Welcome back to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast.

Quick, actionable ideas and tips to help you with your short term rental each and every week.

This week, I got a quick one for you, but one that could put more revenue in your pocket and make your guests happier at the same time.

Stay tuned, let’s jump right in.

Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches.

We’ll discuss investing in real estate, but with a specific focus on short term rentals.

Quick, actionable items to acquire, manage, and scale your portfolio.

I’m your host, Tim Hubbard.

Welcome back to the show, I’m glad you’re here.

I’m just gonna jump right in, because I know last week we got a little doom and gloomy, and we talked about the state of the economy.

If you missed it, go back and check it out.

We did break down the most important metric that we use to monitor our properties, and we gave some great examples on that.

So go back and check that out.

If you missed it, this week, we’re gonna talk about how to earn a little more revenue from what we call gap nights.

What is a gap night?

You may have heard this term referred to as an orphan night.

That’s kind of, I don’t know, orphan night’s kind of like a sad word, right?

I mean, like a bit of being stranded or something like that.

So let’s just go with gap day, or a day that’s sandwiched between two days.

This is essentially a day in your calendar that you are not able to book because of the way that you have your minimum night stay requirements set up.

So let’s say you have a three night minimum stay, and you have a three night reservation, and then you have a two day window, or gap, and then you have another three night stay.

Well, the two days in the middle, that is the gap day, that is the sandwich time that is unbookable.

What can we do with this time?

Well, we can simply offer it to both reservations on both sides of this gap at a discount.

But before we talk about offering the discount on this gap night, let’s just talk real quickly about minimum nights in general.

Your minimum nights should be based off your average length of stay.

And so if your market has an average length of stay of two nights, and your minimum stay requirement is three nights, well, yes, you better believe that you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.

A lot of old school vacation rental markets, I saw this at the VRMA the last time I was there, just this last year, they still offer seven night minimum reservations because they’re in an old school place where that’s just the way it was.

But that shouldn’t be the case, right?

Unless it happens that in that market, the average stay is always seven nights.

But it’s never that way, right?

We know that sometimes there’s a special event, and maybe the event’s only five nights, and it’s in an off season.

Well, then the minimum night stay for that special event should be five nights.

But the rest of the year should be set up in a way to get the max amount of reservations.

So if you don’t know your booking windows yet, well, check out pricelabs.co, use some of their data, check out AirDNA or talk with a property manager that might be able to help you out because this is really, really important stuff.

So assuming you have your minimum night stays set up properly, the only time selling these gap days is not going to apply is if you have a one night minimum stay.

But even then, you might want to offer that one night at a discounted rate to both reservations on both sides of that.

So what does that look like?

Let’s say guest A makes the reservation and a couple weeks later, guest B makes the reservation and it leaves that two night gap.

Well, the moment we have that gap, we want to offer those gap days at a discount to both guests.

So we’re gonna reach out and say, hey guest A, we would love to offer you, and you can of course word this however you want, but we would love to offer to extend your stay at a 30% discount.

You already know that you’re not going to be able to sell those nights because it’s smaller than your minimum night stay requirement.

It’s unbookable, so it’s basically blocked on your calendars.

So you have an opportunity to sell it to the reservation before, at a discounted price.

Everyone likes a discount, right?

And then you also have the opportunity to sell it to guest B that’s checking in afterwards, and you can propose it to them in the same way.

Hello guest B, and you can even say, we have a gap in our calendar.

We would love to offer you a 30% discount to extend your stay if you’d like to check in early.

Now the timing with this is really important.

So the moment that guest B made their reservation, you want to send the message out to them right away, right?

Like instantly, because when someone’s in the mood of checking out or planning their vacation, they’re much more likely to extend it.

They’re much more likely to pay for extra services and things like this.

That’s exactly why when you’re booking something on booking.com or Airbnb, that they offer their experiences after, right?

When someone’s in the mode of purchasing, it’s easier to sell them more stuff.

That’s just the reality to it.

So you want to be offering this gap night the moment that gap is created.

Because what is the alternative, right?

You leave the gap there and you just don’t make any money from it.

It’s just lost opportunity.

Whether you’re just getting started with short term rentals or you’ve been in the game for a while, one thing remains the same.

Your management can make or break your performance.

Our team has learned a lot managing thousands of guests and we put together a handbook just for you with our checklist to cover our exact process.

There’s a lot to consider from verifying guests to managing reviews, and you don’t want to miss a step.

You can get your free copy by going to restmethods.com.

There’s no charge.

It’s my gift to you for being one of our loyal subscribers and I hope it helps you earn higher returns with less headache.

So now the question is, well, what should you really offer that gap night at?

How discounted should it be?

And the answer is, if it’s truly lost income, does it really matter, right?

Maybe you offer it at 50%.

Whatever you’re comfortable with, whatever you think you can offer it at and earn the most revenue from those nights.

So you can be flexible with it too.

If someone says, I might be able to stay, but if you could squeeze a few more dollars out of there, I’ll go ahead and sign up.

Well, that’s up to you, right?

That’s all on your end.

But think that you also don’t have any additional housekeeping, right?

So your average reservation is now longer.

You’re not having to schedule more housekeeping, pay a housekeeping fee.

And at the end of the day, your guest is going to be happier.

So what better way to get a five-star review than starting off by giving your guest a longer vacation at a discounted rate, right?

It should be done across the board.

Anytime you have these gap days.

So make sure you’re keeping an eye on your calendar.

You can set up gap days in Pricelabs.

If you’re using Pricelabs or Wheelhouse or one of the dynamic pricing software tools, you can set up automatic discounts in there.

But remember, that’s not gonna send your guest a message, right?

It’s just gonna show up in the calendar as a lower price night.

And so what we’ve done is we’ve actually turned off those discounts.

So anytime we have an orphan day or a gap day, there is no discount because we wanna manually reach out to that guest and offer that discount.

Now I know that sounds like a lot of work, and it has been for our team.

You’ve gotta monitor the calendar, the more properties you have, you gotta make sure that, again, the timing’s crucial.

So as soon as you get a gap day, boom, you can send that message out.

Of course you can make that message a template, so it’s easier for you to send.

But we signed up for a technology recently called Bestie.ai, an artificial intelligence tool that loads right into our property management software.

We’re using HostAway.

It also works with Guesty.

Where it recognizes this for us, it automatically sends out the message.

It automatically sends out our discounted rate based on what the rate was in the calendar.

That saves our reception team a whole hecka lot of work.

Of course, if the guest accepts it, then we still have to send them a special price offer in Airbnb, or if it’s a VRBO reservation or booking.com, then we have to adjust that reservation there.

So of course, there’s gonna be a little bit more work, but it’s one place where it’s a win-win for both sides.

You as the owner make a little bit more money and you have a happy guest.

And that is the name of the game.

I hope you take advantage of this if you’re not already.

If you’ve been enjoying the podcast or YouTube channel, remember we’re on YouTube now, I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t mind heading over there and just leaving us a little thumbs up or leaving us a like or sharing an episode that’s helped you with a family member, a friend, or someone that you know with a short term rental.

I’d really appreciate it.

It’ll help us continue to spread the word, to spread good practices, and hopefully make things easier for everyone.

So until next time, have a fabulous week, and I’ll see you back soon.

If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, then you know that I’ve been managing my properties virtually for years and years.

My team and I have managed thousands of guests.

We’ve learned a ton, and I’m really happy with the progress and the growth we’ve made.

In fact, we’re now big enough to help manage your properties as well.

Our team has a ton of experience, from the inner city apartment to the large lakeside retreat.

We’ve worked with all types of properties across the nation.

We’ll help to take the management workload off your plate while earning top revenue and excellent guest reviews, all while charging an industry low fee.

If you’d like to find out if your property fits with our program, just head to strriches.com.

There you’ll see a property management button.

Again, that’s strriches.com.

Just click on the property management button, and we look forward to chatting with you soon.