Are your Airbnb Guests Lying To You? | Communication is Key!

So after managing thousands and thousands of guests on multiple platforms, Airbnb and vrbo in multiple cities and multiple countries, fortunately, I know that I'm being lied to. And you may be being lied to as well. That's what I want to talk about this week. Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches. We'll 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 Hobbs. Covered.

Welcome back to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. This week we're talking about lying. I know that's a deep subject, isn't it? But the fact is there are situations when our guests are lying to us or very inclined to lie to us. And then there's also some situations where hosts are lying to their guests, unfortunately. Hopefully that's not happening too often. But I want to break down both, both sides of that. Before I do, though, I want to define what lying is and dishonesty. And I'm not going to use my own words, but I'm going to use the words of Sam Harris, who is one of the most articulate human beings I have ever encountered. He wrote a book called Lying and it has been a super influential book for me. So I highly, highly suggest you pick up a copy of it. It's a short read, but it is jam packed and it's. He just does such a good job explaining why we should never lie, including white lies. So let me read his words real quickly to give you his definition. He says to lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication. When they expect honest communication. That means if you are a poker player or if you are a magician, well, you are off the hook on that one. There's lots of reasons why people lie, and a lot of times we will say something even though we don't feel like it's a lie. Couple examples here. People lie to avoid embarrassment and lie dishonesty. We can put those in the same group. People exaggerate their accomplishments. This is another way of lying or being dishonest. We make promises sometimes we know we can't keep. That is another form of lying. And sometimes we lie to our family members or our friends or our team members to spare their feelings. But I want to explain why we should not be doing that. And I fortunately discovered this book a long time ago, so I very, very much value honesty. Everyone on my team, everyone in my circle of friends, if they're not honest, I don't spend a lot of time with them. Before we get into the guest situations as it relates to our short term rentals, I just want to give you another example of why a white lie is not a good lie either. Let's say, for example, your friend or your significant other, whoever it happens to be, puts on a dress and they say, they ask you, do I look fat in this dress? We've heard this statement before. Now of course, if they are not fat, then it's very easy for you to talk with them about this, right? You can be honest, but let's say you don't think they're fat, but they do look fat in that dress, for example. Well, then you can clearly say I don't think you're fat, but I think that dress doesn't fit you as well as maybe the other one does. The nice thing about communication is that we can phrase things in a way to get our message across in multiple different ways. We don't have to be brutally honest. There's a way to be honest without making it super harsh and difficult for the other person. So that's the nice thing. We have multiple ways of being honest as long as we are getting the message across that we actually believe. Now let's take this example up a notch and make it a little more difficult. What if you believe your friend is actually fat? Well, this gets more difficult, right? That's a hard thing to tell your friend. But let's think about it. If you lie to them and tell them you don't think they're fat, do you think that helps them out? Let's say for example, that your friend happens to be a 35 year old single female, for example, and you know that she really wants to settle down, she wants to have a family, she's trying to get out in the dating world and she would be happier if she lost a few more pounds. Do you think if you deny her the truth, if you don't actually tell her, do you think that's helping her? If she thinks everything's fine, it's not right. I mean there's, that's a hard thing to do. But we've got, we've got to be honest. Really, there's no reason to lie ever. There's the example he gives in the book. The only time that we should ever lie, and this is like.000001% according to SAM Harris, is if it is moral to do so and if it benefits humanity. So I'll let your mind wander with that one, but that's basically never right. So white lies I know they may seem like we're helping our friends, but really they're not. Couple other real quick examples. Christmas, for example. I remember when I was younger and I believed in Santa Claus, and then my bro or someone told me that Santa Claus was fake. And so I went to my mom and asked her, mom, I heard Santa Claus is not real. Is that true? Have you been lying to me or did you lie to me? And I remember her telling me the truth and I just started crying, right? I don't remember how old I was. And this isn't really a big deal, right? Or it didn't seem like a big deal. But this is the thing about lies, they have an impact that lasts for a really long time. So I know when my mom, when Christmas comes around, she thinks about that time when she lied to me and I got really emotional and sad and crying. So every Christmas that comes around, she thinks about that. I know it's a silly example, but I just want to give that example that lies, we can't take them back after we tell them, right? They're just out there and they require maintenance. If you're trying to cover up a lie that she's told, however long ago, you have to keep working on that versus telling the truth. There's nothing to cover up. So thank you for listening to my rant online. I wanted to define it before we get into how it relates with our guests. If you haven't read Sam Harris's book Lying yet, please pick up a copy. I swear it's packed full of amazing, amazing examples. Okay, so there are some situations for us operating short term rentals where we might be inclined to tell these white little lies, or at least not be honest. So let's talk about a few of those here. An Airbnb support resolution, for example, if you're fibbing that to, let's say someone ruins your couch and you put a resolution out for twice the money. And it's not justified in any way. So it's not justified for the price of the couch, including, you know, the coordination fees and after all your fees. It just. It just isn't honest. Well, that's a lie, right? You shouldn't be doing it. Now, maybe that's an example where you aren't going to get caught. Who knows? But let's say you do. Airbnb has a lot of power, right? If you have your listings on Airbnb and you're doing something dishonest, they can take you off the platform. And you better believe if you're Caught just lying outright. That's a really good reason for them to remove you from the platform. They don't want you. They don't want dishonest hosts on there, Right? So that's one example. When you're dealing with Airbnb, make sure that you're honest. Let's say a guest asks you if they can check in early. Tell them the truth. If you don't ever offer early check ins because it's hard to coordinate with your housekeepers and it's kind of an operational nightmare. You can tell them that. Of course you can tell them that in a way that's not so brute, right? But tell them the truth versus saying, oh, no, I'm sorry, you can't check in early because we have a guest checking in right after you. What if they show up and you don't have another guest checking in right after them and they see that it never feels good being lied to. Right? So make sure you're telling the truth when it comes to contractors. For example, I remember working on a property and I had someone in Brazil actually negotiate on my behalf for some materials or something like that. And he's on the phone and I'm listening to him talk to the contractor and he says, oh, yeah, my client found this for X amount of price. And I remember thinking, you know, this is me, you know, working my way through Portuguese as well. I remember thinking, I never found it for that price. And so what am I thinking? Thinking, oh, this contractor's dishonest. If he's dishonest to this supplier, well, then he's probably dishonest with me as well, right? So that's the other thing. If we go back to the white lie example and you tell your friend that you don't think they're overweight when in fact they are, or if you tell them the truth, they know they can come back to you for the truth, right? So if you're dis dishonest once, people will expect you to be dishonest again in the future. Something I've heard from some mentors of mine is that it can take a lifetime to build a reputation, right? Can take your whole life, but you can ruin it with one little lie. So just really, really be cognizant of the way you're communicating. Make sure that it's clear everyone appreciates someone that's truthful and honest. That's who we want around us, right? So there's a couple of examples where you might be kind of inclined to fib. You know, if you're negotiating or if you're talking with Airbnb support, trying to get money back, Something like that. So let's flip. Flip sides here. We have guests that are dishonest with us, don't we? Unfortunately. At least you will. If you're just getting started in the short term rental space, something's going to come up. So I want to give you a few potential examples. Number one, your guest says, I need to cancel my reservation. Unfortunately, my flight was canceled or my business conference was canceled or I got sick or I had a family emergency and I can't make it some emergency to help them get their reservation money back. Now, clearly, a lot of this could be very 100% honest, but sometimes it might not be right. Someone decides they want to change something, but they know there's a cancellation policy, so they're trying to get around it. That's one area where you might get a little bit of dishonesty. My recommendation there, just stick with your cancellation policy. Right. We can't be doing. We can't adjust our cancellation policy for someone and then adjust it for. And not adjust it for someone else in the future. Because, again, it comes back to being honest. What if you adjust it for that person? Then someone else in the future asks you and you say, I'm sorry, we can't budge on our cancellation policy. But you did budge in the past. Well, then you're being dishonest. Right. And that just doesn't feel good. So I would say in that example, just make sure you stick to your cancellation policy. What if a guest shows up with more guests than they put on the reservation? That's another form of dishonesty. Right? What if they show up with a dog? Well, what can we do here? Hopefully, you have a security camera monitoring your entrance, and you can clearly call them out on that one. So these are a few examples of times when our guests might be dishonest with us, but where we can kind of easily call them out on it. Another one might be if they checked out late and your housekeeper showed up and they had to wait around for an extra hour and you filed a resolution and the guest said, I did not check out late. Well, there's a way to combat this, too. If you're using a smart lock that has a unique code for your guests. So this is the way we do it. All of our guests have unique codes, so we know they're the only one using it. And we can see the last time they used it if they lock the door at 1:30pm or if they open the door at 1:30pmel and they were supposed to check out at 11, well, we can send a screenshot of that. And we know that they were being a little dishonest with us there as well. Now there's a really big one here that really just kind of punches you in the gut and it doesn't feel good. And that's when a guest is dishonest about their review. Yeah, that's. Oh, it's painful. And.

I've got some good tips on that. But you got to stay tuned for next week. I'm going to break down all the reasons why and how we can get false reviews removed. Justice. Right. It feels good to get those reviews removed when we know they were dishonest. So that's a big one. And you'll just have to stay tuned. I will get into that next week, so make sure you don't mix it. A couple other scenarios where your guest might be dishonest with you. And now these are a little more difficult to prove. Housekeeping, for example, what if your guest shows up and says the sheets were stained or I found all this hair on the floor. Yes. It's possible. The guests could put their own hair. They could put it on the floor. They can make something dirty to get some refund. This can happen. And unfortunately, this is one of those things that's a little harder to monitor. Now, if you're using a system like Breezeway I've talked about before, where you have really diligent checklists, maybe you have your housekeepers taking photos and videos of the property after they clean it so you have proof, well, that can help you out. But it's, it's one of those tough areas. It's not going to be 100% win. So that's one area. The other one is smoking. If your housekeeper shows up in the property and it smells like smoke and your guest might say, they might lie to you and say, I never smoked in the property. Well, that one again, is hard to win. But there are a couple ways. If you find any sort of evidence, cigarette butts in the trash can, wherever they are, well, then you can use that as well. They are coming out with smoke monitoring devices as well. I know I've got some friends that use those and they can really help. So if you're using one of those, that's another way to prove that your guest was being dishonest. So this isn't a fun topic. Right. We, we don't like dishonesty. We don't like being lied to. And we should not be lying or being dishonest to other people. But the. The reality is this just happens. I really hope that you pick up a copy of this book because I swear it is so much easier to live a life that's honest, where you don't have to cover up for lies and you can tell the truth and your mind just feels free. Right. So hopefully I didn't intimidate you with some of the ways that your guests might be dishonest with you. My team and I have managed tens of thousands of guests. So, you know, we've kind of had everything happen to us and it doesn't happen very often, luckily, but those are a few situations where it might. So again, I know I went a little deep here on the subject of lying, but it's been very important for me and again, for all the people that I surround myself by. So make sure to pick up a copy of Sam Harris's book Lying and just, just imagine what it would be like if we all lived in a world that was 100% honest. It'd be fantastic. So until next time, I hope you guys have a fabul week and I'll talk to you soon.

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