterfalls. Some of the available tours include eagle scouting.

You’ve got local opportunities to go out there with eagle hunters. How many people do you know that have been hunting eagles? Actually, that sounds. Kind of crazy. I think that’s definitely illegal, uh, in the us. But who knows In Mongolia, maybe there’s just an extreme amount of eagles out there. You’re in the wilderness.

If you’re checking out the photos or the video, you can see that this place is surrounded by snow. Definitely remote. Definitely a place or an adventure or an experience. You will not [00:08:00] forget.

You also note that this property is a lot cheaper at $135 a night. So while it is very extreme, it’s not offering a lot of those luxury amenities like the gourmet meals and wine and Peru, for example.

So remember, our price tags have to match our guest expectations and our listing profiles have to do a really good job of explaining exactly what our property is like.

Otherwise, you’ll find yourself with not so great reviews.

All right, next up, no one would be expecting this one, but sleeping underwater with sharks in Paris. And I know you’re probably thinking what that, like where in Paris? How could you do that? Well, it’s actually in a giant aquarium, and this is a property that partnered with Airbnb e.

It’s called the Glass Shark Suite and it’s surrounded by 360 views. Have you guessed it? Sharks?

A truly unique stay was [00:09:00] actually designed to raise. Shark awareness and they offer one night stays there. I do not know the price. It’s very possible that this property just got booked up and it’s not available at all. And that’s something that we find with unique stays, right? Because they’re unique and they’re extreme.

There are not a lot of them. And so when the word gets out and people understand or see how great these experiences are, more people want to book ’em. And those calendars fill up quickly. Also, another great reason to have a direct booking website. These types of properties also lend themselves really well to social media because they can go viral, right?

How many properties do you know that you can sleep in an aquarium with sharks?

So a couple quick tips on extreme stays or accommodations if you’re planning on having one yourself or renting one yourself, and then I’ll give you my final review score for that Columbia property. The first thing is you gotta make sure that it’s [00:10:00] accessible. Set those expectations really, really clearly.

If you are in a place that’s really hard to get to, we’ll make sure that you have required transportation, for example.

You wanna pull out things that guests love about your property. If you’re offering one of these unique type of stays, we can find all those comments in the reviews. But we also want to ask them for their feedback as well. And one of the things that’s undoubtedly gonna be a common thread through these types of properties is just disconnecting from the city life or the work life, doing something different and creating an incredible experience.

You wanna remember to price according to the uniqueness and the exclusivity. If you are charging too much and you’re not meeting those guest expectations, then you’re not gonna get that greater reviews.

People still want to be comfortable, even if it is an extreme accommodation. So if you’ve got a really high price tag, [00:11:00] make sure that you’ve included as many of those modern comforts as you possibly can. And if you’re not able to, that any of those things that someone would expect are clearly mentioned in your listing.

All right, so there we go. Those are some of the world’s most extreme off-grid short-term rentals. I left the Columbia property a. Five star review because it just was such a great experience. I mean, it was really out in the middle of nowhere. Uh, a lot of things go into that though, right? I mean, I’m sort of biased because I’ve been working with short term rentals for over a decade.

We’ve had thousands of thousands of guest reservations, and our team works with hundreds of properties in over 40 cities. So I guess for, uh, an individual owner. Uh, especially in Columbia where the standards are a little lower than they might be in the US or Europe. Uh, I just have kind of like a soft spot for someone trying to do a really good job, and my feedback to them is make those expectations more clear.

But [00:12:00] you absolutely have amazing property. I loved it and I would recommend it.

So while these retreats aren’t for everyone, there’s definitely a segment of the market that’s looking for them and willing to pay for them. If you’ve got some crazy short-term rental stories of your own, we’d love to hear about ’em.

Please put ’em in the comments. It’d be a lot of fun to read. Until next time, I hope you have a fab this week.

While not directly related to your Airbnb business, Airbnb guest experiences can have a huge impact on your review scores. If someone has a great experience outside of your property, they’re more likely to leave you and your property a good review. But the opposite is also true. I’ve signed up for my fair share of guest experiences in the past through Airbnb’s platform.

I wanna break down all the details today and how you as a host could be benefiting.

So what exactly are Airbnb’s experiences? Well, if you’ve been using their platform for some time, you’ve undoubtedly seen this. Actually, it’s the first screen that’s gonna pull up when you open their app. And this is actually not related, it’s not associated with your property, but there are a lot of synergies and there are a lot of opportunities.

Airbnb’s experiences offer all kinds of tours and food courses, you name it, whatever you can [00:01:00] think of, pretty much can go under their experiences. It’s definitely impacted the way that I’ve reviewed the properties I was staying at. Even though the tours and the experiences have nothing to do with the actual property, they do have everything to do with your experience as a guest. So I’ve done a whole bunch of these, but a couple that come to mind, one in Duro are on the Duro River, uh, in Porto, Portugal, which was amazing.

We did this wine cruise down the river and stopped at different vineyards. It was really amazing. Uh, a cooking class in Thailand where I learned how to make pad Thai. And spoiler alert if you love pad Thai. And don’t exactly know what it is that you love so much about it.

They actually put sugar in the pad Thai. I know I was a little bummed myself, but I still indulge.

So boat tours, hikes, cooking classes, wine tours, art classes, photography, you name it. Pretty much anything can go on as an [00:02:00] experience on their platform. And there are a range of prices as well. So there is a lot of potential. For experiences and last year alone there was over 81 billion spent on Airbnb’s platform.

They are no dummy. They know that the experiences outside of your property really drive those review scores and bring people back to their platform. So they’ve put a lot of time and a lot of effort into building out this part of their app, of their company.

You’ve also probably noticed that when you sign up as a host, they ask you for a lot more information. Your likes, your dislikes, where you went to school. All of this is building information on the backend so that they can do a better job of matching experiences and hosts with the right guests and the right people signing up for those experiences.

So there is a lot of opportunity for you out there as a host. We’re gonna break down all the details, but one of the big things [00:03:00] is that people just enjoy human interaction, so in a world full of AI where robots are taking over what seems to be everything, people still really value a human connection.

So let’s break down the benefits real quick. Well, a first obvious one is that it’s another stream of income for you outside of your property. You name your price. If people are willing to pay it, you will have people booking.

So this allows you to monetize either some skills that you have or some local experience in the area. And this doesn’t have to be, you. Remember, you can curate these experiences. And you can create a business out of this just like we do with our short-term rentals and just like we’ve been teaching on this show for the last six years.

If you’re new to the channel, you can go to str riches.com. You’ll find all of our prior episodes. We have tons and tons of free eBooks and guides that my team and I [00:04:00] have put together from our real world experience managing over 50,000 guests with properties in over 40 cities now.

So you can take advantage of your skills. You can build another revenue center, but you can also build deeper connections with your guests. And we know that the experiences that they have outside of your property really affect. The review that they’re going to leave you. If someone shows up to your property, for example, and they miss their flight, their Uber didn’t show up, or their Uber broke down on the freeway and they show up to your property exhausted without their luggage, that’s not a great experience.

Right? And if that’s a short stay, that’s a hundred percent going to impact the review that they leave.

Now, imagine that same guest waking up the next day and they go out on a five hour tour with you as the host. Something that you’ve curated. Something that you’ve created, and they have an excellent time.

Well, all those troubles, traveling will be a thing of [00:05:00] the past, and they’re much, much more likely to leave you a glowing review and also a much longer review, right? Explaining how they really loved your property, but also what they were able to do around your property.

So a couple quick tips for creating a great experience. First of all, you want to check the experiences that are already available around your area. So if there’s a hundred different boat tours, you creating another boat tour is probably not gonna be that successful.

I mean, this comes back to supply and demand, right? It’s the same way it is for a short-term rentals. If you are one of a thousand identical short-term rentals and there’s only 500 people that wanna book ’em, well that’s not a great situation in terms of revenue. More supply than there is demand, right?

So that’s the first thing. You wanna find something unique, something that’s not already extremely competitive, and then you can test your pricing with this, right? If you put your tour, whatever it is out there for $200 and no one’s [00:06:00] booking, and then you lower it to $150 and all of a sudden you’re getting lots of people booking, well, you know, you are now offering competitive pricing.

Of course you do need to make sure that you are available as well, and that comes back to creating a bit of a business out of this, right? Let’s say you are doing the boat tour because there’s not a whole lot of those around, or maybe you know, some unique part of the lake that people don’t usually go to.

Well, you can find people just like we find housekeepers and maintenance people to help with our properties to help with these experiences, and you can build a business out of it.

Okay, so you have an idea. You’ve checked the market, you know it’s unique. You’ve identified what you think is competitive pricing. How do you actually market this experience effectively? Well, a lot of the way you’re gonna market your experience is the same way that you market your short-term rental, right?

You want it to stand out. So coming back to the boat tour example again, if [00:07:00] there’s a hundred boat tours and everyone’s got a picture of their boat and you have a picture of a sloth that you know stays in the same location off the river in the jungle, you’re gonna stand out.

More people are probably going to be clicking on your experience. The more clicks we get, the more potential for bookings.

So of course. The better your photos are, and the more unique they are, the more visibility you’ll get. But you’ll wanna make sure that you craft a really good description, right? Quick tip, take some reviews that you’ve already received and find out exactly what people loved most about your experience.

Use AI like Chachi, bt, or Claude to craft a description and put that right in with your experience. It’s gonna attract more of the same guests that loved your experience.

How do you ensure you always get five star ratings with your experience? Well, that comes back to expectations. Again, the same as our short term rental [00:08:00] properties. If we’re advertising a two car garage, but we only actually have one spot that is setting the wrong expectations. If we’re offering a five hour tour, but you cut it short at three hours, those are not the right expectations.

The best thing to do is just to always exceed whatever expectations you’ve put in your experience that’ll guarantee that you continue to get five star reviews.

One other note is that you are going to be interacting with the people in your experience, right? So you have a lot more opportunity to just hear directly from them when you finish the tour or you finish the class or whatever it happens to be. Ask them for their feedback. Ask them what they think you could do better.

You should of course be doing this with your short-term rentals as well. And so part of our checkout message after someone’s left our property is asking exactly this, what do you think we could be doing better?

Is there anything we could improve? We’d love to hear your feedback. [00:09:00] We truly value it and we’ll make sure to incorporate it for future guests.

To sum things up real quickly, we know that there’s a huge potential for experiences. There’s a lot of ways to do it. I mean, sky is the limit. You don’t have to do it yourself. We know that it can truly add to your property reviews, even though it’s something outside of your property.

And if all goes well with your experiences on Airbnb, well, you can take it off the platform as well. We talk about lots of different software tools on this channel. Some of those have to do with guidebooks, like Hostfully or Touch Stay, and those are platforms that you could use to easily sell tours and.

Classes and all these types of things. So it doesn’t have to be just through Airbnb. Of course, you wanna be really careful that you’re not trying to get someone outside of Airbnb before they’ve booked your experience. They will quickly take you down from the [00:10:00] platform just like they will if you’re trying to book your property directly on Airbnb and you’re sending messages and you’re being really blatant about it.

So be careful with that.

I hope that gave you a little bit more insight. It’s really important for us to understand what our guests want to do when they’re in our area. And so you may just use this as an opportunity to look up all of the available experiences around your property and see what people are actually doing. You can see how many reviews are left by experience.

That gives you really good insight into how you can better craft. A guest experience at your property. Until next time, I hope you have a fabulous week. 

In today’s episode, we’re diving into the short term rental crystal ball for 2026. No, I don’t have an exact crystal ball, but I do have a pretty good idea and I’m super excited about some of the changes taking place. Everything from changing markets to technology. To management trends and investment opportunities, especially, I’m diving into why I’m more excited this coming year about the opportunities we have as an STR investor than I have been in years.

Stay tuned.

Welcome back to the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast. I’m happy you’re here again, and I’m excited to do my outlook, my take on what to expect in 2026. And believe me, we got a lot of good changes coming if you’ve been tuning into the show for a long time. Well, you know, we started. As their real estate podcast, but with a focus on short-term rentals.

I used to talk a lot about real estate investing in general and the fundamentals, but I haven’t done so much of that in the last few years because it just hasn’t been that great of a time to be investing

with interest rates. Higher cash flow was down and with higher property values. Things just got really competitive and so I personally haven’t purchased anything in several years. Yes, I’ve been building a new construction project for quite a while. Excited to share updates on that in the near future, but I haven’t actually acquired any new short-term rentals.

I’ve been focused on managing those properties that already have in my portfolio as best as we possibly can, My team and I have also expanded to manage hundreds of your properties as well, and so that’s been an awesome journey. We have a ton of insight and I’m excited to break down some of those details But let’s take a step back first and let’s talk about the economy in general, because what happens in the long-term rental or residential real estate world really affects short-term rentals, and we have some fundamental changes taking place as we speak.

We talked about interest rates already recently on episode three 18, so if you missed that one, go back and check it out. One of the highlights from that episode was that interest rates are going down, they’ve already gone down, and they’re forecasted to continue going down.

So this is music to my ears. This is also part of the reason why I’ve recently put up several properties for sale. I’m gonna be doing some exchanges and finally moving some things around, because as interest rates come down, that means more people can afford to buy properties, and that means more properties are going to be changing hands.

So we don’t know exactly how far they’re going to come down, but the good news is they’re headed in the right direction. We also had a very significant tax change that happened in 2025, and that is that the return of a hundred percent bonus appreciation came back.

And that is also great news for a real estate investor. That’s also more incentive for someone to purchase real estate.

Because as we know, real estate provides more tax benefits than any other investment class available.

Now, a lot of you have also heard of Trump’s proposal for a 50 year mortgage, and you might think at first that that is just the dumbest thing that you’ve ever heard, because someone will pay twice as much interest as they would with a 30 year loan. But as a real estate investor, this is good news.

The whole idea of real estate investing is cash flow, right? We buy a property expecting to earn more than our expenses, and one of those really big expenses are our loan payment. And so if we can lower our loan payment on a fixed basis, then we have the potential to earn more cash flow. And the best part of the story is that you’re not actually the person paying down that loan, That would be your long-term tenants or your short-term rental guests.

And remember, with an investment loan, you also get to deduct all of your interest off of that loan. And so if you’re paying more interest, you have more deduction. 

So whether you think 50 year mortgages is a great thing or a really stupid thing, the reality is that it’s going to make properties more affordable for people because the monthly payment is going to be lower and the more affordable a property is. The more people will try to buy it. So my prediction for 2026 is that housing prices are gonna continue to go up.

And I know there’s tons of doom and gloomers out there, YouTube channels dedicated to freaking you out, but that’s not my take.

And I actually don’t even see how that’s possible because we are at a historic low for inventory. There’s a roughly 850,000 homes available for sale in the US Now that rates are going down, we have more tax advantages, and we’ll potentially have a longer loan term, that all means more demand , and that simply means that prices should continue to go up.

Now with interest rates being lower and expected to continue to go down, this means that a lot of short-term rental owners out there that maybe weren’t performing that well are gonna list their properties for sale.

And this creates a really good opportunity for any of us savvy, short-term rental investors that really know how to operate a property and optimize its performance, optimize its revenue.

We’re gonna get into a few of the management changes happening nationwide in just a quick second.

So just because things are looking good in the economy doesn’t mean that every market is good for short-term rental investments. Of course, there have been lots of regulations passed. Barcelona just banned short-term rentals, for example. I think that that will continue, but not overwhelmingly.

I think it’ll continue to happen in places that are more dense and that are higher priced. A lot of times, like coastal areas like Los Angeles, like Miami.

Another trend that I see in the short term rental industry that I do not see going away, and I see picking up speed is the trend in midterm rentals. And this in part comes from regulations, right? If you have a market that’s limited your property to a 39 plus stay, well then you’re no longer gonna be a short-term rental host.

You’re gonna be a midterm rental host.

If you missed our episode with the CEO of Furnish finer, go back and check that out. That was episode 3 0 8. 

That episode was full of reasons that might lead you to want to go down the midterm rental route. But one of the main ones is, is that it’s just easier to manage midterm rentals than it is short-term rentals, right? Because you have less reservations, it’s much closer to a long-term rental. Maybe your guest is there for a month or three months versus two or three nights.

We also know that a lot of short-term rental markets saw a huge increase in supply. Tons of properties came on the market and, and a lot of the dense urban areas, the midterm rental strategy can become a really good one.

Now, you don’t necessarily need to go full midterm rental, right? Your property may be in an area that’s suited really well for short-term rentals, but during the high season, and then you switch to midterm rentals. So the goal is to optimize revenue with your property. But I do see midterm rentals continuing to grow in popularity, and there’ll be more and more, and there’s also gonna be a lot to figure out.

On the operation side of that because we basically have two different segments, right? We have the long-term rentals and short-term rentals, and they both have really good tools, but those haven’t really merged yet into the midterm rental space. So I’m excited to see what comes out in 2026.

All right, let’s jump into operations and management, and this is really the key success for any investment property. You can have the nicest property in the world, but if you don’t know how to manage it well, it’s not going to do well. Right? 

And we see this over and over again with short-term rentals, where a property that maybe doesn’t look as nice as the one right next door earns way more money. So it really comes down to the operations and we’re seeing some really big trends happen, especially with the national property managers like Vac Casa.

I’ve got some stats right from Air DNA. I’m just gonna go ahead and read them off. From 2019 to 2024, the churn rate for property managers with a 4.7 average review score or higher is around nine to 11% per year. That means they’re losing nine to 11% of their customers, of their owners per year.

Doesn’t mean that they’re not adding properties, it just means that’s how many they’re losing. That’s their churn rate.

Now, if we look at property managers that have a 4.7 or lower, last year in 2024, their turn rate was 24%. Imagine that. Imagine your Vac Casa, and let’s just say they had 10,000 properties. They have much more than that. That means they were losing 2,400 properties per year, and it makes sense why, right? If you don’t have a, at least a 4.7 review score.

You’re not going to earn as much money with your properties,

and we’ve seen that these large property managers do not do a great job locally. Of course, not in all markets, right? They can do a good job in a lot of them, but as a whole, we’re looking at their average review score.

It is going down, and I expect those to continue to go down.

So it’s not looking good for large property managers or nationwide property managers that don’t have a good grasp on their local management.

That’s one of the reasons my team and I have been partnering with owners like you across the nation to work with your local team, but to take all the headache away on the back end.

We help you optimize your properties. We handle all the guest communication, we handle revenue management, listing, setup, everything on the backend, and we’ve been seeing really, really good results. So if you’re interested in chatting with us, you can head to t riches.com. There’s a little partner with us button, and we’d love to jump on a call with you and talk about your properties.

Another trend that we’ve been seeing, and I expect to continue our shorter booking windows.

Guess are booking your properties with less and less time in advance, and that means that your revenue management strategy has to change. If your average booking window used to be four weeks, but now it’s two weeks and you have some last minute discounts set up in there, well, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.

So those are things you really need to understand about your specific property and your market. And another thing that we’re seeing is that everyone’s using a dynamic pricing tool now, right?

So if everyone’s using the same dynamic pricing tools, then how can you actually get your property to perform better? Well, you need to look at some things that the pricing tools aren’t accounting for. Those would be things like your specific review score or your channel markups between the different OTAs.

We’re gonna get to the OTAs here in just a second. You want to consider things like promos on those different travel sites,

And of course, you need to know who your ideal guest avatar is and make sure that the marketing on your property speaks exactly to that person.

According to Air, DNA supply has been growing nationwide around 3% per year, but that growth is slowing.

A lot of people got into the short-term rental market, and I think 2026, there’s gonna be quite a few people getting out. They realized it’s just way too hard. Maybe they’re not making as much money as they wanted. So supply and demand is one of those other things that you’re gonna want to keep a very close eye on if your market is losing supply.

Then you should be able to increase your prices.

2026. Your review scores are gonna continue to be more important than ever, and I know I say this all the time, but we can see just the way the OTAs are set up now that they’re really prioritizing their top properties. Airbnb created their guest favorite badge, for example.

Which means they’re no longer looking at the host’s ability to manage a portfolio properties, but they’re breaking it down to specific properties, and we know that the guest favorite badge goes a long way in your visibility.

According to Air DNA, the difference in average RevPAR from a top performing property to an average performing property. Is over 15% and now that is an average. So it’s really hard to bucket all the properties together. And we know that there are some that are earning way more, even twice as much as a similar type property because they’re doing an excellent job at revenue management.

They’re listing set up perfectly and they have excellent, excellent review scores.

So to sum up the operations and management, we’re seeing these national property managers basically lose all their business because they’re not doing a good job.

And on the flip side, it means that if you’re doing a really good job, there’s a lot of opportunity to outperform your competition.

Okay onto technology. I couldn’t do an outlook or a forecast for 2026 without including artificial intelligence. And we’ve done episodes on this in the past, but I believe. A hundred percent. 2026. There’s gonna be way more AI in the short-term rental industry than there has ever been, and for a couple reasons.

First of all, it doesn’t forget anything, and if it knows all the details about your property, then it can respond much faster than you can.

And one of the big ones is its tone, the weight. It actually can, and I say can because it really depends on how you have this set up, but how it can communicate with guests. It’s not going to get upset when it receives a message from a guest that’s mad because maybe the miss or flight or whatever it happens to be.

It’s always gonna respond with the best tone possible.

Humans, for example, we don’t have that luxury. We’re emotional creatures, right? And so if we get a response from a guest that says they didn’t like our property, but we love our property, and we put our heart and soul into it, well, we might be inclined to respond in a way that that’s not perfect. I guess you could say it could be emotionally driven, where AI does not have that downfall.

The other big place that we’re gonna be seeing AI is actually in the way that people find our properties. So I don’t know about you, but I haven’t used Google in a long time. I use chat PT or Claude or Gemini. You pick your favorite to do all of my web browsing these days, and I’m sure you’ve noticed when you search for something, it gives you links to websites.

So SEO, the old search engine optimization is kind of going out the window. Right? And now we have what they’re calling a EO, which is content driven,

and AI is gonna be searching for answers that they can provide all of their users. So having some specific keywords is less important than actually providing a good overall answer. 

Hopefully you have a direct booking website and on that direct booking website, you’re gonna want to have some really good content that a potential guest would be searching for in your market.

One other place that AI is going to affect search is actually directly on the OTAs, like Airbnb or booking.com. You’ve probably noticed that on Airbnb. They ask you for a lot of personal information. Now you don’t have to give it all away, but the idea behind that is that they want to start matching guest profiles with host profiles.

Booking dot com’s doing the same thing. And so the properties that are now showing up on these search results are all driven by some algorithms and AI in the background trying to make the perfect match.

And that leads me to the next trend that we’re already seeing, and that is definitely not going away in 2026. And that is the rise of other OTAs, other online travel agencies, not just Airbnb. booking.com is making a lot of headway. We get tons and tons of really great reservations from booking.com.

So if you’re not on there yet, go to str riches.com, check out our prior episodes. We’ve done lots of episodes just on booking.com and how to get it set up on their platform the right way.

We know that booking dot com’s releasing a damage protection program similar to Airbnb’s, so I expect them to gain a lot more traction in the US in 2026.

But it’s not just booking.com, that’s gonna be growing Google Vacation rentals. Other sites like WIM Stay or Hopper, if you’re not on these platforms yet, well, it’s very likely that your property management software already has a connection with them, and we want to get maximum visibility on all of these OTAs.

Of course, you can have different channel markups between the different channels. We know that Airbnb just changed their host fee. So it’s much higher than it used to be. You wanna make sure that you have those markups in place,

Assuming you have those markups jump on the other platforms, you’re going to get more visibility. And more visibility means more demand. More demand for your property means more bookings.

2025 has been an awesome year. But I’m really excited for 2026, not just because of the real estate fundamentals, allowing us investors to have more opportunity, potential for more cash flow, but also because there’s just gonna be a lot of properties changing hands, right? And so if you’ve been on the sideline and you haven’t quite got your first short term rental yet, 2026 is your year.

But remember, just because you find a good property at a good price doesn’t mean it’s going to perform well. You have to make sure you’ve crossed your T’s and dotted your I’s and you know what you’re doing when it comes to operations.

I hope this show has helped provide you some tips. That is my goal, and until next week, I hope you have a fab this week. 

Well, welcome back to the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast. I’m happy you’re here again. If you’ve been following along the show for a while, or if you’ve had Airbnbs for a while, well then undoubtedly you’ve had a guest ask you for a discount.

And even though our prices might be optimized at all points of the year, it still leaves you a little bit confused. So today we’re gonna jump into everything that has to do with when a guest asks you for a discount.

So the reality, yes, you’re going to have guests asking you for discounts even though your price should be optimized. At every given point in the year. The reality though, is that sometimes this is just cultural. Sometimes people will not purchase something unless they think they’re getting a good deal.

Negotiating is just a big part of a lot of different cultures. I remember my days way back selling software to automotive shops. Uh, in Sacramento, which has to be one of the most diverse places in the us. I mean, there are all different types of backgrounds and so of course there were lots of different owners, uh, in this industry that I was working with.

And there were some that hands down, they just always wanted to negotiate. So just expect that this is gonna happen a little bit. There’s also a lot of people out there that know that this works, right? If they message. 10 Airbnbs and they ask for a discount on every single one. Well, there’s probably one or two that are gonna budge a little bit on their price.

Now, of course, someone should be reserving a property based on the value that they perceive, right? And not just on whether or not that host is gonna give them a discount.

So that’s the first thing. It’s just going to happen. The next question is, when should you give a discount? And the answer is. You shouldn’t, but I’ll have a little bit of a, depends here. The reason I say that you shouldn’t give a discount is because we’re using dynamic pricing tools, or at least you should be.

If you’re new to the channel. Head to sdr riches.com. Check out all of our prior episodes. The goal with your dynamic pricing is that you always have the right price. On the right channels for the right guests at the right time. And so your pricing should be changing each and every day based on day of the week, based on seasonality, based on whether or not there’s an event in town or a whole bunch of other factors.

So that is my opinion. You should not be giving a discount. In general, we know that this person reached out to you inquiring about your property because it showed up in their search results. That means it was in the right location. It’s available for the nights that this guests need.

It at least has some of the amenities that they’re looking for, right? Or wouldn’t have showed up. It means that you very likely have done a good job with your reviews and you’re beating out a lot of competition, so that shouldn’t be an issue.

And then you also know that they’re already interested, right? Because they reached out to you.

So that is my short answer, but I do actually have one exception and so I’ll break that down here. But I also know that a lot of you’re gonna offer discounts regardless, so I have quite a few considerations for you. My exception would be if this is a midterm rental. So if you’re renting for 30 days or more, well then just naturally the dynamic pricing.

Isn’t having as big of an impact on this rental, right? Because it’s not just considering single individual days, it’s really looking at a longer period, much like a long-term rental.

You typically have a lower potential guess looking to book midterm rentals and it’s typically for a higher price point, right? And so that would be my one exception. And of course that comes down to your judgment.

So I’ve got some tips for all of you out there that are still giving discounts or that enjoy giving discounts. Just some considerations in general. The first one is that if you give a discount to someone, it doesn’t actually mean that they’re going to book your property, right?

So if someone’s out there and they’re shopping around and they send you a message as well as 10 other people, well, you might go through. All the thinking process and consider, you know, your occupancy the year before and ultimately decide, okay, uh, Tim, I’ll give you a 20% discount only to find that they never actually respond to you, or that they went ahead and booked another property.

So that’s the first thing. The second thing is if you actually give them a discount and you’re waiting for them to book during this inquiry stage, well that means that someone else can’t book, right? Because you’ve allowed them 24 hours to book your property, and so it’s very likely that had you not given them the discount, someone else could come along and book your property that didn’t ask for a discount.

The third consideration is that if you do offer them a discount, well you’ve gotta actually handle that, right? So you’ve gotta make the calculation, you know, if it’s through Airbnb, then you need to make an adjustment.

If you took a reservation from VRBO or booking.com, well then you either need to go through your property management software or maybe you’re using Stripe. Adjust the amount of that reservation, send it to ’em, and again, you can go through all of that and then maybe don’t book your property.

Another consideration is that a lot of people that are asking for discounts. Tend to be a little more challenging guests. Now I don’t want to generalize people, but my team and I have managed 50,000 guests or probably much more than that at this point, and lots of different cities.

Uh, and there is a bit of a correlation you could say, between the people that ask for discounts, even if we don’t give it to them, and sort of the quality of the guest.

My last consideration for you is that if you are out there and you’re giving discounts on a normal basis, that you at least hold back on the high seasons or the peak seasons or the periods where there are events those days that are very likely to get booked without you giving a discount. Remember, this guest reached out to you 

 because you showed up in their search results, and that means that they are already interested.

Okay? So coming up a couple rules you might want to place around discounts if you are giving them.

A couple alternatives that you might give instead of giving a discount. And then also how to just respond professionally no matter whether you’re giving the discount or you are denying it.

One of the challenges with giving discounts, especially when you’re working with a team, if you have a receptionist helping you, or if your brother or your sister or your mom or whoever’s helping you with your property and you’ve said, yeah, we’ll take discounts sometimes. Um, but not all the time. Then that means every time you get a reservation, you’ve really gotta walk through that process.

You gotta figure it out. And so it’s best to set up some rules around when you’ll be taking a discount.

You need to know your break even point on your property. So this is the point where you can’t discount your property anymore because you’re just not making money on it right now. We know a lot of the costs that go into our short term rentals are fixed, like our mortgage payment. If we have a mortgage, our property taxes, our insurance, these are costs that we’re gonna have regardless.

There are some variable costs there, right? So we have. Utilities, we have housekeeping. You just gotta make sure that you’ve calculated all those things accurately and you’re not actually losing money on a reservation. But assuming you’re not losing money, then you really do want to keep your property as fully occupied as possible.

Just make sure you set some guidelines around that so that you don’t have to go through the whole thinking process every time. You can even set up default responses to your guests, handling that communication in a really professional way each and every time without having to recreate it.

A couple alternatives that you might consider instead of a discount, maybe your property is not booked the day before and you have a minimum two nights stay, so you know it won’t be booked. We’ll consider offering them an early check-in or consider offering them a late checkout. If that doesn’t mess up your housekeeping schedule or prevent you from getting another day booked,

you may consider to throw in a welcome basket or something like that, or if you have kayaks in the lake, we’ll maybe consider offering those up for free or something like that.

And then lastly, you just, you really wanna sell your property, right? If you have great reviews and you’ve done a great job with your property, then again, they reached out because they’re interested in it, and you just wanna remind them of why all the people in the past have had such a great experience at your property.

Lastly, how do we handle the communication with guests that are asking for a discount? Well, we’ve got lots of great AI tools these days, right? You can use cloud or cloud. I don’t know how it’s pronounced. Chat, GPT. They do a really good job. You could literally just paste your communication right in there and say.

This is my discount rule. I only discount when this happens, and it can craft up a really nice message for you.

But I think ultimately you want to just remind them that your price is always optimized. It changes on a daily basis, so it’s priced perfectly. For that day or for those days in that reservation, of course, you always wanna be responding with a, a warm, uh, empathetic tone. But you also want to be confident, right?

And you may even consider putting a little bit of scarcity in there. Again, the guests reached out because they liked your property, and if you know that, it usually always gets booked. Then you’re much less likely to need to offer some sort of discount, right? And you can also reassure them of that, like, Hey, you know, uh, we know you’ll love our stay.

You can see from all of our prior reviews, our property’s pretty much always booked. So we hope we get the, opportunity to host you.

And lastly, you may consider just giving them some other dates if they’re coming to town for vacation, to stay at your property in its peak season where prices are three times as much as they normally are, say, you know what? We would love to host you, but this is a really peak season, and so for those reasons, our prices are higher because we know that we will get booked.

But if you would like to come back next week, during the week or next month or whenever it happens to be, our prices will be lower and we’d be happy to accommodate you at that time as well.

Okay, so that’s a wrap. People won undoubtedly. Ask for discounts with your property, but don’t let their discount requests undermine the quality of your property, right? Remember, they reached out because they liked your property. Your property was showing in those search results because you’ve been doing a good job because you have good reviews.

Hold firm is my recommendation. If you happen to have a midterm rental, well then you could, you know, take that with a grain of salt. It’s up to you. Really. You need to know your calculations and if you are offering discounts, just consider having some SOPs, some rules around it so you don’t have to go through the whole thinking process again.

I hope that gave you a little bit more insight, and until next time, I hope you have a fab this week.

Welcome back to the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast. I’m happier you’re here again. You know how some listings just seem to dominate search results even though they might not have more reviews than yours? Well, there’s actually a badge system that top performing hosts know all about, but most people are a little bit unsure what it actually is and how to get it.

I’m talking about Airbnb’s guest favorite badge, and no, this is not the same as being a Superhost. So in this episode, we break down how this special badge impacts your visibility, your bookings, and ultimately your nightly rates will reveal exactly what it takes to get it and how you can join the other 2.1 million listings worldwide that have made the cut.

Let’s jump into it

so what exactly is Airbnb’s guest favorite badge? Well, very simply, it highlights top performing properties and what guests have found to be their favorite.

And while that seems really simple, it’s a little confusing because [00:01:00] Airbnbs have this thing called Superhost status for quite a long time. But the reality is that the Superhost status is on an account level. You can be a Superhost on top of 20 properties, but the guest favorite badge is property specific.

Okay,

so this is based on property performance and not on host performance, and it’s actually replaced that filter in an Airbnb search for Superhost. That status or that filter is no longer available. And so, so when someone’s out there and they want to find a property that they know is doing well, they’re gonna filter by guest favorite and no longer by Superhost status.

So even though the Superhost filter is gone, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be a Superhost and also have a guest favorite badge on your specific properties. You can definitely have both, and the more the merrier.

And we know that Superhosts do a good job, right? They have certain criteria that they have to meet. They have certain ratings that [00:02:00] they have to meet, just like we’re gonna cover specifically for the guest’s favorite badge. But 72% of all guest favorite badges are coming from Superhost.

So how exactly do we get the guest favorite badge on each of our properties? Well, the first thing is you have to have at least five reviews within the last two years, and they have to have an average review score of 4.9 or higher.

As you might recall, a super host status only requires a 4.8 average, but again, that is on the host profile. We’re talking specifically about one individual property.

The next requirement for getting the guest favorite badge is that you have to have high subcategory scores. Now, I know high isn’t super detailed, but unfortunately this is what Airbnb gives us, and it’s all relative. So your subcategory scores are relative to your competition. If [00:03:00] all of your neighborhood’s not doing a good job on one of these specific areas like cleanliness or check-in or communication, well, then the bar will be dropped and you won’t have to meet those high scores.

But of course, we are in the hospitality business, right? So the goal is having a perfect experience every time.

The last piece is you’ve gotta make sure that you’re not canceling your guest reservations. This is also a super host requirement, and to meet this guest favorite badge for each of your properties, you can’t cancel more than 1% of your reservations. Hopefully you’re doing some good guest verification upfront, so you’re weeding out any sort of red flag. Guess we like to say. And in fact, if you notice some sort of red flag or something looks fishy on a reservation, an upcoming reservation, well you can reach out to Airbnb’s support and you can have that reservation canceled. Penalty free, but you gotta make sure you follow the rules if you’re new to [00:04:00] the channel.

Well, we’ve got hundreds of episodes on how to better operate your short term rentals, how to provide a better guest experience, and ultimately earn as much money as you possibly can. You can go to st riches.com. You can see all of our prior episodes there. We also have a ton of free resources, eBooks, all kinds of things.

My team and I have managed over 50,000 guests, so we’re speaking from real world experience.

So that’s it. Those are the four requirements. You gotta make sure that you have at least five reviews in the last two years. You gotta make sure the average of those review scores is 4.9 or higher. You gotta make sure you haven’t had more than 1% of your reservations canceled, and you gotta make sure that those subcategories of your review score are high.

Yeah, I know that’s a little vague, but it’s relative to your competition.

Now if you are a super achiever out there and you are just blowing it away, and your guests absolutely love you, you’ve got perfect scores across the board each and every time. [00:05:00] Well, you can actually earn a little bit more visibility if you are in the top one, five or 10%. There’s some extra special little baggy things that Airbnb’s gonna put on your listing.

The first one for being in the top percent, you get a gold trophy,

And if you make the top 5% cut, well your listing is going to make it to the top. They’re going to highlight it for you. And lastly, if you make that top 10% cut, well they’re gonna give you a little extra special note above your reviews.

This is, of course, at the time of this recording, we know that Airbnb just like VRBO and booking.com, they’re constantly changing their algorithms, right? And they don’t just give away the secrets, but it’s pretty obvious if you’re not getting good reviews, your property’s not gonna do well. So you gotta make sure that you do a really good job and that you do a really good job on all the different platforms.

This, of course gets a little harder to do the more properties [00:06:00] you have, and that’s why 55% of all the guest badges out there are from single host operators.

The trick is figuring out how to give that sort of single property operator host attention. But on a larger scale, and that’s what our team at Cosley has done. Again, if you’re new to the channel, we’ve managed tens of thousands of guests and lots of properties, and our partners earn those guest favorite badges and they earn that Superhost status.

We, of course, help with all the backend operations, and if you would like to partner with us, well, we’d love to chat with you. You can just go to SDR Riches. Dot com. There’s a little partner with us button and we will jump online, see how we can help.

So how does having this guest favorite badge actually help your visibility? Well, for starters, it’s a filter, right? So we know when someone’s searching for an Airbnb. They’re gonna plug in the location. They’re gonna plug in the [00:07:00] dates. They very often plug in the number of bedrooms if they’re going on vacation versus a work trip or something like that.

Maybe they plug in some special amenities, like. A pool or a spa or something like that. And then to take it a step further, what they used to do, or what seasoned Airbnb users like myself would do to weed out some of the bad operators was to select the Superhost status. But that’s no longer there. Now it’s the guest favorite badge, which is of course, by each property.

And so this filter is there. That means if someone checks this filter and you don’t have the badge, well whoop. You are gone from those search results and you have way less competition now.

So aside from just having the filter, we know that Airbnb’s giving you this badge ’cause they’re doing a good job and they know that the guests that are staying on your property enjoy your property. So it’s easier for Airbnb.

They know that your property’s gonna get booked easier, and so they [00:08:00] boost you up those search rankings and how much they do that? Well, we don’t unfortunately know exactly, but we do know that it’s helpful.

So it’s pretty simple, right? The better you do with your reviews, the more visibility you should have. But I don’t think all of you out there really understand the impact of a negative review. So if you jump back to episode 2 56, we will break that down and we’ll break it down with the numbers. It’s very clear from all the data we have access to that two properties with different review scores, but everything else being equal, they can make completely different amounts of money.

So quick action plan. Take a look at your Airbnb listing. You may be surprised to know that you already have this guest favorite badge, but if you don’t remember those qualifications, if you’re renting your property out for midterm stays, well, it’s gonna take a little longer to get those reviews. You might consider dropping the minimum stay requirements so you can get this badge sooner and not [00:09:00] later.

And if you have any other questions on it, we’ll just drop a comment down below and our team would love to connect with you. See what we can do to help.

Thanks for tuning in to the Short term Rental Richest podcast, and until next time, I hope you have a fabulous week. 

Welcome back to the Short Term Rental Riches Podcast.

If you’re managing multiple STR properties or even just one, you know that guest access can be one of your biggest headaches. After hosting more than 50,000 guests, I can say that Smart locks are now essential for my business for so many reasons. But the problem is not all smart locks are created equally, and if you choose the wrong one, well, you will continue to run into problems.

So today we’re diving deep into the Ultimate Guide to Smart Locks and Airbnb integration. I’m gonna walk you through exactly what to look for in a smart lock, which brands I personally recommend amongst the hundreds of different options available,

how to integrate them seamlessly with your platforms. There’s a lot to cover. Let’s get into it.

Well, welcome back to the show. I’m glad you’re here again. If we go way back to episode six, this was in December of 2019. I did an episode called the Most [00:01:00] Important Automation Essential or something like that. I was talking about digital locks, and so here we are years later and there are literally hundreds of other digital lock options.

If you go into your local Home Depot or Lowe’s, or you jump on Amazon, you’re gonna be overwhelmed.

So let’s go ahead and jump into what you need to look for in a smart lock. I’ve got eight main features for you.

The first essential feature you need with your digital lock is wifi access. You need the ability to change codes online.

Having a digital lock where you can program codes in it isn’t good enough because you’re gonna want to integrate this lock with Airbnb and your listing platform, so it automatically creates codes for you. We’ll get to that in a second. The second feature that you need is in case the internet goes out, your lock needs a memory.

So if you created a code for a guest that you sent out two weeks ago and your internet goes out. [00:02:00] Well, you need that code to be remembered in the lock, and so you want to make sure your digital lock has a memory.

The third essential for your smart lock is just making sure that it’s easy to use. There’s a ton of digital locks out there that actually require you to download an app. We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to put any steps between our guests. And checking into our property, and preferably your digital locks can allow you to create the shortest code possible.

Of course, it’ll be a unique code, but a four digit code is the best way to go.

The fourth essential is just making sure your lock is durable. There are literally hundreds of them out there, and especially if you’re near the ocean, you’ve got those salty breezes coming across. Or if you’re in snow country where it goes below zero degrees, 

You’ve gotta make sure your lock is durable and we have our top two recommendations for you in just a moment.

The fifth thing is when it comes to integration. So there’s a lot of [00:03:00] great digital locks out there that have the features we’ve talked about, but they don’t actually integrate directly with Airbnb. And actually you wanna make sure that it doesn’t just integrate with Airbnb, but it also integrates with vbo and booking.com.

We’re gonna get to that in a second, but having that integration is the first step.

Number six. You wanna make sure that you have an online dashboard where you can see your locks, you can see if the battery is going low. You can see who’s used those codes to access your doors when the door locks are locked, when they’re not locked. Having that online dashboard really helps in a lot of different ways, and especially the more properties you have.

A seventh essential is for any of you that have more than one lock on your property if you have two entry doors, while you wanna make sure you create a very short, simple code for your guests. But then it also sinks to the different locks. And so most lock companies will call this a [00:04:00] common door, and you’re basically just linking two locks together online.

Again, this is through your dashboard. So if you create a code oh oh seven oh, that goes right to both locks and your guests don’t get stuck outside or have to remember two different codes.

This also works really well for any of you that have maybe a smaller apartment building or a building that has a common shared door, because you don’t want to give out a static code for this common area door so anyone can get into the building. But you also don’t want to give your guests multiple codes, so they gotta remember two codes.

So you want to make sure that your lock has the ability. To sync codes. So when you have a new guest that makes a reservation, maybe that code is oh oh seven oh. It creates that automatically for that common area door, but then also creates it for their individual apartment.

Number eight. This one’s really important. Your lock’s not gonna do that well if it doesn’t have charged batteries. So having a battery reminder both [00:05:00] on the door itself and on your online dashboard is gonna be key to making sure that your guests don’t show up and they can’t get in. This makes it easier for your housekeepers to relay the information from you.

The more obvious the battery indicator is, the better.

So there are eight essentials. One of the ones I mentioned has to do with integrating with Airbnb. Now, most locks actually are not going to integrate with Airbnb, and even if they do, they’re very likely not going to integrate with VRBO or the other listing platforms where you definitely need to have your property listed.

So what are our options here? We have a couple options. Well, if you’re only on Airbnb and your lock integrates with Airbnb, you’re okay in the sense of the locks, but you need to get on the other listing platforms, and as soon as you do. You can use a property management software platform to integrate with those locks.

Now, not all property management software platforms or PMS programs will allow you to integrate with [00:06:00] locks, but the most popular ones these days have that functionality. Of course, it depends on the lock that you choose, right? They’re not gonna integrate with all the different locks.

But assuming you choose one of the two models that we’re going to reference here in just a short minute, you should be in good shape.

Now, there is another option. Let’s say you’re not using a property management software platform. And you are on multiple listing sites like booking.com and Airbnb, making sure that you have a code that can go out to any of those platforms that is unique for your guests. And that is set up just for the reservation so it expires after they leave.

Well, there’s some other software that’s popped up to help you do this.

We use a program called Remote Lock. We’ve been using it for years. They have all of the dashboards and things that I’ve been talking about. They do charge you a per lock fee, but they make it really seamless.

And if you’re not using a property software platform that allows you [00:07:00] to integrate the locks, or maybe you are using one, but it doesn’t allow you to integrate to all the places. Well, you can integrate this with your property management software and then it will do all that code disbursement for you.

So I know that sounds a little complicated, but it really isn’t. Most of these PMS programs have what they call a marketplace can simply go there, search for remote lock. You do a little connection, you set up all your locks on remote. But then they’re programmed to go through your property management software.

So no matter where you get a reservation, those codes are gonna go out to all of your guests. Now there’s a whole bunch of these companies that have popped up as well. Another one that I see at all the conferences is called Au Pair two O-P-E-R-T-O. So check out either of those if you’re still manually setting up all your codes, especially to go across the different platforms.

I’ve got one last tip before I jump into my favorite lock recommendations, and that is that you can’t rely just on your lock [00:08:00] as reliable as some of these locks are these days. Sometimes it just doesn’t work, or sometimes your guests just can’t figure it out. They keep plugging the code in wrong. They’re not hitting the hash sign or whatever it happens to be.

Maybe it’s dark, maybe they can’t see that. Well, you name it. There is a lot of issues with guest checking in and digital locks. So you’ve gotta make sure that you have another way for them to get in. And that is a simple little lockbox that you can put somewhere near your entry doors. You don’t need to give them a code to the lockbox, right?

This is just for emergencies. But make sure you have a key in there. Make sure the key works, and, uh, have that backup plan because a guess that can’t get in your property. Well, that is the ultimate fail.

Okay, here we go. Our top recommendations after managing tens of thousands of guests, the number one lock that we recommend is the sage on code, the wifi version, of course, that can connect online. It has a dashboard. [00:09:00] It can connect to a lot of the property management programs out there. We found that it’s very durable.

It’s easy to use. You don’t have to download apps or anything like that. Now they have a couple versions. They have the deadbolt version only, or if you’re doing a renovation or something like that and you have a door that only has one hole, well, you can get one with the handle on it.

They look sleek, they look modern, they come in multiple colors. They’re available on Amazon, they’re in available in Home Depot or Lowe’s or any of your local home improvement places. We’ve used a lot of these. I’ve personally purchased thousands of dollars of these. And this is our number one recommendation.

The runner up. Number two would be the August Locks. Now, these locks do work well. They do integrate with a lot of platforms. Again, our favorite is the sage lock. The August lock is quite expensive. It’s very comparable with the sage lock. In fact, both of those are. A bit on the higher end of the price [00:10:00] scale, but again, you’re gonna be using this lock for years and years, and so you want to make sure you have a good one.

And just think about it if, you have an issue with your lock or it doesn’t connect, and a guest comes in and they have a problem with it and they can’t get in, well, you better believe they’re gonna be asking for a refund or they’re gonna be asking for some sort of discount if they’ve gone through all this hassle just to get in.

So it’s worth investing just a little bit more upfront. But if you are more budget conscious, there’s another lock. The last lock that we’d recommend, and this is by TT Lock, so it is. Cheaper. Again, it’s not our favorite recommendation, but it does have pretty good integration and it is easy for guests to use.

So there we go. There are the essentials. That is our recommendation after using lots and lots of different locks. But I’ve still got a few other additional tips for you. Just a few other things to keep in mind.

Even though a lot of these locks have the wifi dashboard, you can control them online. You do want to make sure that you’re creating a unique code for each guest, but you don’t necessarily want [00:11:00] it to expire the minute their checkout happens. So if it’s 3:00 PM and they’re hauling a, a suitcase out to the car and they return back to the house at 3:02 PM to grab the next suitcase.

And the door’s locked because you’ve got it set up for an auto lock function. Well, you don’t want that to happen, so leave a little bit of grace period when you’re scheduling these locks. And most of the time that’s just a quick setting where you can say, we’re gonna schedule this unique code for whatever guest reservation comes in, but instead of it ending at 3:00 PM we’re gonna end it at 3:30 PM.

Remember that you can use your digital locks to assign codes for maintenance people, right? This is one of the really nice benefits of having the wifi and the online dashboard. If you’ve gotta have an HVAC person come in there, or your handyman needs to get in, well, you can create a real quick code for them, and you can also see when they actually entered and how long they’re there.

Right? If you have a unique code set up for a door, well then all the history would be tied to that one code. You can see every time someone [00:12:00] opens a door, every time someone unlocks it, and every time someone locks it. It

Another nice thing of having this history is that it also tells us when our guests check in for the first time. So make sure that your welcome message or your friendly follow up that says, Hey John, just wanna make sure you got in the property. Okay? Make sure that it doesn’t go out before they actually check into the property.

Right? And this is one of the ways that you can verify that they’ve made it into the property. You can have your lock, depending on the version, send you a notification when that guest checks in for the first time.

My last tip, and this is probably the most important one, just make sure that your door codes are as simple as possible. The fewer digits they are, the less digits a guest has to remember and the less chance that they’re gonna screw up when they plug it in. Because even though some of these locks are really, really easy to use, you would be surprised how many people still have trouble with them.

So I hope those essentials give you some more insight into what you need to look [00:13:00] for when you purchase your new lock.

Consider all these tips and remember that even though you might have the best lock out there, you’re still gonna have some guests that are gonna have trouble with entering the code or whatever it happens to be. There is quite often user error, so make sure you’ve got that backup in place and just make sure that you’re there to help them get in if they need some help.

Till next time, I hope you have a wonderful week. 

Scams and short-term rentals actually aren’t that rare, and unfortunately they’re rising. They don’t just impact hosts. Guests are also getting burned to, and so in this episode, we break down the most common SCR scams that have tricked. Thousands and show how both sides can stay protected.

We’ve got real stories, real lessons, and also a guide to help you scam proof your stays. Stay tuned.

The first scam in this one is a classic. Classic in the sense that it’s been happening for years and years, and it happened to my team and I. This is the Craigslist copycat scam where they will literally copy your listing and post it for rent at a way lower price, and then try to get payment through PayPal or even through a check, which was the case that we had.

You get someone showing up here at your door that is not happy, and so of course this isn’t a good situation for anyone and we do need to be on the lookout for [00:01:00] copycat listing.

The second is the booking.com payment loophole. So if your property is listed on booking.com, which I hope that it is, because you can get a lot of reservations on there. You need to make sure that you’re listed properly. I’ve got some actionable tips for you in just a few minutes, but what happens is someone’s going to book your property on booking.com.

It’s going to be last minute. You’re going to send them check-in instructions because most of you have, it’s set up to go out automatically, even if the payment. Fails, and that’s where the issue happens. These booking.com reservations come in last minute. You send out the check-in information, they check into your property, and you find out shortly after that the payment that they processed actually failed.

Number three, this is the chargeback fraud. And this one’s really frustrating because you can have people stay at your property, you’re communicating with them, they’re having a great time, and then for whatever [00:02:00] reason, after they check out, they file a dispute likely because they know they may have the potential to win the dispute with the credit card company where they say they didn’t stay at your property and they get all of their money back.

These chargebacks happen when you are taking reservations through your own payment system. So most commonly, Stripe, and this could be reservations that come in from VRBO, from booking.com, from Google, from your direct booking website. If you are taking credit card payments, well then there is the potential for this scam.

Again, I’ve got some actionable tips to help avoid all these scams. But before we do, I want to jump in to a few more. The next one is a stolen credit card. So again, if you are taking payments, you’ve gotta do some verification.

Because if someone’s making a reservation with someone else’s credit card and they stay there, when the person that actually owns the credit card sees these charges, well they’re going to file a claim with a credit card company, and the credit card [00:03:00] company is almost always going to favor with their client.

In this case, they absolutely should, right? Because it’s a stolen credit card.

The challenging thing with these chargebacks is that they’re not necessarily gonna happen the day after someone checks out or the week after someone checks out. But you could see this showing up weeks after the actual reservation.

The fifth scam going around, and this is also one that’s happened for a long time. This is the linen and pest scam where someone will actually show up with dirty linens and use that as evidence to give to Airbnb or to give. To whatever listing channel they made their reservation from. Now we know sometimes these are hard to fight.

If it’s a pest one, you see someone send a picture and it’s got this tiny little spider. A lot of times the OTAs are siding with their guests. Unfortunately, again, I’ve got some tips to help you combat all this.

Number six is related, but a little bit different. This is the cleanliness scam where someone shows up, usually it’s a last minute [00:04:00] reservation, and within one to two hours they’re like, Hey, this place is dirty and they want a full refund. And what we found out is a lot of times. When this happens, people are actually using the property.

So maybe there’s a big event going on there, maybe Taylor Swift’s showing up, or maybe some other artist is in town or a sporting event and people are traveling in and they want a place to freshen up, maybe have some drinks or something before they head to the event. So they’re actually using the properties for a couple hours and then claiming that it wasn’t clean, trying to get a refund.

Now we’ve of course found this out through experience, right? So when someone’s used one of the apartments and then our housekeepers go in. Where the guests said they wanted to check out immediately because it wasn’t cleaned, we can see that they used the towels.

We can see that they used the shower. Well, hopefully these haven’t happened to you, but at some point or another, some scammy things are going to happen.

Now I saved the craziest one for last. Number seven. These are third party squatters. What do I [00:05:00] mean by this? Well, let’s say someone books your property, but they actually give access to someone else. It could be a family member, it could be a friend. It could be that they’re basically subleasing your property after taking that reservation.

Maybe they don’t have a. Host profile that they actually care about. And so this was an opportunity for them to get a little bit of money and just leave the scene. I know that this has happened. Again, some of these happen more on certain channels than other. I had a friend call me not too long ago with this actual one happening.

He said, Tim, there’s all these people in my property. Uh, the reservation was from booking.com. I can’t get in touch with them. And the people staying there like don’t even know the person that made the reservation. So of course we don’t want this to happen. Uh, this is probably the most stressful one, right.

Good news is there are quite a few ways to avoid all of these situations, and let’s go ahead and get into those.

The [00:06:00] first and most obvious and easiest one is just to review your guest’s profile and their history. If they have zero reviews and they made a last minute booking before some crazy concert, well, you have a little more reason to be alarmed.

But that doesn’t mean you want to be excluding first time guests. In fact, we did a whole episode on this. This was episode 2 91 where we talked about all the reasons where you do want to be accepting first time guests, but of course you want to have these checks in place that we’re gonna break down right now.

The second thing you can do if you’re getting risky reservations on booking sites like OTA or even a direct booking, is to not allow same day check-ins. So to have a little bit of buffer time to allow yourself to. Verify their ID to get a rental agreement signed to make sure you have a deposit. These are all proactive things we can do, and I know speaking from experience, we’ve managed tens of thousands of guests.

The times that we have these [00:07:00] scams pop up, it’s so, so small, but when it does pop up. It can be stressful, right? So, making sure that you have these checks in place is gonna make the whole operation a lot easier, a lot smoother.

We always like to have a rental agreement digitally signed, and so we get this before a guest checks in. It also states the rules, so the house rules for our property. Again, you wanna make sure that those are really well dialed in and if you don’t have your house rules dialed in yet, well you can get our free copy. The link will be in the show note.

If you’re getting a booking outside of Airbnb, make sure you have a copy of their ID and also get a selfie. Just because you have a picture of their ID and you have the name on their credit card, doesn’t mean they are the person in that id. So we take it one step further, we get a selfie so that we can match that up, and we ask for that at the time of booking. Of course, all this happens.

Before check-in, deposits go a really long way, so you either wanna make sure you have a deposit or you have a deposit waiver set up. We use a company called [00:08:00] Wavo.

Make sure you have exterior cameras. This is such an easy one to do. Make sure that your entrance door has one, not showing anything on the inside. But on the exterior, so you can see if the, the two guests on the reservation are showing up with an extra five guests, or if they’re showing up with pets, that’s a really easy one to do, and so is having a digital lock code that changes with each and every guest.

Don’t use a static code because someone can easily give that away to someone else.

You may decide to take it one step further and actually use a software specifically for guest verification. There’s quite a few out there. There’s Super Hog. There’s another one called Auto Hosts. Another one called Authenticate, where they can do a lot of this pre-screening for you. And of course, the more steps you have upfront, the more likely a scammer’s gonna get intimidated.

He’s gonna know that, or she’s gonna know that you know what you’re doing. You’ve heard of these scams before and you’ve taken the proper precautions.

[00:09:00] Lastly, make sure that you document everything. So if there’s any sort of issues going on, we like to have all written communication. That way we can easily pass it back to Airbnb or we can easily pass it back to any of the listing sites where the reservations were made. It’s a clear story of everything that happened.

And a couple quick tips for you guests out there. Well, if you’ve already been scammed, then fortunately you’ve probably learned your lesson. But don’t be booking things offsite, right? These Craigslist scams are too good to be true. If you’re booking a property that has no reviews, take a look at the host profile, ask a few questions and make sure that you’re better prepared before you book that property.

’cause this happens on both sides, right? We are in the hospitality industry, but. The reality is there’s millions and millions of short-term rentals out there. A lot of people are doing a really great job. They’re very honest, but there are some scammers out there. I hope this gave you a little bit more insight.

Until next time, I [00:10:00] hope you have a fabulous week.