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

Welcome back to the short-term rental riches podcast another week another topic relevant to your short term rentals of course this week we’re talking about booking.com you’ve probably heard of them they’re one of the largest O. T. A.’s or online travel agencies as a referred to in the world they have lots and lots of listings and I want to talk about whether or not you should put your rentals on there for more exposure I have used booking.com in the past so I can be speaking directly from my experience so let’s just go ahead and get right into it well I’d say as investors are always looking increase our revenues in a stable way right and so by going on more and more O. T. A.’s or online travel agencies that’s a way for us to easily increase our exposure to our short term rentals which means we’re gonna more people looking at them more demand which means which will run our properties for more if we have more people looking at it so I have experimented with this at thon I’ve been on lots and lots of different listing sites and tiny ones you pry never heard of but also a lot of the big ones currently I’m on Airbnb I’m on VR BO and homeaway which also links into the Expedia network so if you’re on VR BO he maybe didn’t know but you’re also on Expedia and I’ve also been on booking.com and tripadvisor I’ve been on booking.com twice I just give me another chance I guess I’d say so spoiler I’m no longer using booking.com but I want to tell you why and some things to consider I want to go over the set up if you’re considering using booking.com some of the pros and cons in jest how to decide if we should go on more listing channels or not so let’s just start with some of the stats book it not come. Com is one of the largest OTA’s in the world they have over 28000000 listings now it used to be a lot more hotel focused and there’s still tons of hotels on there actually would say that probably dominates our listings but now they’ve got it all right to compete against Airbnb and compete against B. R. B. L. you can run apartments on there you can rent all sorts of different types of listings but they historically have been geared more towards hotels and so you are going to find if you go on booking.com that the gas that are booking your properties they’re gonna have a little bit more of a hotel type experience in mind actually you know one of the payment options for example on booking.com is for guests to pay at your property now if you’ve been listening to show for a while you know that we try to automate all of our operations so we use digital locks and clearly freezing digital locks with a self check and we’re not gonna be accepting payments right that’s more for hotel that has a lobby that has a staff so let’s talk a little bit more about the set up they have what they call their extranet which is for property owners it’s your – board for booking.com where you can see all your listings you can see your cancellation policies you can see payment options stuff like that. So keep in mind if you’re thinking about going on booking.com or branching out maybe you’re just on Airbnb right now there’s lots of software to help us integrate the calendars you can use a host fully your host away your Porter or smart B. and B. these are all management software programs it’ll help you integrate those but the calendar integrations not really the most difficult part that’s actually pretty easy what becomes a little more difficult is that you’re gonna have a whole different set a cancellation policies they’re not going to be exactly like Airbnb is are not going exactly like home ways to keep that in mind you also have this different type of gas that’s booking a rental it’s going to have more experience or I guess if they’ve been using booking.com for a while they probably stayed more hotels so if you’re renting an apartment or whatever it is that might be a little new to them and that again is creating like an expectation there so their expectations might be different than what it actually is so keep that in mind price scene and accepting payments now this is a tricky one with booking.com if you’re using VR BO and homeware already you know the date we accept payments on behalf for gas most all of us are using stripe for that straight makes it really easy it’s a one of the biggest payment processing company in the world. So they integrate with all these property management programs as well so that’s what we use but booking.com’s gas I guess I would say this is in a nutshell the reason why I’ve stopped using booking.com for the second time is that we get a lot it invalid payments we get people giving us credit cards that don’t have them insufficient funds or whatever it is I feel like there’s more ways that people have figured out how to kinda tricked the booking.com system so we just had a lot of experience a bad experience with gas and invalid cards and trying to call them and then the contact was an invalid number it just became quite difficult so that’s the big reason that we’re not using them now but it doesn’t mean that they’re not right for you and of course I’ve got dozens of properties now so it’s a little harder to track each property versus maybe only have a couple that’s going to be a lot easier right you can you can mail these things down right away so that was a big reason for me I’m always looking for partner programs and software and things that allow us to continue scaling in creating a great guest experience so cannot calm just hasn’t been that for me we did get a lot of bookings from there I would I would say that so if you know it comes down to sh should you go on these other artists well are you not stain booked if you’re not same book there could be several reasons for that not enough listing exposure clearly can be one of them but I might be your pricing might be reviews so check those things first before you decide to go to other travel agencies other O. T. A.’s increase your exposure that way or add your exposure because you’re gonna have to monitor different cancellation policies and different types of gas and different ways of accepting payments all these things. It just gets a little more complicated so a few of the pros I mean with booking.com they are a huge network they’re huge so you will get bookings if you on booking.com you well they just they have a huge network they have 247 support so they have a huge network I guess the cons is that you know we get lots of bad payments we get some people trying to cheat the system a little more often than they would maybe with another platform you have to manage all those different policies cancellation policies also your reviews are going to be coming into a different channel now see got to check that there’s definitely some pros if you want more exposure and you have the resources to manage these gas and just stay on top of those payments then I’d say go for it try him out hopefully using a property management’s offer already and you can integrate really easily you don’t have to re create your whole listing with booking.com there you have the ability to sync with a lot of these property management software so they can pull the information for you so that’s a pro as well so the pros you huge network more exposure and you will get bookings the cons gotta keep track all these other things you might have some gas or kinda trying to be a little sneaky you know I guess ultimately comes down to are you staying occupied with your short term rentals and you’ve already ticked all the other boxes you’re given a great guest experience your pricing is in line with what the market can charge if you’re doing those things and you want a lot more exposure check them out it really comes down to whether your staying occupied or not I would say 1 more pro to being on multiple platforms is that you’re not reliant on 1 if you have an issue with their baby for example do you guys listen the podcast for a while you know they took my listens down on 1 of my accounts without telling me without notifying me on the dashboard I lost in the tens of thousands of dollars was only down for a week before we notice so. It does create more exposure and it lessens your risk you know being on one platform so that’s another benefit so check it out if you’re interested it could be right for you or you might have similar experiences I just want to share my recent experience wherever you are out there thank you for listening if you guys haven’t already had the S. T. E. R. R. riches.com that’s our website that supports the podcast in our you tube channel and we have tons of great resources on there in fact I have a section on there just called recommended resources and I have all my favorites offer programs and books and all these things that I’ve been using to build my business so check that out if you haven’t if you haven’t left this review would really appreciate it until next time hopefully guys are doing well with your real estate portfolio. It’s a wonderful there’s so much money to be made the short term rentals but it all starts by having the right property if you guys haven’t yet seen my free ebook on our website rest methods.com head over there and get a copy it’s going to break down what I look for in a property in some great short cuts so that you don’t have to spend hours and hours researching at over rest methods.com and you can grab your free copy there if you want a crash course in everything I’ve really learned to short term rentals in over 5 years managing over 15000 Gasol recorded on our last live event I am happy to say we broke it down really nicely into a bunch of different modules that you can watch at your own pace it takes you from start to finish from finding a property we talk about analyzing the property but then also some of the more important pieces how to find your team and how to set up everything so that you can run your operation is passively as possible and free up your time you can find that it rests methods.com forward slash virtual.

RELATED PODCAST EPISODES

• Episode 78: Why I’m Switching Property Management Platforms (And Who I Went With)
• Episode 38: Is a Short Term Rental the Best Use for Your Real Estate‪?‬
• Episode 33: When Should You Put Your Properties in an LLC‪?‬‬
• Episode 16: This Should Make You Excited About STRs‬
• Episode 09: Searching for a Property? Use a Broker or Real Estate Agent‬