Short-term rentals are an interesting niche in real estate. Why? Because you can have two properties, right? Next to each other and one of them can literally be earning twice as much as the other one. But it all comes down to the experience. We have in the property or the experience, our guests have, I should say, and there’s a lot of things that go into the experience. I just got back from five weeks of traveling and six different countries. I stayed in a lot of accommodations and I’ve got a fresh outlook on this also, after managing and hosting over, 21,000 guess, so want to fill you in. On my tips, things you can do to make sure you are getting this piece, right? Stay tuned. Let’s Jump Right In.

Welcome to short-term rental riches will 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 short-term rental Riches podcast. I’m really happy you’re here and I’m happy to be back in Columbia. I’ve been traveling around a lot. A little too much. I would say it feels good to have a home base, doesn’t it? I gotta say I’m pretty nomadic and I have been for years and years but it’s just nice to come back to a place that you love. And have a home but I learned a lot over the last five weeks. I stayed in a lot of different accommodations throughout six countries and quite a few different cities stayed in over five or I stayed in five airbnb’s and quite a few hotels. So I want to shed some light on the experiences that I had and I want to give you five things that you can do to make sure you’re guessing experience better. And I want to give you five things to make sure you are not doing because at the end of the day if our guests are not having a good time if you’re not enjoying themselves, if they’re not having a good guest experience, well then you’re going to get a bad review and we all know what that means. Right? That means less occupancy and lower daily rates and less money in your pocket.

So it was such a whirlwind went to a lot of different places started in Spain, flew into Spain, then headed to Bulgaria and then Romania and then turkey and then Georgia. In Greece, and then back to Spain. And then, to the US. Oh gosh, it’s exhausting just thinking about that, but I had a fantastic time. Fantastic time. And I love traveling, that’s why I got into real estate, right? And fortunately, everything has gone really well, and it’s allow me to be able to do that, but it’s even better now because I get to travel and stay in all these accommodations and it helps improve my business, my short-term rental business, there’s a reason that are being MB puts so much emphasis on the experience, that’s how they started. And that’s why they’ve grown so much because you can have a much different experience in an Airbnb than you can in a hotel. I think we all know that if you’ve been in the short-term Rental World for a long time, you can stay in a tree house. There’s not a lot of Hotel treehouses, although there are a lot of glamping places coming up and there’s just so many different types of rentals out there.

But it really does come down to the Ends. And that’s why Orion be has been so successful. That’s why they changed their search or added to their search recently to add so many categories, so that we don’t all keep going back to the same types of places. So that we may be stay in a castle one day or we stay out in a glamping Resort and the desert somewhere. So they know the value of experiences and we need to know the value as well. There’s some people that get this right that know this really well and these are the really nice. Nice. Luxurious hotel chains have been around for a long time. There’s a reason, someone might spend a thousand dollars a night to stay in a hotel and it’s because they’ve been there before they had a great experience and they believe in that brand. So we have a little harder time is short-term rental host, proving that but there are definitely some things that we can do to make sure we’re on that same level. All right, five things that we can do to make sure that our guests have a great experience. Number one, we need to set clear expectations, they guess needs to arrive and get what they were expecting to get if we drop the ball somewhere, our photos aren’t accurate or we left out some information or a listing and a guest shows up and things aren’t as an expected that’s going to start their trip off the wrong way. And that’s really going to hurt their experience. That’s a hard one to come back from the next thing.

Number two is that we need to have clear communication, so this is sort of in line with expectations, but I’m referring more to our communication with our guests. So that’s the messages we’re sending to them, that were communicating with them, is that all text and automatic looking messages. We don’t want to do that. We don’t want someone to feel like they’re talking to a robot, right? We want everyone to feel unique and not like they’re just another number.

So one of the best things we can do with our communication is just make sure that it’s personal and now I know that’s hard to do if you’re trying to scale, but it’s something that really is necessary. So, find out why the guest is coming to town, and that’s an easy way to add some Personal Touch into your messages. Number three is consistency, so we need to be consistent in order for our guests to have a good experience and this is sort of in line with The other two expectations and communication. Let’s say, our guest has a great first day and they’ve enjoyed everything, and we’ve been communicating with them and giving them recommendations whatever they ask for. And then day two, they just get crickets and they can’t get in touch with us. Well, that’s not gonna be very good. We’ve got to be consistent, right? So number four. Did they put some thought into the property? No one likes to show up to a blank slate with the bed a nightstand and no artwork nothing to draw your attention, right? Just feels like you’re staying in a decorated bresson sell, I guess. And this is the way a lot of hotels, are right? A lot of traditional older, or Budget Hotels, they have a bed, they have a bathroom, they have a little mini fridge. That’s about. All they have. That doesn’t really lead to a good experience. Not to say that. Everything else that hotels doing, can’t lead to a good experience but that definitely doesn’t add to it.

We’re running an Airbnb. When we’re running a short-term rental, this is one of the areas where we can really shine against our hotel competitors. I stayed in one for example but we stayed in a bunch of cool ones. But staying in one and Romania that used to be a wine cellar. So it was down in the basement but they still figured out how to get light down there. Had curved brick ceilings. I don’t know how old this place was but maybe got hundreds of years in this really old town brosh. So if I don’t know if I’m pronouncing it right, but it really cool. It’s actually near where Dracula’s castle was. We went and checked that out but we don’t all have that luxury to just put an Airbnb in an old wine cellar, right? But we can add things in our Furnishings that are going to really, add to the experience. So number five, the fifth thing that we can do to make sure guess have a good experience. Is make sure that they have a good night’s sleep. Now, I know that’s not really experienced related per se, but if our guests aren’t getting enough, sleep, they’re not going to enjoy much of anything, right? You know, when we are really tired, it’s just hard to be in a better mood. So we want to make sure they’re having a good night’s sleep, and we can do that by using the mattresses that we recommend. If you haven’t seen recommended resources yet, you can go to rest methods.com you can see the exact mattress that we use. You want to make sure that you’re using good sheets and you have blackout curtains and that there’s not a lot of noise in there.

So we got to make sure that A good night’s sleep because if they don’t, we can do everything else and our guests are not going to have a good experience. So just to recap on those real quickly, we want to make sure that we have clear expectations. We want to make sure that we have really good communication, and we don’t sound like a robot. We’re adding, some sort of Personal Touch in there. We need to be consistent, very important. We need to be consistent. We want to put some thought into our design. Add something that makes it a little unique just at least one thing that captures your guests attention also makes for a good photo. And then lastly, we want to make sure that our guests have a good night’s sleep so make sure that your bedding and your bedrooms are set up properly. Ok. Now for the other side of the equation, 5 things that are going to take away from your guests experience of five things that we can avoid doing. Number one is too much automation.

Now you’re probably thinking especially if you listen this podcast for all Tim, you are the biggest hypocrite. You try to automate everything and I do I try to automate as much as I can, but I still understand that we have to have a personal touch. So my amazing receptionist team, sends personal messages to our guests and it really goes a long way. Of course, we automate a lot of messages to, but those are generic messages like check-in instructions and check out instructions. So don’t automate everything. Make sure you still have a personal touch in their number to a second thing. That is really going to take away from a guest experience. This is a big No-No and that’s if you have some sort of Remnant from a past guest in there, or if this is a personal property of yours that you stay in personally you’ve got a bunch of family photos or something like that. That’s going to take away from the experience, right? We want our guests to walk into the properties and half of blank slate.

We want them to be able to Create that experience. We don’t want things. Making them think of other people’s experiences, for example, photo of you on a vacation in Hawaii. So we don’t want that. We don’t want any sort of remnants of other guests in there. So make sure you’ve got those things taken out. The third thing that takes away from guest experience, and this is by no means an exhaustive list of everything. I there’s a lot that goes into experiences, right? But these are some easy things that we could do. The third one is making sure we don’t feel too much like a company. Now, if you only have one property or a few properties, then you’ve probably got this one handled right. Unless you, have a property management company handling up for you, it’s very possible. They could be adding too much Company Feel in there. So what do I mean by company? Well, is your profile photo, a logo of the company? Do you have a bunch of policies when the guest checks in, does it say company policy says that you can’t do this for that or is that a way that your Communicating and messages. Well, if it is take note of that and try to remove as much as that company, vibe that you can, we want to have our operating procedures set up as best as we can and the way good companies do that. But we want to take that company, feel out of it. So that’s number three, number four for things that you can do, that’s really going to take away from your guest experience or really not give you the opportunity to give your guests a good audience.

And that is, if you don’t have any recommendations, you want to make sure that you’re recommending things, this is something that we can get personal with right. This is my favorite Mexican restaurant because I love their guacamole. They make it by hand, you will love it. It’s delicious things like that. Having some cafes and we talked a lot about recommendations and guide books in the past but have some of those in there and even better, if your guest tells you why they’re coming to town, I always recommend that you maybe it’s to view a local tourist attraction or something like that. If you can Custom, Tailor, a recommendation that might fit in their schedule. Whoo, that’s a big one. That’s very personal and that’s going to add to the guest experience. So make sure that you have recommendations. We do that in two forms. One is we have a single page print out in the property that has top three, cafes top three restaurants and a bunch of little bullet points for some walking distance, rest. Durant’s, or locations, grocery stores, pharmacies things like that. But then we also have a digital guide book and sky’s the limit with your digital guidebook. You can put in as much as you want in there. So, make sure you have recommendations to provide a good experience for your guests. And number five, this is kind of in line with communication and guess messages but we want our guests to feel like we care about them, right? So this happened to me while I was staying in one of these.

Airbnb is recently is that they set the checkout message, like, two days before ever going to check out. And what, you know what I was thinking is like, oh wow, they really aren’t too worried about me staying in this property. If they’re already telling me how to leave, that’s just what I was thinking. So make sure that your automated messages are set up to go out at the right time. We send our check out messages the day, someone’s checking out just a couple hours before as a friendly reminder so make sure to double check your messages just to recap.

Those Five things that will take away from our guests experience. That’s too much automation. So no Personal Touch whatsoever. Number two is some sort of remnant of Prior guess experiences or your experiences if this is a personal property so make sure you’ve got a clean slate so someone can build and make their own experience. Number three is having a company feel. Now, that’s not to say that having a company, feel means you’re going to have a bad experience but guests like a Small touch, especially on the Airbnb, platform other OTAs, other platforms, attract, a different type of guest booking.com, for example, is more traditionally people that were staying in hotels, so that might not be as important, but in the Airbnb World, it started with experiences and personal host. And so, if you are operating a company, try to take as much of that company, feel out of there as you can. Number four and this is a big one is not having recommendations or enough recommendations.

So make sure you’re I’m through periodically and updating these and adding a few in there and not just the recommendations, but why you like them? And the number five is sending out check out messages or some sort of communication that lets your guests know that they’re not really valued, right? And they’re kind of just another number, they’re just another reservation. So we want it to be as personal as possible. I hope that gave you a little more insight into experiences. It really is one of those things that can really Drive your income up can really drive your occupancy up and we want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to make sure our guests have an amazing experience and they keep coming back. So, one thing happened during my travels, these last five weeks that really affected my experience and I didn’t mention it here but it is something that I guarantee. We’ll get you a bad review. So sorry. But you’re just going to have to stay tuned until next week until then I hope you are having a wonderful day.

Thanks for tuning in, I’ll talk to you soon. Want to get on the fast track to Financial Freedom through short-term rentals what all starts with the properties you acquire. But you want to make sure that you acquired the right properties, I want to give you my ebook. That will show you how to do just that. There is no charge to my gift. You for being one of our subscribers, just go to restmethods.com. that’s REST Methods.com

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