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

Welcome back to the short-term rental riches podcast so happy you’re here again as always today I’ve got another awesome tool for you to help with this increased demand that we’re seeing hopefully you’re seen as well domestic travel is up and it’s going to continue to go up fingers crossed knock on wood and as restrictions loosen up and life goes back to normal so we need to gear up so that we are ready for this new demand one of the things that’s going to help us do that that helps us operate our short term rentals and that helps us make it as passive as we can is a guide book a simple little guide book that literally only takes 15 minutes to set up with some of the tools available today and it has such a big impact because our bookings are reservations and how occupied our properties are is based off our reviews right and our reviews are based off the guest experience and a guide book does a lot for guest experience when everybody started that’s what it was all about yeah things have changed a little bit more and and Airbnb is are almost becoming more of you know like in a commodity like hotel space but no doubt about it a guide book and a digital guide book gone are the days of paper formats I’ll tell you about a little cheat sheet that I keep in the rentals but for the most part it’s just a digital guidebook so I want to give you the company that I use how I set mine up and just some of the main points that you. Can user guide before I use one that’s made by host fully like all software for the short term rental industry they’ve come a long way and it is really good and it’s really easy to use and it’s really easy for our gas use which is super important so what are some of the things that we use them for well we can use them for checking instructions we can use them for our local guide or local recommendations which I highly suggest that you’re doing you may need to update a few of them after cove ID unfortunately a lot of businesses have not made it and I got a feeling a lot more not gonna make it so just keep it up to date so if you’ve got someone coming to town you’re not leading them astray into the wrong place so of course we can use it for restaurants we can use it to make it easier for guests to find your property so that hopefully it has GPS plugged right in there so they can pull the property address and they can go right there a really cool thing with host fully that I’m not sure about other guidebook companies is that you can require that your gas agree to some sort of terms and conditions or what I’ve done is put my house rules into the guide book so this is how I set up I send it out via taxed through my management software which goes out automatically but hopefully provides a link so you could send that link out whichever way is easiest for you whether it’s strictly through a rental platforms like Airbnb or through your property management system or maybe you’re just texting them so you can send the Mattacks they open it up with mine they’re asked to agree to the house rules that is the same house rules they saw when they made their original reservation but it’s just one more spot to remind them that this places them for parties would allow smoking there but what’s even better than them seen this again is that you get to collect their email. 2 and as you know some of the listing platforms don’t make it very easy for you to get your gas contact information well this is a really easy way so if you want to do marketing down the road you have a whole list of your gas that have stayed with you that have used your guide book so when do I send it out well as we know guests don’t always read to how her communications and fortunately but the time when they are most aware is right when they make the reservation and right before they check in that changes with age range a little bit I think millennials for the most part checked very last minute but if you have a vacation rental or somewhere where someone is booking way further out in advance they’re probably gonna be planning on it a lot more verses a business traveler for example so they may be looking for this right out the gate so I send it out right when I guess makes reservation goes right out in one of my automated emails and says Hey here’s a link to a guide book I’ve been working on it’s not perfect sense it’s always changing so if you have any recommendations please let me know something simple like that and I send it out via text message but then I also send it out 2 days before the check and so they’ve got it right on their phone and it’ll get someone excited about common I I try not to make mine too crazy because sometimes when we have information overload we’re not as happy with the decision we made just because we knew we had so many more options so I definitely put in a good handful of restaurants and I’ll put in my top ones so my top 3 restaurants all labels you know this is my top one for this is my top on for that my top 3 cafes I love going to cafes hopefully as the world continues open up post code 19 we can go back to hanging out in cafes read and drink and some some good coffee shop in my top cafes top things to. Do and just a little blurb about them a link of phone number whatever it is to make it as easy as possible for your gas now that same info I also do a little cheat sheet that I live in the apartments all put my top 3 restaurants a top 3 cafes and also a short list of places they can walk to that is totally dependent on where your property is but for mine Westermann urban areas so I put local places they can walk to and you know it’s crazy even if your apartments not perfect the bang for your Buck that you get out of a guide book goes so far we get so many great comments right all I love your recommendation for so and so or thanks for the handy guide book you know we used it the whole time it’s just so easy to do and you really can’t set it up very quickly and free hopefully offers a free guide book if you only have one property if you have more they have other options but it’s very inexpensive for the value that you’re getting out of it. Now it is a nother piece of information that we need to monitor right so for scaling for adding lots units or if that’s our plan the more different pieces of information we have the harder it is to monitor so what I’ve done with some of mine is if I have multiple units in a building for example I might set one guide book up but for the whole building so it doesn’t have the specific door code which we don’t really want to give to our gas too far in advance anyway so I don’t even include that in there but we can certainly have the property information where to park the local attractions and restaurants and cafes in anything else that has to do with your property that they should know about that is the beauty of a guide book you can answer so many of your guests questions before they ask them and that makes the experience for your gas better and that makes your experience better as a host and your job easier and it makes it easier to scale so I highly highly recommend checking out host fully and I’m not an affiliate of them at all I’m just saying that I think it’s a really good tool and if you don’t use theirs you should definitely use one from another company it’s it’s almost a must now hotels have been doing this forever right most the time they had a printed out in the actual hotels although with our new cleanliness standards those are actually going away to and that’s something really interesting that I will talk about next week is how hotels and short term rentals are merging together they have been for a long time but especially with what happened with Kogan 19 now they’re merging together even more they’re becoming more similar so we’ll talk about that next week but hotels we can learn a lot from them they’ve had guide books for a long time they have typically a person. In that you can ask that knows the area but having a platform from your guests ago do they can open up on their smartphone it’s mobile friendly that is really the easiest way so if you want to provide an even better experience for gas make sure that you have a digital guide book it’s easier for them to use that has your local knowledge and your recommendations echo so far for someone coming into town that that doesn’t know maybe anything about the area so put your favorites in there and try not to overload it but also make a custom you know in may and put a note in there why you love those tacos so much or why you think that little Korean hole in the wall place is fantastic and they would never find it had you not told them people loved that you know those little things make the experience and that creates a good review and good reviews crate bookings and bookings with good reviews and high occupancy is the name of the game that’s why we’re here right to build up our portfolio to generate passive income which this guidebook will definitely help you you can automate a lot of the messaging and information they’re going to need for your property so check it out you have to you have to it’s it’s such a good tool closely is the name of the one I use I will put that in the show notes and aside from that. Hope you are doing well out there in. Want to get on the fast track to financial freedom through short term rentals what all searching the properties you. You want to make sure that you fired right. To give you my. Yes there is no charge to you for being one of our subscribers just the rest. R. E. S. T..

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