How to Opt Out of Airbnb Services and Build Your Own

Airbnb just made their move. They've rolled out what they are calling services, which is massages, chefs, facial trainers, all bookable by guests, straight through the app. And here's the thing. They didn't ask you. They don't need your permission. And they're not cutting you in. It's happening in your property and on your watch. And you carry the risk. This isn't about improving guest experiences, about control. Their control, not yours. And let's be real, they've shown their hand. They're not building this for you. They're not here for those who are running actual business. They are building all of this for the hobbyist hosts. So tonight isn't just a call, it's a line in the sand. And we are going to show you how to opt out of Airbnb services, how and why you need to do this. And then I've got an absolutely amazing person to the right of me, Annie from the host co is going to join me to walk you through how to do this properly, your way where you get all of the benefits in return. And again, this is such an important one. I put the poll out. So many people wanted to hear about this and I'm very excited to dig in. So as we are coming in everybody, I just want to get your opinion. Where and how do you think about Airbnb services? Pop in the chat. Do you like it? Do you not like it? What's your opinions and most importantly, what's your question? So Annie, as we do get started on that, can you just please give a super quick introduction of who you are, the company that you had and and when did you hear about Airbnb services and what has your week been since?

Hey everybody, I am Annie Sloan, CEO and co founder of the host company and we are a company that connects amenities and services and allows you to provide your own services to guests. And I will tell you, we've actually been talking with the Experiences team for quite a long time. I have worked embedded at Airbnb. I am in the Bay Area as well. So we knew this was coming. But everything in the last week since it's been live. What we didn't know is one, that Airbnb is not providing any amount of revenue to you and also two, they are not providing any visibility to you of who books and they don't really give you a great way to do any curation of that services, those services. And then lastly, I'm also a short term rental host. I'm an Airbnb super host. I Also book on other channels. And my co founder in the host co runs a large property management company. So I will also say we feel your pain because we are in the same boat.

So just before we all jumped on this call today, Annie was actually speaking with the support team at Airbnb because we wanted to make sure that the advice that we give you is one that is up to date and live. Now, the context of this is that we are recording this on Monday 19th May at 6pm UK. All right, 20th, it may be different, 21st, it may be different. But this is the latest information. Now, what we want to do in this hour that we have together is we want to give you all the information, but most importantly, show you, A, if you want to, how to opt out and how to opt out the right way, and then B, how you can build your own. And we're going to explain the reasons why. So, Annie, from first and foremost, from the conversations that you have had, say that a guest would like to opt out of services, but most importantly, why, in your opinion, they should be opting out of Airbnb services as well.

So in my opinion and the opinion of so many of you, I think that have joined the call, um, you are, again, you don't have the control over the services. You are not able to share your personal recommendations, right? Which is generally what people want. And more than anything, you know exactly what your guests want and need. So, hey, for example, a service might be you're on an island off the coast of Florida and no one can drive on the island, right? You are probably, probably recommending that same golf cart guy five times a week if you got ten doors, right? Again and again and again. So you are able to decrease guest questions by providing those services and providing them in an automated way. The Airbnb services are not going to do any of that for you. It is kind of random services that you are not curating, right? The second reason why you probably do not want to do those services with Airbnb is it is no longer connected to you and you're listing specifically, right? So another example might be, you know, Hibachi night guy for, I don't know, family reunion or for your summer vacation, right? If you, as the property manager, the host, is recommending that service, it is connected to you. When your guest, two months later back at home is talking about it, they say, oh, you know, this listing, it connected us to this amazing service. If Airbnb is connecting that service, that guest is not thinking about your listing at all. They're thinking about Airbnb, right? That also is marketing. Like, hey, we have, if you are able to say to guests, we can connect to massage, Reiki, healer, wellness services, that is, we are connecting to those services versus, oh, Airbnb has some services over here. And then lastly, the reason, I mean, this is the big reason for people is revenue, right? If you're in a hotel, the hotel is making money off those services they're recommending, right? With Airbnb, you are receiving nothing. And again, you are getting the liability. There's obviously air cover, but we won't go into the depths of air color we cover. We could do an hour on that. But also, you know, they're saying, oh, the reviews, it won't affect your reviews. I think all of us know, I mean, I have a short term rental guest who's like, oh, they left the towels on the bed and not in the bathroom. Right. Your guest is not really going to understand the difference between those two things. And then you're, and you're allowing someone in there that you're not curating. So that's kind of a macro of why you will not want to use Airbnb services. And then we'll get into the other ways to do it. And I know Mark's going to tell us more about how to actually opt out even today. Services.

No. Fantastic. So just to jump on top of that, I, I went into all of the Facebook groups that I'm part of and I looked at all of the questions that were coming into my inbox and these are some of the top questions that were coming, coming through. Who are the service providers? How are they actually vetted? And again, I put my little marketing hat on and I've, I've actually submitted a listing to Airbnb and I will report back when I find out more about the questions that we asked. I've reached out to a few people who have been vetted and are on the site. They're yet to get back to me, but we'll find out more about that because that's a big concern. You think about it, you know, if you have got people coming into, into your house and, and they're not sort of vetted by you, then who is coming in? And that's a very important part. This is why companies like Truvy and all of those sort of guest verification companies are here because it's a big part of our insurance and what we do. Another one is can guests book these services at my property without telling me? Yes, they 100% can. But again, we're going to show you how to opt out of this. Number two, and this is probably a big one, if I was to opt out of Airbnb services. So I tell them that I, they don't want to be part of Airbnb services, will this affect my ranking on Airbnb? Now, I can put a little pin on this already. Both Annie and I are verified with different sources that, no, it will not affect your ranking on Airbnb in any way, shape or form. Which I know for a lot of people that was a big headache and a big conundrum because A, yes, you don't want to have Airbnb services valid for your property, but B, Airbnb, for whatever reason, they bring in a lot of your revenue and you didn't want that to be affected, which was totally understandable. Number another big question was, do I get a cut of the commission? So if a guest books on Airbnb services, do I see any money? No. Again, we're going to walk you through the, the benefits of how to do it your way. And again, we've got so many others. So again, I think we've covered a lot of ground here. Insurance is a tricky one. We're regulations and legal issues in many countries is a tricky one. And I think, again, not to slate Airbnb, but this is very, very common in how they, they make these sort of decisions. I think from a, a board level, from a shareholder level, when you're talking about the benefits of adding services as a product, it's a money making scheme. Hands down. It ticks a lot, a lot of boxes from, from what they want to achieve. But when you look at it from the actual practicalities of it, from, not just from Country Ride, but sometimes citywide, you do get into a lot of sticky issues with this. So again, what we want to do now is I'm going to share my screen. And again, Annie's just confirmed this and I've spoken to a few people. So this is how you, you opt out. So number one, what you need to do. And again, this may change tomorrow, this may change of next week. And I feel like this truly will change on how you do it based on your response. And I'm not just talking about Annie or Eyes, it's every single one of you. The 111 people are with us live now. The 240 people that have registered, every single host in the Facebook groups that are upset with this. You're gonna probably have to vote with your feet on this one. So the only way to opt out at the moment is you need to give them a call. So you need to call your Airbnb support, whatever phone number you can find in your extranet, that is the number two, call. It doesn't work as well if you message. It doesn't work as well as you email, you may find. And I've seen this a lot from the messages and the forums that I'm part of, is that when you call, you're going to speak to somebody who hasn't got a clue what Airbnb services is. And that's just the nature of it. It's such a huge company and you're gonna just have to say to them, listen, I want to opt out of Airbnb services. I do not want Airbnb services in my property. I want for you to mark it down as opt out. Okay. And they will probably make a note. They'll probably say, can you please message that in? But you got to start the initial with a conversation. Is that. Again, Annie, does that back up with what you've spoken about today?

Yes, exactly. Call, tell them you want to opt out. And in the language, in the FAC language, it says from Airbnb, tell us which services you would like to opt out of. Which is an unusual way to do it. But you can call and say, I would like to opt out of all blanket, all Airbnb services in my property. And what that does is it makes it so that your guest will not see those bookable services through their booking flow. And that's the main thing.

Yep. Okay, so let me just share my screen super quick. And this is the thing that backs you up doubly. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to share my screen and I'm going to show you my Airbnb Extranet. And again, this is just for one of my listings. But again, your PMS that you have got, whoever you are with, you should be able to do this through there. And it will automatically sync in. For those who need to go straight into the Airbnb Extranet, this is where you go. So go to listings, go to House Rules. And as you can see here in House Rules, it says pets, maximum number of pets, events, smoking, quiet, commercial number, check in. And then there's one here that says additional rules. In here is where you put in this copy. We do not permit any Airbnb services or experiences on this property, including third party bookings made through the Airbnb Experiences platform. Any guest who attempts to host or bring an Airbnb related service experience onto this premises without our prior written approval will have a reservation canceled immediately with no refund offered or issued. Now, this may seem a little bit wordy, but again, it just to back you up. And again, if you've got a property management software tool, whoever you may be, that may speed it up. Now, again, if you would like a copy of that description, then I'm. What I'm going to do is I've got it in my Instagram. So if you go to instagram.com forward/boostly you UK, so let me just type that in here and you can do this at any point over the next couple of hours. If you send me a message that just says rules R U L E S, just send me the message R U L E S, what I'll do is I'll. I'll put that house rules copy that I used put it onto a Google Doc and I'll send it to you and I'll show you exactly where to send that again. And again, if you're watching this back on the replay 100, just message me anytime instagram.com forward/boostly UK or just go on to Instagram boostly UK b o o s t l y UK and I'll get that copy to you. Now, the reason why you're doing that, yes, you may think that's a little bit overkill, but it's just covering your back. So you're going to call them. Like I said, they'll probably ask you to message you message. And then you put that on. Then that is giving you the, the protection that, that you need. Now, there's been a couple of questions coming in, Annie, so I just thought it'd be a really good time to sort of take off, tick off this. So here's, here's the first question. What happens if a guest is unhappy with the service? So an Airbnb service, do you think they're going to associate it with your Airbnb listing and your Airbnb stay? I feel like we've sort of, kind of unpacked this, but could you sort of, again, just like rewind it back and just sort of mention this a little bit more? So the trouble with Airbnb services and how it could potentially impact the guest review in your property when they come to leaving that review?

Yeah, I mean, this is, I will. This is my opinion on this, but as both a short term rental host and as a software owner in this space, is that your guest is going to is going to. Is going to think of those things as one thing. Right. Even if it is two separate systems. I think we all know reviews are a very funny thing. And people will focus on, they'll be like, oh, there were too many bugs and they're staying in the woods, guys. Right. So I, I think it will be very difficult to separate those two things, particularly if they had a bad experience with the service. Right. I imagine that Airbnb will have something that perhaps flags like, oh, these two things are separate, but we don't know. And also, I think we all know the trouble with getting reviews fixed. So something you probably just want to avoid in general until we know more.

Yeah. Okay, so I want to give you some stats because there was some really interesting articles that came out, everybody, since the back of last week, and this is why, yes, we want you to opt out of Airbnb services. And I would just really love to know if everybody could just give me a quick yes or no in our chat box. Have you already opted out of Airbnb services? Have you messaged them? Have you contacted them? Have you opted out? Just give me a yes or a no just so I can realize where we are with the, with the layer, the land here. And yes, we want to opt out of Airbnb services. We've shown you how to opt out of Airbnb services and the reason why. But here's some stats. 72% of travelers say they value experiences more than physical products when traveling. And number two, Airbnb's own data shows that guests are 3.5 times more likely to leave a five star review when in their stay is included a personal touch or local recommendation. So yes, on one side we are saying to opt out of Airbnb services, but whether they like it or not, they have now created a new category called services. And millions upon millions of people who use that app. Millions upon millions of people that will have seen their social media, millions of millions of people around the world who will have seen their adverts will now know about services. So whenever life gives us lemon, I love to turn it into lemonade. And so now this is a perfect time. If you've not done this before about creating your own in house services, and you probably already offering these, but you now need to make it mainstream in your market and you now need to make it front and center of what you offer because the benefits are there, Annie. So like I said, of all the people I thought to reach out to, I couldn't think of anybody better than Annie, who is obviously doing this on the day to day and this is what the host co is all about. So let's just go to the next part then. Why the host code? Why did you create it? Why for and how can we as hosts take advantage of this phenomenal marketing moment that we have to make sure that A, we can offer the services but B, get all the benefits on the back of it.

Mark, you are absolutely right. Your guests are now going to expect that they can connect to services, right? In general, that's going to be normalized, which is fantastic. The biggest part of this for the host co is is we know that no one knows your guests better than you. You are fielding their questions all day. You know exactly what they're going to ask. My rentals are in Joshua Tree Saturday night at midnight I'm going to get that text that says, hey, you know where we can buy firewood? And they're 30 miles from the store. And there I've had three bottles of wine. You know already I know that that's going to happen. And you know generally what your guests are going to want. So that is why amenities should be in your hands. That's the first thing. Like the power of amenities is one, they should be in your hands because you know what your guests are going to want. You know the five things that that's going to be, right? It's going to be in your area. Maybe it's people are asking me for massage, people are asking me for a parking spot, right? All these things are services. Everybody comes for a week and day four, they're dying for a midst day clean. So they're at the beach and they bring six kids, right? All of those things you are going to know, you're going to know, as I said earlier, the golf cart rental guy, you're going to know the restaurant that everyone asks about. So a big part of amenities is your recommendations, not Airbnb's recommendations. I went and looked. I'm in the San Francisco Bay area and I know it's going to grow. But there was like one wellness thing and it was like a psychic singer or, you know, something that I wouldn't want to show my guests. Right. The next part of that is amenities. Things like services, right? Like a massage, like a chef. Your guests might actually not book them that often, right. And we see that on our platform specific services like that they're like 10 to 15% of sales. But the important part is that they're in kind of the guest hierarchy of needs. And what I Mean by that is, you probably know my guests are going to want firewood. My guest, maybe they need a case of water because they're somewhere they can't drink the water. They're probably going to ask for a late checkout, right? Bundling amenities on a page where your guests can see the things you know they're going to want and then offering them extra services like, oh, massage chef, oh, we can get a yoga instructor for our girls weekend. Right? And having all those things together, it, one, it will bring you more money, but two, it's giving your guests an emotional connection to your unit. Right. And I am all about this. The emotional connection. I think most of us know guests often get more excitement from planning the trip and anticipating the trip than being on the trip. Often that's like a couple and one person is like doing all the planning. They're so excited. One person is doing their laundry at 1am for their 5am flight and it's like no idea where they're going, right? Kind of. That often is a couple dynamic, right? But when you are offering services that you are curating that you are showing to your guests that you're saying, this is connected to us and our unit that is actually getting people more excited about your listing. Like, they might not ever book the. You could say, like, oh, hey, there's a yacht charter and we can connect you to it. They might never book that, but the power of amenities is they know that's coming through you. So they already feel better about your listing. They feel stronger. Oh, look what we could do, right? Oh, we can get a natural wine sommelier for our girls trip, right? Or yacht. I know the yacht charters are really like kind of an out there example, but all of those things are going to give you better reviews, better rebooking, right? The other part of that is amenities are really amazing for marketing. So for example, someone comes and stays at your house and it could be if they're, you know, we're talking about Airbnb here, but direct booking as well. They come and stay at your house, they had a nice time, six months later you're going to send them an email because hopefully, you know, you've gotten them into an email stream. If you have an email that says, hey, early birds, 20% off this summer. It's not an exciting email. I mean, 20% also is a lot. You guys, you're discounting your brand, you're discounting your, your items. But if you say this summer we've got new connected wellness amenities, Reiki Healer, sound Bath. I mean, I'm in Joshua Tree, my properties. So it's all like, woo, woo examples, but things like, you know, this summer we're offering on delivery vegan charcuterie board, which is amazingly a thing that actually sells. But all of these things, if you are connecting them to your property, particularly if you're advertising them, it's getting people to come back and look at your website or even if it's Airbnb, it's coming, it's getting people to come back and look at your property and consider it. And that booking consideration is so much higher if you were giving them something new to think about and come back to when that is divorced from you. And then it's just Airbnb services. Totally different thing. Right. So another example is like I said that those guests saying, you know, we need a cleaning on day four, that's what they bring home and they talk to their friends about, oh my gosh, it was amazing, they had a cleaner come in on day four. You know, I got six kids or whatever. It was so cool. Right? So the power of all of those amenities is, is extremely important for you. As long as you are curating them yourselves. The next part of that is the control over those amenities. If you are doing this yourself, and we'll talk about, I'll show you how that works. You are seeing every single amenity. You are turning off what you don't want. Right? I don't want that. I don't want that. But you're also, again, nesting in, you know, extra rental damage protection, $30, 50, $1500 in services right next to maybe that massage therapist. But you're also seeing the entire conversation between that vendor and your guests. We're able to show you exactly when it's going to happen. Put it on your calendar. We can even move your calendar for you if it's like, oh, they need to stay an extra two hours. Right. So the control piece, the curation piece, and then obviously the revenue piece is part of it. You're going to increase your revenue from getting a percentage of vendor services, but. But you're also going to just be getting people to come back again and again to look at what's available. So if that's also a late checkout, if it's an extra night stay, if it's, you know, a deluxe pet experience instead of a pet fee where you're providing like two bowls that say, I love Sedona, Arizona, that is something that you are providing, that is an extra service. Right?

Yeah.

So that's My big soapbox for the power of amenities. It just goes on and on.

I think it all comes back to somewhere that we've. We've talked about for a long while, is that with services like you said, they're going to be bolted on with Airbnb services, like, this is the Airbnb Chef, this is the Airbnb Cleaner. It's like when we allow people to say, I've just stayed at an Airbnb, where if you flip it on their head and you brand it yourselves and you brand it as a part of you and your brand, then, you know, it could be the, oh, I got an Annie Chef. You know, I got an Annie massage, I got the Annie vegan board of all the cool foods you just described. Right? So it's about bringing it back to you, which will then make it a whole lot easier when it comes to marketing and, you know, filling your properties with bookings that are yours and not somebody else's is because they're relating it to you and not back to. Back to Airbnb. So there's some really, really, really good questions that are coming in now. What I'm doing is in the chat, I'm moving it to the Q and A, because we will answer those as we go, because there's some really, really good ones that I do definitely want to crack on with. But I feel like that, like I said, the most important thing is to make sure that A, you start offering if you haven't already, and if, B, if you are offering, you really do start talking about it. So let's just put the. The question to the chat. Who is already offering services? Not Airbnb services. Who is already offering services in house? Amenities, Cleaners, hairdressers, massages. Who is already doing it to give us a simple yes or a no in the chat? And there's been at least three questions asking this question. Number one, I am late to the call. Will this be recorded? Yes. And I'm going to make sure after the call and after I've got the kids to bed, because it's seven o' clock nearly in the UK here, I'm going to make sure you all get emailed a copy, whether you've tuned in live throughout or if you've missed a little bit. But please make sure that you stick around. And secondly, what I will say, I shared with you the exact copy to put on your Airbnb listing in your house rules to mean that you are going to be good by opting out of services. And if you want A copy of it. All you need to do is go to Instagram Boostly uk B O O S T L Y uk, hit the follow button, hit the message and just put house rules or Rules I U L E S. Do that and I'll make sure you get a copy of it in a few hours time. All right, let's just see. People are offering yes, parking spaces. 2 no, I'm not. Yes I am. Etc. Okay, so this is the cool next question for everybody who put yes, and this would be really kind, a nice little workshop that we can do together here. What are you offering? So put in the chat. Simple bullet points. What are you offering? Let's get some inspiration. We've got one in parking spaces, which is fantastic. And for everybody that put no, this will be your inspiration of what you can start to offer. Okay, Annie, so let's just do the assumption. Somebody who's watching this, they haven't got anything that we're offering right now. They want to get started. How can you a package it up, present it and how have you done this with the host co and feel free to share screens.

Yeah. First, I will also say, just for clarity's sake, there's two types of services that you can offer. There are services that we call post owned services. Your own services. Right? And these are things that are going to have extremely low risk to you. Midstate cleaning, linen refresh. Hey, extra beach towels. Really good one. Or also that, guess what, they lost your beach towels. You have more on site. Firewood. You can also add your own vendors. So extra recycling pickup. Right. If you've got somewhere where there's a party. Right. If you're allowing that kind of thing, your own vendors could be anyone within your ecosystem, within your team. Let's say your sister is a portrait photographer. You can add her to your post code store, which I'll sell you. And what it will do is it'll hold your guest's credit card information and it will push off that request to your sister. Hey, Annie, Sloan wants two hours of portrait photography at this place at this time. Can you fulfill this service? So that is like the ultimate control that you have of absolutely your own vendors. We see people in Florida who are like people lose their beach key all the time. Instead of having a runner go out and take it again, have a drawer that you can vend that item and when your guest purchases it, we can give them a code. Right. That can be, if you're not using Airbnb or other channels, a gift certificate for a future stay that can be tip the cleaner, that can be expedited returning of a package. I will tell you, this is like the ring a ding item that I see all the time now. Because someone wants their kid's toy, right? Or their laptop halfway across the country. You're a property manager, it takes you like half a day to go send that. In Landers, California, where our properties are, the, the post office, it's like two hours a day and you don't know which two hours it is like it takes a whole day to return a package. Things like that are host owned services. Vendor services are things that you are recommending that are local vendors in your area. So bike rental, kayak rental, massage, chef, etc. And those are services that are generally vendors that you are already aware of that you're recommending or you're using the host co and you are deciding, I don't want that one. Yes, I want that one. No, I don't want that one. Yes, we want baby equipment rental through babyquip, right? So I will show you what that looks like. But if you are like, I don't ever want anyone in my house at all, you can also just decide, I want to do these services that are late checkout baby equipment rental and midstate cleaning and I'm not going to do any of the other services. I will also say you probably have more services available to you that you already know. There are people on your team who would be happy to go get a birthday cake, right, at the store, right. They want to make 20 extra dollars, right. Or 40 extra dollars. We have campsites that use us. The guys hanging out at the campsite, the camp managers are like, oh yeah, we'll set up your fire for you before you get here. Yeah, we'll have a cooler full of ice when you get here. Those are awesome services. And those guys are probably sitting around kind of twiddling their thumbs, right? So it's taking what used to be kind of an awkward conversation and cash exchange and changing it into an upgrade and upsell, et cetera.

Yeah, I think you would be amazed. Sorry, before you go on, you would be amazed at what you are already doing that you can technically turn into an upgrade or an additional add on or a service experience. And a lot of you will be thinking, well, do people actually pay for this? Like the stats and the numbers are there. I know somebody that was up marking by 300% from what he paid. Birthday cake, birthday banners, etc, 300. And because it's around a celebration, little Timmy's Birthday, you've just drove three hours. You don't want to have a birthday cake sitting in a car for three hours. You don't want to have to worry about the balloons and stuff, etc. You want it to be a massive surprise. That smile on little Timmy as he walks through the door. That parent or parents will pay 300 markup for that, for that moment. And that's one little example. And I guarantee a lot of you are, are probably doing a lot of stuff that you do for free. And one of the advice that I give a lot is you've got a OTA booking package and you've got a direct booking package. So for example, if somebody books via Airbnb, the check in is the check in. But if they book via direct booking, they can have this package where they can get, you know, all the singing, all the dancing, bottle of wine, coffee, whatever you want it to be. And you can upsell that and people will 100, 100 by. So you'd be amazed. So that's fantastic. So we've gone through this. What's the next step, Danny?

So I'm going to show what a host co store looks like. Here we go.

So please keep coming in. I was going to say the, the chat is absolutely going bananas now with what they offer and somebody is offering boards. The thing that you talked about, Annie, I don't even know how to pronounce it. It looks lovely. I don't know what's on it. But the boards, the vegan board, somebody is offering them already.

So it's fun, funny, it is shocking. I mean, especially when someone is going hours away and they don't know what is nearby. The, the amount that people will spend. And I will also say this, all of these things that you are offering is. You're never nickel and diming anyone. I always say, don't ever sell anyone a toothbrush or a coffee pod, right? Much like hotels, when you walk into a hotel, you are checking in, they may have some things for sale. They then say, oh, here's our spa menu, right? Then they also say, you know, your room's not ready, the bar is right over here. If you want to, if you want to take your, kick your feet up. All of those things are upsells. All of those things. Would you like a nicer room? They're all upgrades to your say. And I think it's such a huge mindset shift to understand that and that your guests, they're like, hey, you know, they're time poor and cash rich when they're on a trip, they're like, oh, thank you for taking care of that for me. So that is the big mindset shift there. Just making sure you're positioning it as such. So this is what a host co store looks like that a host sees. Let's look at a guest view of this. So and I will also address the privacy policy stuff as well, but this is something that your guest often sees on their mobile phone. What we do is in your messaging, including your Airbnb messaging. You can say, hey, thanks for booking. We're so excited to have you stay. If you'd like to add any upgrades to or experiences or services unique to our property, if you'd like to add any of them to your stay, check out our store.

Okay, so let me stop you for one second because this. Pascal, this is your question. Seth, this is your question. Every single person who has emailed me, they say, are you going to cover Airbnb's new off platform policy? This is Annie covering it right now. So go to town on this.

And man, it has been a, it has been a wild month for all of us, hasn't it? So this is a host co store. It can be shared. We are a third party service. You can share our links across Airbnb, VRBO Direct, anywhere you want. It's essentially a website that is showing your guest experiences that are branded to your listing. So you can see this is actually one of my houses in Landers Joshua Tree area and you can offer products and services for their stay. Third party services, you can still book away off site. If it is something specific to Airbnb, that is a fee. Obviously, if it is a, if it is a mandatory fee, you should include it in the total cost of your stay. If you have a mandatory cost included. If it is an optional fee, what we do at the host company is we can push your guest to pay in the Resolution center for that fee. I would say always include that request. I'm going to go down low in this store. This store has got. I'm going to take you guys to a, a store with less stuff in it of mine. Shout out to any Oregonians there. If you're every. I think every place in the world has a place called Clear Lake. But for example, this is just speaking to fees very briefly. If there is a fee that you have and it is incredibly hard to chase down, they instant book, they forgot they had a pet. You know, they forgot they had a second pet that's £90. If you are using just the manual, chat in Airbnb, you are never. And hopefully you're using a property managed software. You're like, who was it? Especially if you got a lot of listings or you're co hosting. When did they ask? You're never able to track it down. So you can manage fee requests in your host co store along with amenities and then you can push your guest to pay for that fee when you approve it. You. That's the thing. You don't want your guests to just buy it. You can say, yes, we approve that extra guest and we will send them the instructions of where in Airbnb we can deep link into it and how much they should pay. That's one thing that you can do for. What are we. What are we calling it? The new privacy policy updates. But you also want a store that works across all of your. You don't want something that just works for Airbnb. Right. So we can parse out. Yes, I paid through. Yes, I booked through Airbnb. Yes, I did. The other thing, as I said earlier, if you missed it, is all of your guest services should be in one place and they should be big and they should be visual. Your guest is either, as we like to say, tired or drunk or both if they're on vacation. Right. Somewhere in the middle of that, you want big bold tiles and you want them to be able to look at those tiles and see, hey, that charcuterie board is right next to the early check in. Because they're not going to know this is another huge thing about amenities is they're not going to know that that thing's available or even be interested in it unless they're probably going to see, hey, we want some rental damage protection. Some extra rental damage protection. Oh, we need to request a pet that we forgot. Right? All of those things, they should be in one visual storefront where your guest is not looking at a bunch of links that aren't very pretty. Doesn't know what's available. Right. So you can also obviously take payment or the host co is the merchant of record take payment for any other platform and then we pay you out for that item.

Just a quick one. So because it's very topical, someone put. Anthony put. How can you have a guest pay a fee via the Resolution Center, Annie.

So the way that we do it also the Resolution center is a nightmare. I'm just going to come out and say that like it's resolution and it's also extra paying for extra things. Right? The way if you are going to push them to the Resolution center the way it works with a host co is you leave instructions in that product. Say it's like an early check in and let me just show you guys what that looks like. So I'm going to go up to requests. So this is even today it's going to say $0 for this because it's a test. But you can say, hey, my guest requested an extra pet. You can approve or deny it and because then you know, okay, this is for two months from now. It's on my calendar. Who would it that stay if it is. If your guest says yes, we booked this on Airbnb. You can say, hey, Host coast. Send them instructions of exactly where to pay for this deep link into the Resolution center for their booking. This is where they go. This is where they hit send money and how much to send and does.

If something has to go through the resolution center through Airbnb, did would they charge you commission or no?

They don't. They don't charge you commission. But they are making money on this because they're keeping the amount, right? It's just like the cash float. They especially for fees. This is a big thing. If they are holding that amount for you, it just. I, you know, it depends on when, when the booking is. Someone is making money on that money, right? That is probably not you. We don't make money on your money because we don't hold it within our own accounts. So that is our policy. I will say since the policy change, we have seen zero anyone being warned from any of our users if anyone hears anything about it. But we still have people saying, hey, go request your late checkout. Go request your extra guest. Right? And we have seen nothing so far in the history of the host code. We have seen one person get warned and they were acting through guesty and we don't know why they, you know, it could have been to a. A booking channel one ever. So I will tell you, we're obviously every day, we're also talking to Airbnb almost every day and saying, hey, it's what we're doing. How's this? Is this still working? So that is our privacy policy update again. We want to make sure that obviously all of us, including us, are in compliance with Airbnb while you're still able to do all these other things across all your other channels.

So I can answer this next question. So will it confuse guests if we have the no services chatter in our rules and we don't we opt out of services on Airbnb, Will it confuse them then when we send them links to our own services. No, absolutely not. Because what we're saying in there is that unless we give you written approval for anything external outside of what we do as a brand, then it is not allowed. So basically, you are empowering your brand even more with this and you are saying, hey, we are not a hobbyist host here. We are not somebody who is just given a property, put it on Airbnb. If it brings in money, great. But you are instantly showing the future potential guest that you are a proper operator. You are doing this for a business. And you, you are, you are, you know, you're, you're a company and you can offer these services. So in fact, it will not hamper you. It will help you in this process.

I will also say just briefly, something that we hear often is offering all of these items. So your guest is not going to see Airbnb services in their booking flow if you've opted out of AirBNC services. So they likely won't even know that those are available. Maybe. Right? But what we often see is when you share a store again like this, you can put in there things that are just answers to questions, right? So if everyone. I will tell you, if you're going to you California, it's probably because you want to go to the French Laundry like the most. Why do you go to yellow California if you're not going to the most famous restaurant, right? You can and should be putting things in your storefront if it's through the host co or otherwise. That's that answer your guest questions before they ask them. Because that's also fantastic for reviews. It's fantastic for you getting way less questions, right? So put something in there that says, hey, this is where you go to find a reservation. It can be open table. You can also make commission on that, right? You make commission from open table. If you have. If you're in Alaska, in some town where everyone's going to the fish run, you should say, here's where you get tickets to that fish run, right? And you should have it next to extra guest hibachi, extra insurance. That is how you actually really get that revenue piece going is by putting those all on one page and in big, beautiful, colorful letters to get everything you need.

And from your experience, when is the best times and how many times do you put this store in front of a guest after they've made the booking? Which is, which is really clear. This is where the off platform thing has come around, isn't so much to hinder you. Once a Booking has come in. It's for those that when an inquiry comes in on Airbnb and you try and take them off platform, this is what they're trying to obviously prevent from happening. But the, the, the question was when and how many times are you putting this store in front of your guests through whatever automation that, that, that, that, that you have?

This is a good thing. We're recording this. Or I would say like everybody get, get out your pen. So sharing your amenities and when we say amenities, just everything, everything here, right. Should be done right after they book. Hey, thanks so much for booking. We're so excited to have you. If you'd like to add anything additional to your stay, like massage chef, et cetera, check out our store. What that does. People aren't going to buy things at that time. It's sort of like when you get a plane ticket and they offer you a rental car, you're like, no way, I'm coming back to this later. Right. But what it's doing is it's setting expectations. It's setting the expectation that you have a cost for late checkout. It's setting expectations where they can find things that they need for their stay, right? An extra fridge. I mean things like that, believe it or not, come up then one week and make sure it's just automated in your automated messaging, no matter who you use. One week before their stay, seven days. Hey, get excited. You're one week out. If you'd like to add any amenities or upgrades to your stay, check out our store. We'll let you know sooner this day with actual check in instructions. That is when people buy things because they're like, oh, oh yeah, my trip. I got to get ready for the trip, right? They're getting excited, they're getting close to their stay and that's when not only are they going to buy things, you're also going to again set their expectations of where they can find things so they don't have to ask you. Another thing that we see is every single product that is available in any host co store has its own deep link. So if your guest is like, hey, do you know where we can get a massage? You can send them just the link to that product. They can book it in 30 seconds on their phone. Oh great, thank you. Or request it. We want a massage on this day at this time. This many people. Swedish Yatsu. Here are our names and then hold the credit card info while we match it to your local vendor. So that is generally how you do it. We do see some People with specific products offering them. For instance, gratuity. I would really highly suggest, don't leave a brochure. Don't leave, you know, a QR code. But you can say, thanks so much for your stay. I. I would only do this for really large properties. Right? So nine bedrooms in Orlando. I would never do it for my two bedroom properties because I don't think that's very cool. If you'd like to leave a gratuity, you can do so here and include a link to it. And then for people who are doing direct booking, if they want to offer a, like a gift certificate for a future stay, also after the stay. And then lastly, again, for anyone that missed it, if you have a storefront and you are doing any sort of marketing, you can include that, hey, look at what we have available. It's getting people to think about your rental, even when they're like, six months away from going on a trip again.

So, Annie, if anybody wants to go and check out more of the host co, what's the domain that they need to go and check out?

Right now it's www.thehost.co and put the.

Link in the chat as well. So it's literally on the screen as well. Go and have a look. Totally free to get started, which is amazing. We are going to do questions, right, so you've got a few minutes now to put all of your questions into the chat and we will get through as many as possible. We've got a lot of members who are within this chat who are using the host code and they are raving about it, which is good. What I'm going to say to everybody is that it is very, very important now more than ever that you market the fact that you are offering services. This is the time where Airbnb have given us a new category, a new verbiage, and people are gonna start using it. If you sleep on this, particularly on opting out on the app, then you could potentially have some situations occur. And we are less than a week in, like I said. I've just been onto the. The Airbnb website just as we've been chatting. I wanted to have a little look what was offered up in the. In the United Kingdom, and there isn't a lot of.