Delivery! Better Ways for Guests to Receive Packages at Your STR

Welcome back to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. I'm really happy you're here again and I'm really happy that we have the ability to order pretty much anything online these days. I spent a lot of my time in Colombia, as most of you know, that have been listening to the show for a long time. And I also spend the other half in Brazil, where I am now, although most of my properties are in the US and the properties we're managing for our partners, but we can order things online for delivery, fast delivery, pretty much anywhere in the world. I remember when I was in Colombia not too long ago, they have what they call Rappi, and that is their delivery service that basically can deliver anything. And they have what they call Rappi Turbo. And so I was testing out Rappy Turbo, which they guaranteed was a 10 minute delivery or less. I know what you're thinking, that sounds crazy. Although Amazon's getting pretty close, aren't they? And so I ordered a toothbrush, I think, and then I think I took a shower and I was waiting for someone to come over to my house and they were gonna be there in like a few minutes and the doorbell rang. I went and opened the door, but I kind of did it in a sneaky way. I was like hiding. I was gonna play a prank on my friend. So the rappy person showed up so quickly that I kind of played a prank on them instead of my friend until I realized it was them. But this is just becoming much, much easier. It's all over the world. It's not necessarily as cost efficient in the US as it is down in Latin America, at least when it comes to silly miscellaneous things like a toothbrush. Right? So let's get right into it. Should you allow deliveries at your property? Now, we are in the hospitality industry, so my quick answer would just be yes, always. We should always be doing whatever we can to make our guest experience the best possible experience. But despite depending on the type of property you have or the length of your reservations, sometimes this doesn't make sense. So let me give you a couple examples. First off, we've got single family homes. Maybe they're out in a neighborhood which the majority of short term rentals are sort of set up this way, right? And for those of you out there with properties that are set up this way, it's a lot easier, right? Maybe your minimum stay is three nights or four nights and someone shows up and they can order Amazon and it's going to show up the second day to a private entrance. No one else is There, it's not going to get potentially stolen or anything like that. And so for you, yes, that's pretty easy. And definitely you would want to allow your guests. And a lot of times they're probably not even going to ask you, they're just going to ship it there anyways, Right. There are some things we want to add in our house rules, so I'll get to that in just a second. But for those of you with single family homes, with easy shipping, not really a big deal, right? And especially those of you that have longer stays. So the longer someone stays in your property, the more they're going to need these things, right? Whether it's Amazon packages or whatever it happens to be, they're going to order more things online. So if you're kind of going the midterm route and you've got people essentially living in your properties, then it would be good for you to have a good way for them to receive those packages. I got one tip coming up here in a second. But if you're on the opposite end of that spectrum, let's say you're in an urban city and maybe you're competing with hotels, your average night stay is like two nights, or maybe you have one night stays. I would not allow your guests to send something on one night stays because some issues show up, right? Maybe they order something and it doesn't show up on time. And then you receive a package for a guest that's not there. What do you do then? Are you going to ship it to them? Do you have someone to ship it to them? Those are things that we, we need to be aware of. This is the same reason why a lot of hotels don't allow you to ship things to the hotel. Now, of course, the nicer the hotel is that you're staying at, the more likely they will be accepting deliveries on your behalf. A lot of newer and bigger hotels, especially in conference areas, even have delivery centers, but they're not always open all hours of the day and they do charge you on top of that. Okay, next up, let's say your short term rental is in a condominium. It has an hoa. And a delivery person's gonna have to go through multiple gates to get to your guest. So the more barriers there are, the more complicated it is to receive a package. A lot of times, yes, these associations also have places to draw packages, but if there's not, then this just adds a level of complexity to the whole bit. Right now you might be thinking if you're out there and you just Got started with one property or maybe you have two. You're like, tim, this isn't really a big deal. I'm just, yeah, they can accept reservations, but the more properties you add and the more different types of properties you add, it adds another layer of complexity, an operational piece, and ultimately creates a little bit of responsibility or potential liability for these packages if they don't show up. Right. And so this is again, one of the reasons that a lot of hotels do not accept deliveries. Okay, so let's say that you do allow deliveries. One thing that you definitely want to do is make sure that you have it in your house rules. Talk about the process. If it's as easy as them delivering it to the doorstep, then maybe you don't need to put a lot in there. But you do probably want to put something in there that says, you're welcome to send deliveries to the address, but please know we are not responsible if anything shows up missing. If it doesn't arrive on time, so on and so on. So just think that through for a quick second. Always that good to have it in your house rules, right? And if you want to get our house rules, we've been doing this for a long time. We've managed tens of thousands of guests. We have a free house rules template for you. You can go to striches.com it's right there under our recommended resources. Make sure that you adjust it just a little bit. But I guarantee it's got some rules on there that maybe you haven't thought of. So go check that out. Okay, Next consideration. If you have a property that's in an area with shared common spaces that someone has to pass through to get to your apartment. It could be, or your condo or whatever it happens to be. It's not a really good idea for them to give those delivery people all of those codes. Right. And so you might want to have another little rule in there that says make sure to meet people at the front door for your deliveries. Please don't give out the code to delivery people. So use ChatGPT or come up with some better ways of actually wording that. We don't want it to come off as like, you know, really strict or stern or a demand or anything like that. It's just a friendly reminder that, hey, we're doing this for the security of everyone in the building. And if you happen to own the whole building. I have several buildings like this where there's a common area and have multiple short term rental units inside. We have a little sign there right Next to the door that says, you know, something along those lines of make sure to grab your deliveries here instead of giving the delivery person the code to get through all of the access. So, so just one other real quick tip there. But I guess at the end of the day people are gonna order stuff if they want to, even if you have in your house rules. But the upside of having it in your house rules, if you have one of those properties that doesn't lend itself well to receiving deliveries, the upside of having it in the house rules is that you're not gonna be liable for anything if it shows up missing. Okay. So if you are allowing deliveries, another thing that you might wanna do is have a delivery box. So let's say you have a duplex or. I stayed in a property in Fort Lauderdale, Florida recently. I believe it was a triplex. And they had at the entrance, it was a real cool, like Amazon, drop your packages in this box here. It was labeled or it had FedEx and UPS on it and it was a place for someone to drop packages. I think it may be locked. So again that might be something that your guests wouldn't be able to access, but at least protected the package a little bit. This was, I was staying real close to, to downtown and so a lot of people around, right. So I thought that was a cool way so you could think about that for your property. I'm sure you can find those on Amazon. And speaking of Amazon, they ship really fast now, don't they? Depending on what city you're in, you might even have one hour shipping. So a little side bonus here, if you forgot something in your property or your guest says, hey, you know, there's not enough toilet paper, something got missed during the housekeeping turn, coffee, whatever it happens to be, you could just ship it right to them on Amazon if you happen to have that one hour service in your area. So this is becoming more and more common in a lot of places. Maybe one day they will get up to Columbia standards and have 10 minute deliveries. I'm just kidding. I still don't know how those people in Colombia do it. I, I think, well, first of all, they don't deliver all products that quickly and they're literally like waiting at the stores on motorcycles or something. I mean it's really incredible. But things are getting faster. Who knows, maybe we're gonna have drones delivering things real quickly. I've definitely seen the little robot driving self driving things going around town. So going on a tangent, but this is something that's gonna happen in our Properties deliveries show up at our short term rentals, so hopefully you can allow them. That's the best thing to do. It's going to make your guest experience a little bit better. But make sure you have some information in your house rules. Make sure that you have some instruction on the way you would like them received. And if you ultimately don't have a good place to receive them, you could have a message in there that says, hey, there isn't a good place to unfortunately deliver the package here, but there is an Amazon drop center just a few blocks away. You can have it shipped there and you can pick it up on your own terms. So keep an eye out for any of those sort of Amazon drop centers popping up in your city or your neighborhood because that is another way to accommodate our guests. Right. So hey, real quick episode for you this week. But it's something that's bound to show up in one way or another at your properties and it's definitely becoming more and more and more common as time goes by. So until next time, I hope you have a fabulous week.

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