Biggest Airbnb Host Fail and How You Can Avoid It | Tim Hubbard

All right, we're just going to go ahead and get into this one. This week I want to talk about the biggest fail you can make as a host on Airbnb or wherever your short term rental is listed. 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 Hubbard.

The biggest fail. I promise you this will get you a very bad review. I alluded to it last week when we were talking about experiences and five things you can do to really add to a guest experience and five things that will take away from your guest experience. So if you missed that, go back and check out last week's episode. So I did just do a whole bunch of travel in Eastern Europe and I stayed in a lot of Airbnbs and one of them in Bulgaria was a great little Airbnb. Actually. It was a great location. It was decorated really well, had a nice terrace, was in a super old building, good communication, easy check in, had everything I was looking for and I really enjoyed it until. Until something happened. I was out with my friend and we were celebrating one of his friends birthdays. He's from Bulgaria, so it was fantastic traveling around with him. It's always the best traveling with someone that's from the place where you are because they know all the little things, they can explain the culture to you. So I love that. But anyways, we're out celebrating one of the birthdays and we had some drinks and we went to club afterwards. Now I'm not like a big clubber and this wasn't like, you know, the crazy rage clubs or anything like that, but they had some good music playing and we were there late and I left about 12:30 at night, so it was a little late. And I'm walking back in the dark through Sofia, Bulgaria to my Airbnb when I reach in my pocket and I realized I did not bring the little key tag to get into the building. Bummer. Big fail. And so I called the host several times and I messaged, but unfortunately there was no response. So what am I going to do, right? What are my options? Well, it's looking like I'm going to stay in a hotel. Luckily my friend was there and so I called him and he hadn't gone to sleep yet. And I said, george, I can't get back into my Airbnb. I'm sorry, but can I crash with you tonight? So I was able to crash with him he had a spare bedroom, which made it really easy. Right. Had I not had that, I would have had to find a hotel. And it was cold and I'm in a place where I don't know where I am, you know, so that would have just been really difficult. I messaged the host again in the morning, and this is the part that was almost more frustrating. And they hadn't responded. When I messaged again in the morning around 8am and they responded and said, oh, you should have called us. You could have just used this code to get in. So there's two things that happen there to lead to a bad experience and to leave your guests a little frustrated. The first thing is we should never say that you should when we're communicating with our guest, because that implies that we did something wrong. Right. We should have done something differently. So that's not a great way to communicate with our guests. Now I realize there might have been some language barrier there, and that's totally fine. But the second thing that was frustrating about this is that they had a code to get back into the property. So that property had a digital door lock, which I had the code for. But then when I checked in, I got an actual key to get into the building instead of the code, which I understand they maybe didn't want everyone to have a key to the building, but what they could have done is had that code in an easy place to send out in case a guest is gets locked out. And so let's talk about backup options here and making sure that this never happens to your guests, because this is the ultimate fail. And we've talked about it a bit in the past. Sometimes these automated locks, these door locks, they're hard to use, right? So let's assume that this is a property that doesn't have two doors. It's just one, and you have an automated lock and something happens with it. Well, what's an easy way to make sure that this guest can get back in? That is to have a lockbox with a code handy for them so they can get a key and get back in. So always have a lockbox next to your digital lock. You don't need to give out the code, but you do if someone gets in trouble, right? So the second thing is we need to make sure we have someone available.

This is the biggest fail. This is the biggest fail. And I didn't leave him an exceptional review. I'll just tell you that. I didn't leave them a really bad one. I just. I don't think I have it in me to like leave someone a one star or two star review, you know, that really crushes someone. But all right, I left him a three star review. That will crush someone too. When's the last time you booked a property that had a three star review if you had other options? People aren't booking properties with three star reviews. So yeah, I did leave them a three star, but there's things that need to be improved here. Right, so. So that's the number one thing you can do, is make sure you have a backup way to get in a lockbox, for example, which they could have had at this property somewhere as well. The second thing is you've gotta make sure that you always have someone available. Now I understand not everyone's working 24 hours a day, but you've gotta have backups. So we've talked in the past about how we use a virtual phone line to route to all of our receptionists. So maybe you don't have a full receptionist team, but you want to make sure you have backups. So what you can do is you can route that phone number if a call comes in after a certain time and it can go to multiple people at the same time. So maybe you have a friend that you talk to and you say, hey, this is probably never going to happen, you're probably never going to get a phone call. But can I have you as like a third backup in case for some reason one of my guests can't get in or they have an emergency? So you can add multiple people for that phone number to call and at the same time. Now another thing that you might be able to do depending on the property management software that you're using, hopefully you're using property management software. Smart bnb, for example, can actually send messages based on what a guest has written, even if someone's not monitoring it. So if someone says, hey, I'm stuck outside and it can't get out, well, maybe you set up an automation that automatically sends up a backup code. But really at the end of the day you just got to make sure that you have someone available. That's what it comes down to. And I know that's difficult if we only have a couple rentals and we don't have people working on our team full time. But you got to have it because you know what will happen if you don't. Someone's going to get locked out, someone's going to have an emergency and they're going to need you. And when you can't pull through, they're going to leave you a not so good review. So that is the ultimate fail. I can't think of one that's worse than that. Really. You know, I mean if a guest can't get into your property, then they, they can't enjoy your property. So make sure you've got a backup for your digital lock, have backups for your backups, and make sure you have backup communication. If you have something you would like us to talk about, head over to our website, Strict. Just scroll down just a little bit and you'll see a spot on there where you can request anything you want us to talk about. I enjoy getting the feedback, so keep it coming. And until next time, I hope you have a wonderful week.

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