Airbnb Hosting Tips from the Cruise Industry

Welcome back to the show. Let's go ahead and jump into it. My biggest takeaways from being on a cruise ship for 15 days. They have so many, so many things that they do exceptionally well. And we can apply these in our short term rental and we should be applying these in our short term rentals because communication and service is really what it comes down to when someone leaves a review. So I've got my top takeaways, but before we do that, I wanted to just sort of spell out the short term rental journey. You could say when you first start with the short term rental, it is imperative that you get good reviews. It can literally make or break your investment. I say this all the time, but I'm going to say it again. You can have two short term rentals right next to each other. One can literally be making twice as much money because they have a bigger base of reviews and a much higher and they do a better job of listing their properties. So there's a lot of things that go that, as you know, we talk about those here every week and quick, actionable episodes. But it really is, it's like a journey. And so when I start a brand new short term rental, let's just take the first two months, for example, we have to get those perfect. And just like the cruise industry, they have to get it right as well. And so I'm excited to get into these takeaways, but I just want you to think about when you're starting your short term rental. If you're out there and you're just getting started, really, we have to invest into these first two months and make sure that our guests love the stay. And if something comes up at our short term rental, well, we have to be there and we have to communicate with them exceptionally well. So when you're getting started out there, make sure you cross those T's, you dot your eyes and you don't overlook anything because that meticulous detail, that is what is going to come through at the end. And so the cruise industry has gotten this right. I mean, most cruise lines, I would say, have gotten this right. They have thousands of guests that go in and out of their cruise ships all the time. They are a well oiled machine. The cruise lines have also been around for a really long time and so that repetition has allowed them to learn from their mistakes. Hopefully some of the podcasts that you've tuned into onto this show have helped you learn from some of my mistakes because my team and I have managed tens of thousands of guests and we've learned a lot, but that really is the key, right, is learning from our mistakes. And unfortunately, we don't really have that luxury when we start with a short term rental. We have to get it right in the beginning. And so a lot of times when someone starts a property, they uncover these little things that they missed. And so we can save ourselves if we have excellent communication. But the idea is to make sure that we don't have any of those little imperfections. So let's go ahead and jump into some of the things that I took away from this cruise, and hopefully you can implement these into your existing properties. Or if you're planning on launching one sometime in the near future, you can add these as well. And these takeaways, they're a bit random, you could say. I mean, they're just things that I noticed on the cruise. It's like, yep, we should have these there. Yep, we already have these there. And so the first one are notes. So I've talked about this before, but having notes in our properties, especially for things that aren't super intuitive, you know, if one of your guests might not know exactly how to operate your thermostat, for example, well, you should leave a little note there to let them know how to do that. Some of the places where the cruise ship had these labeled were in the shower. For example, it said, make sure to test the temperature before you get in. Or on the electrical outlet next to the sink, it said for, not for hair dryers. Or it had certain things labeled. And I know I've got a lot of old properties, actually. If you're watching the video version of this, you can see this brick wall behind me. I'm in one of my properties in Tennessee at the moment, and this house is probably like a hundred years old. I don't remember the exact date actually of this one. I think it's like 19, 25 or 27 or something like that. So it is quite old. Of course, a lot of our guests love the historic piece of it. But part of having an older property, if it hasn't been 100% renovated, sometimes you have these issues. Like if we have too many people plug in hair dryers, then it can flip a breaker. And so leaving little notes for anything that's not intuitive or anything that might come up with your guess, that can save a lot of questions. If you just have it right there in the property, we recommend using one of those little Dymo label makers. You can just print it out there on the spot. The second thing that the Cruise industry does an excellent job of, again, they've been doing this for decades and decades and they've had millions and millions of guests come through is that their properties and their furniture are designed to have a lot of guests coming through. So as we know, our furniture and our short term rentals gets a lot of wear and tear, right? We have different types of people, different sizes of people coming through and using it. And so we want to make sure that we have very durable furniture. The couch, for example. In my opinion, that is the most difficult furniture item. We actually did a whole episode on that. So go back to SCR riches and check that out for some of my tips around adding a couch. But if you get a cheap couch or you get a couch that has a certain type of fabric or material over another one, it's not going to last. And a couch isn't an easy item to change. And so we need to give a lot of thought into the furniture that actually goes into our properties and the wear and tear so that we don't have to block our properties for a certain amount of time while we're repairing furniture. And we also don't want that as part of our guest experience. We don't want them experiencing a wobbly table or wobbly chair or a bed that squeaks or anything like that. And so having the appropriate furniture and really giving thought to that is going to make your experience a lot better. So the third thing that I took away, and this is one that they nail, and it's one that we should have down pat as well, and that is communication. So communication really is the name of the game. Communication and service, right? There was 2,000 guests on this cruise ship that I was on and there was over a thousand employees. So if you can imagine that, that's, that's a lot of employees per guest, right? They remember your names, they remember your preferences, they do all these to make you feel more special, really is what it comes down to. And that's what a guest wants, right? That's the way our guests should feel. So our guests are not always right. But I do believe, and I heard this quote somewhere, that it is our responsibility to make them feel that way. So we have to have excellent, excellent service and communication with our guests. I feel really fortunate that our Guest Experience team leader worked on a Cruise Line for 13 years, Norwegian Cruise Lines. She managed a lot of people underneath her. And now she manages our Guest Experience team, which also has. We've actually got two people that we brought on from the cruise industry, but she does an excellent job.

The cruise industry knows what they're doing. They've done this before. They know how to get service right. And so I feel really fortunate to have her on our team. If you guys didn't know yet, by the way, we are managing other properties and I would be happy to chat with you to see if your property would make a good fit with our team, the same team that manages my portfolio. You can head to restmethods.com There's a little property management button there. Couple quick questions. We can schedule zoom link so they get their communication. It's five stars. I mean, it's truly amazing. The next piece that I took away, and this is one I talk about a lot, is technology. And so technology is one of those things that can be a huge time saver. It can make things much more efficient when you both for us as owners and for our guests. The cruise line that I was on has this new cool technology called the Medallion app that they use. So basically everything you did on the cruise line was just through one app. It unlocked your door before you even got there. You could order from anywhere on the ship and they'd bring your drinks or food or whatever it happens to be. You didn't have to give them your room number. So if a waiter came around and asked if you would like a drink or whatever it happens to be, your name pops up on their screen and your image and so they know exactly who they're talking to. It saves time and makes things more efficient. And I'm sure they sell a little more that way too. So technology is one of those things that should be helping us on, on both sides. It's something that fortunately in the short term rental industry, there's so many new programs coming up, we use a lot of those. I'm a big proponent of technology, but again, we have to make sure that we still have that guest experience first. Right. No one wants to be talking to a robot. So technology is huge. I'm excited to see what we have just in, just in this next year, really. The next piece is also a bit of technology, but it doesn't have to be. And so that sounds a little confusing, but I'm talking about guidebooks and recommendations. So this is something that the cruise industry obviously does as well. Right. And they sell a lot of the tours and the things that they do, but they do a really good job of making that information available. And they do do it in two different places. So they have a digital typ guidebook. Actually the TVs in each of the rooms on the cruise you can view options tours and things like that. But they also each night would lay out a printed one sheet of the available options for the following day or the for the next day that we're unsure. So if you've been listening to podcasts for a while, you know that we've used guidebooks for a long time. We use a company called Hostfully to set up ours. They're digital, they're amazing. But we also have printed out one pagers I call them in all of my properties and then all the properties that we're currently working with that has a top three restaurant recommendations. I like to put top three cafe recommendations in there, any places you can walk to and then the big highlights for that particular market. Just a short page not to overwhelm anyone, but to give them one other spot to find our recommendations. The sixth big takeaway from being on a cruise for a little over a couple of weeks is how important the team is. How important our team is, right? Because we can't do this alone for sure. If we have one property, the more properties we have, the harder it gets, right? So we, we could do this alone when we get started. But not everyone wants to be cleaning their property and doing all those things. So it's really, really important to have a good team. And there was someone on the cruise ship working in one of the dining areas that have been with the Cruise for over 50 years, if you can believe that. The dedication to the company, but also the way the company treats that employee, right? No one's got most of the time going to be working for a company for so long if they don't enjoy it, if they don't feel that it's fair. And so make sure that you're being really fair with your team that works with you, that helps you with your properties, that you're being grateful for them, aren't we can't do this without our housekeeping team, our maintenance, our reception. Every step of the way is really, really important. So if you haven't thanked them lately, well, now's a good time to do that. Just reach out and say thanks, hey, I really appreciate all your help and make sure that things are fair. The seventh big takeaway and this is a really important one. We sort of started off the episode talking about reviews and our reputation with a short term rental. And they did this really well too. So they very often mentioned, hey, we'd love your feedback. They left printed feedback forms in the properties. Of course they have the Digital version where they send you emails and do all that. But they actually verbally talked about it quite a few times. Hey, I would. We'd really appreciate it. If your staff's doing a great job, please leave them a nine or ten review. So this is out of ten, right? And I love the way that they frame this. Right. Because some people with Airbnb, for example, if they leave a four star review, they might think, oh, that was a great stay. I'm gonna leave it a four out of five. That's pretty good. But that's not pretty good for us as hosts, right? A four star average is. That's a B minus. That's not very good. People aren't booking four star averages. And so we've talked about that before. You may want to send out personalized mess message to your guests, the ones that haven't left you reviews yet, and say, hey, we'd really appreciate your feedback. For us, a five star means this, a four star means this. But having that visible inside your property is a really good step too. Hey, we hope that we're doing everything right. If we're not, please let us know. We want to make sure that your stay is perfect. So getting that feedback is super, super crucial. And we know it's a fact that the more reviews you have on the listing platforms and the better that review score is, the higher up you're going to go in the search results. So really important to be getting those reviews and to be getting good reviews. So just a couple parting words for the episode today.

I try to learn a little bit every time I stay in an accommodation and it was no different with the cruise lines. There's some really, really good takeaways, the biggest one being service. But we can always improve, right? The one thing that I would say that they could and I really had to search for something for them to improve on. But a couple nights when the boat was rocking out there in the sea and it wasn't super steady, the hangers were squeaking. It's like it was really nothing, right? But it could disturb your sleep. I just took the hangers off the thing and put them on the floor. But that is feedback. Maybe they change the way that they make their hangers in the future. Because if it happens, and to me, I'm sure it happened to other guests as well. And this is why the private feedback that we get in our reviews is super, super important. It's not the part that gets publicly posted, but it's the part where someone enjoyed this day. But maybe the hangers are squeaking and they wanted you to know about it. We need to act on those. We need to fix that, make sure our properties are perfect so we can always improve. I thought that Princess Cruise Lines did a fantastic job. It was truly, truly an awesome trip. And just one last tip for those of you out there that haven't actually stayed in your property yet, I highly suggest that, because that's how we learn about some of the little things that maybe our guests aren't telling us. And it's even more crucial to do that before you launch your property. So I hope that gave you a little bit insight. These are things we've talked about before, but important in any sort of hospitality setting, right? Also, if you didn't know, now you can get really good WI fi out in the open sea. So the remote work limits have been stretched once again, which is a big demand factor leading to a lot of short term rentals. Right. People can work wherever they want for the most part now. So I hope that gave you a little bit of insight. Hope you've been enjoying the podcast. If you have and you haven't left us a review yet, I'd really appreciate that. Any feedback whatsoever for me so I can make sure that I'm bringing you the best content possible. I'd really appreciate that. If you found an episode that you've enjoyed or that's helped you, if you don't mind just taking it, a screenshot of it and send it to one of your friends that's interested or a family member or someone in the industry that you think it might help. And until next time, I hope you have a fabulous week.

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