Delivery! Better Ways for Guests to Receive Packages at Your STR

welcome back to the short-term rental riches podcast I'm really happy you're here again and I'm really happy that we have the ability to order pretty much anything online these days uh I spent a lot of my time in Colombia as most of you know that have been listening to the show for a long time and I also spend the other half in Brazil where I am now although most of my properties are in the US and the properties we're managing for our our partners but we

can order things online line for delivery fast delivery pretty much anywhere in the world I remember when I was in Columbia not too long ago they have what they call Ry and that is their delivery service that basically can deliver anything and they have what they call wrappy Turbo and so I was testing out Wy turbo which they guaranteed was a 10-minute delivery or less I know you're thinking that sounds crazy although Amazon's getting pretty close aren't they and so I ordered a a toothbrush I

think then I think I took a shower and I was waiting for someone to come over to my house and they were going to be there in like a few minutes and the doorbell rang I went and opened the door but I kind of did it in a sneaky way I was like hiding I was going to play a prank on my friend so the wrappy person showed up so quickly that I kind of played a prank on them instead of my friend until I realized

it was them but this is just becoming much much easier it's all over the world it's not necessarily as cost efficient in the US as it is down in Latin America at least when it comes to silly miscellaneous things like a toothbrush right so let's get right into it should you allow D deliveries at your property now we are in the hospitality industry so my quick answer would just be yes always we should always be doing whatever we can to make our guest experience the best

possible experience but depending on the type of property you have or the length of your reservation sometimes this doesn't make sense so let me give you a couple examples first off we've got single family homes maybe they're out in a neighborhood which the majority of short-term rentals are sort of set up this way right and for those of you out there with properties that are set up this way it's a lot easier right maybe your minimum stays three nights or four nights and someone shows up

and they can order Amazon and it's going to show up the second day to a private entrance no one else is there it's not going to get potentially stolen or anything like that and so for you yes that's pretty easy and definitely you would want to allow your guests and a lot of times they're probably not even going to ask you they're just going to ship it there anyways right um there are some things we want to add in our house rules so I'll get to

that in just a second but for those of you with single family homes with easy shipping not really a big deal right and especially those of you that have longer stays so the longer someone stays in your property the more they're going to need these things right whether it's Amazon pack packages or whatever it happens to be they're going to order more things online so if you're kind of going the midterm route and you've got people essentially living in your properties then it would be good

for you to have a good way for them to receive those packages I got one tip coming up here in a second uh but if you're on the opposite end of that Spectrum let's say you're in an urban city and maybe you're competing with hotels your average night stay is like two nights or maybe you have one night days I would not allow your guest to send something on one night's stays because some issues show up right maybe they order something and it doesn't show up

on time and then you receive a package for a guest that's not there what do you do then are you going to ship it to them do you have someone to ship it to them uh those are things that we need to be aware of this is the same reason why a lot of hotels don't allow you to ship things to the hotel now of course the nicer the hotel is that you're staying at the more likely they will be accepting deliveries on your behalf a

lot of uh newer and bigger hotels especially in conference areas even have delivery centers uh but they're not always open all hours of the day and they do charge you on top of that okay next up let's say your short-term rental is in a condominium uh it has an HOA and a delivery person's going to have to go through multiple gates to get to your guest so the more barriers there are the more complicated is to receive a package a lot of times yes these associations

also have places to draw packages uh but if there's not then this just adds a level of complexity to the whole bit right now you might be thinking if you're out there and you just got started with one property or may maybe you have two you're like Tim this isn't really a big deal like I'm just yeah they can accept reservations but the more properties you add and the more different types of properties you add it adds another layer of complexity an operational piece and ultimately

creates a little bit of responsibility or potential liability for these packages if they don't show up right and so this is again one of the reasons that a lot of hotels do not accept deliveries okay so let's say that you do allow deliveries one thing that you definitely want to do is make sure that you have it in your house rules talk about the process if it's as easy as them delivering it to the doorstep then maybe you don't need to put a lot in there

but you do probably want to put something in there that says you're welcome to send deliveries to the address but please know we are not responsible if anything shows up missing if it doesn't arrive on time so on and so on so just think that through for a quick second always that good to have it in your house rules right and if you want to get our house rules we've been doing this for a long time we've managed tens of thousands of guests we have a

free house rules template for you you can go to Str strr riches.com it's right there under our recommended resources uh make sure that you adjust it just a little bit but I guarantee it's got some rules on there that maybe you haven't thought of so go check that out okay next consideration if you have a property that's in an area with shared common spaces that someone has to pass through to get to your apartment it could be or your condo or whatever happens to be it's

not a really good idea for them to give those delivery people all of those codes right uh and so you might want to have another little rule in there that says make sure to meet people at the front door for your deliveries please don't give out the code to delivery people so use chat gbt or come up with some better ways of actually wording that um we we don't want it to come off as like you know really strict or Stern or demand or anything like

that it's just a friendly reminder that hey we're doing this for the security of everyone in the building uh and if you happen to own the whole building I have several buildings like this where there's a common area and have multiple short-term rental units inside we have a little sign there right next to the door that says you know something along those lines of make sure uh to grab your deliveries here instead of giving the delivery person the code to get through all of the access

so so just one other real quick tip there but I guess at the end of the day people are going to order stuff if they want to even if you have in your house rules but the upside of having it in your house rules if you have one of those properties that doesn't live end itself well to receiving deliveries the upside of having it in the house rules is that you're not going to be liable for anything if it shows up missing okay so if you

are allowing deliveries another thing that you might want to do is have a delivery box so let's say you have a duplex or I stayed in um a property in Fort Lauderdale Florida recently I believe it was a Triplex and they had at the entrance it was a real cool like Amazon drop your packages in this box here it was labeled or it had FedEx and UPS on it and it was a place for someone to drop packages I think it may be locked so again

that might be something that your guest wouldn't be able to access but at least protected the package a little bit this was I was staying real close to down toown and so a lot of people around right uh so I thought that was a cool way so you could think about that for your property I'm sure you can find those on Amazon and speaking of Amazon they ship really fast now don't they depending on what city you're in you might even have 1 hour shipping so

a little side bonus here if you forgot something in your property or your guest says hey you know there's not enough toilet paper something got missed during the housekeeping turn coffee whatever it happens to be you could just ship it right to them on Amazon if you happen to have that 1hour Ser service in your area so this is this is becoming more and more common in a lot of places maybe one day they will get up to Colombia's standards and have 10-minute deliveries I'm just

kidding I still don't know how those people in Columbia do it I I think well first of all they don't deliver all products that quickly and they're literally like waiting at the stores on motorcycles or something I mean it's really incredible but things are getting faster who knows maybe we're going to have drones uh delivering things real quickly I've definitely seen the little robot driving self-driving things going around town so going on a tangent but this is something that's going to happen in our properties deliveries

show up uh at our shortterm rentals so hopefully you can allow them that's the best thing to do it's going to make your guest experience a little bit better but make sure you have some information in your house rules um make sure that you have some instruction on the way you would like them received and if you ultimately don't have a good place to receive them you could have a message in there that says hey there isn't a good place to unfortunately deliver the package here

but there is an Amazon drop Center just a few blocks away you can have it shipped there and you can pick it up on your own term so keep an eye out for any of those sort of Amazon drop centers popping up in your city uh or your neighborhood cuz that is another way to accommodate Our Guest right so hey real quick episode for you this week but it's something that's bound to show up in one way or another at your properties and it's definitely becoming

more and more and more common as time goes by so until next time I hope you have a fabulous week want to get on the fast track to Financial Freedom through short-term rentals what it all starts with the properties you acquire but you want to make sure that you acquire the right properties I want to give you my ebook that will show you how to do just that there is no charge it's my gift to you for being one of our subscribers just go to rest

methods.com that's reest methods.com