There are so many little features in Airbnb and booking.com and Expedia and all these different booking sites. It seriously a pain in the butt if you’re trying to track them all at the same time, but there’s one that’s really important and the one that might actually be required and that’s instant book depending on which OTAs you’re using. So, I want to talk all things instant book, this week, some pros, and cons, some tips, if you are using in some book, which I recommend Come in but there are a few situations when I don’t think you should be using in some books will talk about all of those this week. Stay tuned.

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 happier here again, I made this podcast into short bite-sized episodes so that you can get the most benefit from the least amount of time. So, I hope it’s been working that way for you. We are just in a fast-paced society. Aren’t we want everything like now or we want? And yesterday, we want to really quickly and when we don’t get it right away or we don’t get a response. Right away, that impacts our experience. And one of the things that makes it much easier for us to book, an Airbnb or book.

A short-term rental is instant book you’ve seen it before. Undoubtedly, if you’ve used Airbnb, most listings have instant book turn on and I do recommend it at the end of the day, but there are some cons to it, there’s some things we want to keep in mind. There’s some settings, we might want to put in place, we’re going to talk about all those this week. Let’s start off with the Rose. First of all, it’s going to maximize your bookings, right? If someone has to go through more steps to book your property, then less people are going to book it, that’s just how it works. It’s the same way if there’s a check out card online and you have to jump through 10 Hoops to get to your payment method and the chances you actually completing that purchase are going to be a little less than if you just went straight to a checkout cart, right? The easier. It is for someone to purchase or reserve our property the more as Patient’s. We’re going to get and Airbnb appreciates this right, they want more bookings.

So, the side benefit to this not only is it easier for guests to make reservations but Airbnb encourages us to have in some book turned on and so they actually boost our search rankings. So just by turning that little button on you’re going to get more visibility if you are also on other platforms Expedia, for example, requires you to have instant book. So, you’re to be limiting yourself a little bit. If you’ve got instant book, turned off, not only on Airbnb but because the fact that you just can’t go on some of these other listing sites, at the end of the day, this just it just makes it easier for guests and it makes it easier for hosts. It also makes it easier for our host to achieve super home status or Premier host status from BRB 0 because we’re getting Fast Response times. We’re getting more, bookings, all things that they require in their metrics? For determine whether or not we should be a super house.

There’s always a flip side. There’s always two sides to everything, right? And what are the cons to instant book? Well, number one, I’d say, probably going to have a little more cancellations, if it’s easier to book, people don’t think through it as far as they would. If there was a reservation process where they actually had to communicate with someone sometimes, they booked the wrong date, sometimes its Brooke, you know, the wrong place, whatever it happens to be. So, you’re probably going to see. A little more cancellations, but depending on how your cancellation policy set up, hopefully you’re not losing any money from that.

So, I think a very obvious con is that we have a little bit less control with who’s booking our property, right? If they can instantly book it and we don’t have the chance to communicate with them to find out why they’re coming to town or all those things before they make the booking. Then we lose a little bit of control, but that doesn’t mean we lose all control. So, I’ve got some tips for dealing with our instant book. Yes, I think the first one is just make sure you have good house rules set up and you can check the show notes in this episode. I’ve got my house rules there. That are very complete. Make sure you take a look at them. And if you’re missing any of those that are relevant, your property, put them in there because that is our chance, right? That is one way to protect ourselves from a guest. Maybe that we didn’t want, but we can also set up some dialogue as soon as someone makes the booking and find out why they’re coming to town. And get a little more information on that.

Another thing that we can do to help protect ourselves from maybe not an ideal in simple. Guess is just set some additional requirements so we can request their full name, all their contact information. Of course, we can also require brief introductory message now. Of course, they can just send a message. Says Hi in Ames John, I’m coming on Friday, but hopefully we get a little more information there at least to get the dialogue going. And then again, we got to make sure that we Out of our house rules in place and that they protect us in all scenarios.

Now, the other thing we can do is if worse comes to worse and we are just not comfortable with our guest is we can actually have their reservation canceled. So more on that in a quick second..

We covered a lot of topics on this podcast and a quick action will bite size format. So, you have the tools to acquire and improve your short-term rentals on your own. But if you want to go deeper, I’ve a special invite for you. Join us once a month that are rested investor Clubhouse, where we go in-depth on an individual topic, everything from analyzing properties to improving operations and our bottom line, we cover it all the clubhouse members and myself are sharing best practices to earn the most Revenue with the least amount of headache and I would love to have you there as well. That’s restmethods.com forward slash Rich. Our lives are shaped by those. We spend the most time with. So, if you want, to take your Str to the next level, come join us. Hope to see on the inside.

Okay, so if worse comes to worse and a guest book, our property and we are just not comfortable. We actually can have their reservation, canceled penalty-free, as long as it’s for a few specific reasons. So, the first one is, if the guess is unreliable or they have bad reviews. So, if they are not responding to any of our messages, you’re going to want to involve Airbnb, and if you’re uncomfortable with that, guest background the reviews, and you’re not getting communication. Well, you can have that reservation canceled.

Hopefully, you have enough time to figure that out so that you can get your calendar book back afterwards. Another reason that we can use to have a reservation. Canceled penalty-free is if we feel that a guest is likely to break our house rules for whatever reason that is. So again, it’s better to have more house rules than less, right? So, let’s just say for example, guest says, I’m coming in for a bachelor party with MI6, Friends or something, something like that real basic, but it breaks your house rules. Maybe your properties only set up for guests, or maybe your house rule says absolutely no parties and they have party written right in their message. Well then that is a reason you can use to get that reservation canceled. So, at the end of the day, instant book I am all for it. I use on all my properties. The only property that I don’t actually is one in Brazil and it’s because it’s got a little more difficult entry access and they actually have to meet with a manager down there and it’s a little less seamless.

So, there are a couple scenarios where you might not want to use instant book and I’ll just give you a couple of those here. One is, if you only offer long-term stays right, if your minimum stays 30 days or 60 days or 90 days, then you want a vet that guests a little more, right? And you want to find out why they’re coming and all those processes and hopefully have them fill out a lease as well, which we do for all my properties, if the reservations 30 days or more. So that’s one scenario where you only do long-term, reservations 30 days or more as an example and you won’t have a little more time to verify and communicate with that guest.

And then the other reason is kind of similar to my Brazil. Property example is that if there’s some sort of challenge with the property or special feature or something, like that, that you’re going to need to communicate with the gassed or get across. Maybe it’s a property that’s just really hard to get to. If you listen to my episode on a property, I stayed out and a jungle and Columbia. I mean, if someone booked it today and good luck getting there today, that thing was so hard to get to. It was beautiful. If you want to check it out, it’s episode 139. But that’s another example where you wouldn’t want to have someone instant booking at least for a same-day reservation because it’s just a challenge lunge to get to that property. Or if they need more information, that you can’t give real quickly.

And just a quick message, then that might be a scenario where you wouldn’t want to use instant book as well. So, if you’re not using instant book right now, I’d make sure that you check all your settings, do, whatever you can to be able to use instant book because it’s definitely going to help you. But there are a couple situations where maybe you don’t want to. So, I hope that shed a little bit of light on instant book. I hope your properties are saying very Full and until next time, I hope you have a wonderful week.

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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