Are You Automating Too Much? | The STRR Podcast #94 | Tim Hubbard

Airbnb has changed from what it used to be. It used to be very personal. Now we're automating all kinds of things, many of which I teach on this channel. But are we automating too much? That's what we're going to dig into this week. Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches, where we'll discuss investing in real estate, but with a specific focus on short term rentals to help you build wealth faster with as little headache as possible.

This week we're going to talk about something that's kind of reverse of what I normally talk about, which is scaling and growing and automating and operating our properties remotely from Columbia or anywhere in the world where you are. So this is a bit of a flip, but there is such a thing as too much automation. So that's what I want to talk about. We didn't see this a long time ago with Airbnb. You know, when Airbnb started, it started started as someone, a host, renting their property. And many times this was like before automated locks. You know, someone met the guests there, maybe they're traveling from the other side of the world. It was fun, it was interactive. We got to meet lots of people and then we handed them the keys, we showed them around our property, we gave them some recommendations, verbally maybe, and then we wished them a good stay and we checked in with them more often and. But now things have really changed, right? We have recognized how much money we can make with these properties, four or five or more times what we're making with long term rents. And so a lot of investors, myself included, have jumped in and we're scaling. And with that scaling, naturally, we're losing a little bit of the human touch. But that doesn't mean we have to lose all of it and that doesn't mean we can't get great reviews. So I want to talk about the main points here. Hopefully just as a reminder to you guys to check on a few things to make sure that you're not automating too much. So before we can kind of decipher whether or not we are automating too much, we need to know what type of guests are staying in our property or our avatar, you could call them. You know, vacation rental, where families are staying for a week is going to be different than some probably tree house, tiny home out in the forest, which is going to be different probably than some guests staying in urban city places. Although I would say that the demand and the visibility of short term rentals is just growing exponentially. So we will start to see people of all ages traveling at all types of properties. We have a really wide range of people checking into our properties. So we have to try to set up our automated messages to accommodate as many people as as possible. So we need to know what types of guests are checking into our properties and try to accommodate as many of them as possible with our automations and with our guest messages.

Sometimes we're going to be too automated. And how do we know? Well, it's going to show up in our reviews. And one thing I've noticed is that, you know, as I've scaled, I created my own company to manage my own properties. And when someone on Airbnb, this is more specific to Airbnb because booking.com that's traditionally been like hotels and. But Airbnb and Vrbo, I would say, you know, there's still quite a lot of people out there that are looking for and they're expecting a personal experience, you know, maybe even like handing keys over. If they were using Airbnb a long time ago, they're expecting more of a human interaction. So we're gonna realize if we're not meeting that by buyer reviews and if we're a management company managing all of our properties, well, some people get turned off by that. Some people aren't going to book your property if they see it's managed by a property management company.

So instead of us advertising all of our properties, as, you know, my company name and that's the picture of the logo on there. I've got a picture of my face on all my properties. And yes, it's not me sending all the messages. I talk with my team about this all the time, but I am behind a lot of these processes and everything. So it still allows a little bit of that personal touch. And I do have a bio on my Airbnb profile. So if you don't have a bio on there, put one in for sure. Mine says, I love traveling. It says, you know, I like to stay active when I can. And just a little bit about me, I like real estate investments. So just talk a little bit about yourself and if you're doing this with your spouse or significant other, have a picture of both of you guys with your dog or whatever it is. A nice, friendly picture will help add a little more of this human touch. So that's the first step is just having a little profile bio that says the person behind these properties is actually a real person. But we can also add in some human touches with our guidebooks and our recommendations. So yes, our digital guidebook is automated. If you haven't already, go back and check out our podcast on hostfully. That's what I use for guidebooks. But this can add a personal touch in an automated type way because I've got my favorite restaurants on there. I've got some recommendations in a city that I'm very likely more familiar with than the guests that are coming. Right? So put in some little notes in there. You know, I, I really love this back alley Korean barbecue place. You will not find a better one and you wouldn't know it was there unless someone told you. So those little things add a lot. And again, that's kind of automated, but it's still a bit of a personal touch. Another thing that you're going to want to do, and I recommend this for any guest coming in, is just ask them why they're coming to town. We want to know that anyways. But in that response we can find out a little more. Are they coming to meet a family member they haven't seen a long time? And then we can offer legitimate response. You know, I hope you have a great time with your great uncle or whatever it is. So it's just a little more personal. That's not an automated. Well, you can make that automated question, but it would be nice to have a legitimate response. So obviously, you know, if you're not the one sending these messages, then you've got to have a receptionist on your team or multiple receptionists that are helping you with this. Just to add a little bit of personal touch. And of course we need a phone number. We need someone that can be accessed all times so we can ask, we don't have to ask too many questions. You know, there is such thing as being too personal, right? So we don't want to ask too many questions. If the guest isn't writing a whole lot, well, then we shouldn't write a whole lot back in response. We should try to match how much they're communicating with us and that'll help. That'll go a long way too. You can add little things like welcome cards in your property and have your housekeeper add the name of the guest coming in each time. So that's kind of a nice touch too. It's a little more personal. It's easy to do. And if you're using property management software, which I always recommend, you can easily share the guest name and contact with your housekeeper. So they know that in advance and you don't need to add it in. So those are just a few things. That we can add in amongst all this automation. But we still are going to have a lot of automated messages, right? I think that it's a good idea for some of them. Like we have one for example that follows up, it goes out 4, 6 hours after check in and just says, hey, I just wanted to make sure that you checked in okay and you're enjoying the space and below that you can put in easily. Please note this is an automated message but we're monitoring it full time. So if you do have a question, let us know and we will respond. Right, right away. So by adding a note in there that it is automated message, that can help too. So someone knows they're not communicating with the robot. Right. So that said, there's a few touches in there. I'm a big believer in automation. It's better for our guests too because they're getting things timely, but we need to have the other end of that. We need to have someone that can respond if we need to and just add a little more personal touch and this naturally as we scale becomes harder and harder to do, but it's not impossible. Right? The big hotel chains of the world, they save notes on our guests so we can save notes on our guests in our property management software. One of the things we do when our guests are checking in is we check to see if they've stayed with us before and we can welcome them back. Another little touch. So take a look at your automations, how they're set up. Are you guys getting negative feedback because there's not enough personal touch? Well then let's just make a couple changes. Let's make the guest experiences better. That's going to improve our reviews, that's very likely going to improve our revenue and our occupancy and then we can keep on keeping on. So until next time, I hope that gave you guys a little insight and I hope you're doing very, very well out there. Take care.