Earn MORE Than Other Hosts | How To Elevate Your Airbnb Guest Experience | Tim Hubbard

Short term rentals are an interesting niche in real estate. Why? Because you can have two properties right next to each other and one of them can literally be earning twice as much as the other one. But it all comes down to the experience we have in the property or the experience our guests have, I should say. And there's a lot of things that go into the experience. I just got back from five weeks of traveling in six different countries. I stayed in a lot of accommodations and so I've got a fresh outlook on this also after managing and hosting over 21,000 guests. So want to fill you in on my tips, things you can do to make sure you are getting this piece right. Stay tuned. Let's jump right in. 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.

Welcome back to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. I'm really happy you're here and I'm happy to be back in Colombia. I've been traveling around a lot. A little too much, I would say. It feels good to have a home base, doesn't it? I gotta say, I'm. I'm pretty nomadic and I have been for years and years, but it's just nice to come back to a place that you love and have a home base. But I learned a lot over the last five weeks. I stayed in a lot of different accommodations throughout six countries and quite a few different cities. Stayed in over five or I stayed in five Airbnbs and quite a few hotels. So I want to shed some light on the experiences that I had. And I want to give you five things that you can do to make sure your guest experience is better. Then I want to give you five things to make sure you are not doing. Because at the end of the day, if our guests are not having a good time, if they're not enjoying themselves, if they're not having a good guest experience, well, then you're going to get a bad review. And we all know what that means, right? That means less occupancy and lower daily rates and less money in your pocket. So, man, it was such a whirlwind. Went to a lot of different places. Started in Spain, flew into Spain, then headed to Bulgaria and then Romania and then Turkey and then Georgia, then Greece and then back to Spain and then to the U.S. so, gosh, it's exhausting just thinking about that. But I had a fantastic time. Fantastic time. And I love traveling. That's why I got into real estate. Right. And fortunately, everything has gone really well and it's allowed me to be able to do that. But it's even better now because I get to travel and stay in all these accommodations and it helps improve my business, my short term rental business. A reason that Airbnb puts so much emphasis on the experience. That's how they started and that's why they've grown so much. Because you can have a much different experience in an Airbnb than you can in a hotel. I think we all know that if you've been in the short term rental world for a long time, you can stay in a tree house. There's not a lot of hotel tree houses, although there are a lot of glamping places coming up and there's just so many different types of rentals out there. But it really does come down to, to the experience. And that's why Airbnb has been so successful. That's why they changed their search or added to their search recently to add so many categories so that we don't all keep going back to the same types of places so that we maybe stay in a castle one day or we stay out in a glamping resort in the desert somewhere. So they know the value of experiences and we need to know the value as well. There's some people that get this right, that know this really well, and these are the really nice luxurious hotel chains have been around for a long time. There's a reason someone might spend $1,000 a night to stay in a hotel, and it's because they've been there before, they had a great experience and they believe in that brand. So we have a little harder time as short term rental hosts proving that. But there are definitely some things that we can do to make sure we're on that same level. All right, five things that we can do to make sure that our guest have a great experience. Number one, we need to set clear expectations. The guest needs to arrive and get what they were expecting to get. If we drop the ball somewhere, our photos aren't accurate, or we left out some information or listing and a guest shows up and things aren't as they expected, that's going to start their trip off the wrong way and that's really going to hurt their experience. That's a hard one to come back from. The next thing number two is that we need to have clear communication. So this is sort of in line with expectations, but I'm referring more to our communication with our guests. So that's the messages we're sending to them. That's the way that we're communicating with them. Is that all text and automatic looking messages? We don't want to do that. We don't want someone to feel like they're talking, talking to a robot. Right. We want everyone to feel unique and not like they're just another number. So one of the best things we can do with our communication is just make sure that it's personal. And now I know that's hard to do if you're trying to scale, but it's something that really is necessary. So find out why the guest is coming to town. And that's an easy way to add some, a personal touch into your messages. Number three is consistency. So we need to be consistent in order for our guest to have a good experience. And this is sort of in line with the other two expectations and communication. Let's say our guest has a great first day and they've enjoyed everything and we've been communicating with them and giving them recommendations, whatever they ask for. And then day two, they just get crickets and they can't get in touch with us. Well, that's not going to be very good. We've got to be consistent. Right. So number four, did they put some thought into the property? No one likes to show up to a blank slate with a bed and a nightstand and no artwork, no nothing to draw your attention. Right. Just feels like you're staying in a decorated prison cell, I guess, you know, and this is the way a lot of hotels are, right? A lot of traditional older or budget hotels, they have a bed, they have a bathroom, they have a little mini fridge, and that's about all they have. That doesn't really lead to a good experience. Not to say that everything else that hotel is doing can't lead to a good experience, but that definitely doesn't add to it. And when we're running an Airbnb, when we're running a short term rental, this is one of the areas where we can really shine against our hotel competitors. I stayed in one, for example. Well, we stayed in a bunch of cool ones, but I stayed in one in Romania that used to be a wine cellar, so it was down in the basement, but they still figured out how to get light down there. Had curved brick ceilings. I don't know how old this place was, but maybe, you know, gosh, hundreds of years in this really old town. Brasov. Brasov. I don't know if I'm pronouncing It. Right. But it was really cool. It's actually near where Dracula's castle was. We went and checked that out. But we don't all have that luxury to just put an Airbnb in an old wine cellar. Right. But we can add things in our furnishings that are going to really add to the experience. So number five, the fifth thing that we can do to make sure our guests have a good experience is make sure that they have a good night's sleep. Now, I know that's not really experience related per se, but if our guests aren't getting enough sleep, they're not going to enjoy much of anything. Right. You know, when we are really tired, it's just hard to be in a better mood. So we want to make sure they're having a good night's sleep. And we can do that by using the mattresses that we recommend. If you haven't seen a recommended resources yet, you can go to restmethods.com you can see the exact mattress that we use. You want to make sure that you're using good sheets and you have blackout curtains and that there's not a lot of noise in there. So we got to make sure that they have a good night's sleep. If they don't, we can do everything else. And our guests are not going to have a good experience. So just to recap on those real quickly, we want to make sure that we have clear expectations. We want to make sure that we have really good communication and we don't sound like a robot. We're adding some sort of personal touch in there. We need to be consistent. Very important. We need to be consistent. We want to put some thought into our design. Add something that makes it a little unique. Just at least one thing that captures your guest's attention also makes for a good photo. And then lastly, we want to make sure that our guests have a good night's sleep. So make sure that your bedding and your bedrooms are set up properly. Okay, now for the other side of the equation. Five things that are going to take away from your guest experience. So five things that we can avoid doing. Number one is too much automation. Now, I know you're probably thinking, especially if you listen to this podcast for a while, Tim, you are the biggest hypocrite. You try to automate everything. And I do. I try to automate as much as I can. But I still understand that we have to have a personal touch. So we send personal messages. My amazing receptionist team sends personal messages to our guests. And it really goes a Long way. Of course, we automate a lot of messages too, but those are generic messages like check in instructions and checkout instructions. So don't automate everything. Make sure you still have a personal touch in there. Number two, a second thing that is really going to take away from a guest experience. This is a big no, no. And that's if you have some sort of remnant from a past guest in there, or if this is a personal property of yours that you stay in personally, you've got a bunch of family photos or something like that that's going to take away from the experience, right? We want our guests to walk into the properties and have a blank slate. We want them to be able to create that experience. We want. We don't want things making them think of other people's experiences. You know, for example, a photo of you on a vacation in Hawaii. So we don't want that. We don't want any sort of remnants of other guests in there. So make sure you've got those things taken out. The third thing that takes away from guest experience, and this is no. And this is by no means an exhaustive list of everything. There's a lot that goes into experiences, right. But these are some easy things that we could do. The third one is making sure we don't feel too much like a company. Now, if you only have one property or a few properties, then you've probably got this one handled, right? Unless you have a property management company handling up for you, it's very possible they could be adding too much company feel in there. So what do I mean by company? Well, is your profile photo a logo of the company? Do you have a bunch of policies when the guest checks in, does it say, you know, company policy says that you can't do this or that, or is that a way that you're communicating and messages? Well, if it is, take note of that and try to remove as much as that company vibe that you can. We want to have our operating procedures set up as best as we can. And you know, the way good companies do that. But we want to take that company feel out of it. So that's number three, number four, fourth thing that you can do that's really going to take away from your guest experience or really not give you the opportunity to give your guest a good experience. And that is if you don't have any recommendations, you want to make sure that you're recommending things. This is something that we can get personal with, right? This is my favorite Mexican restaurant because I love their guacamole they make it by hand. You will love it. It's delicious. Things like that, having some cafes. And we've talked a lot about recommendations and guidebooks in the past, but have some of those in there. And even better, if your guest tells you why they're coming to town, I always recommend that you ask. Maybe it's to view a local tourist attraction or something like that. If you can custom tailor a recommendation that might fit in their schedule. Oh, that's a big win. That's very personal and that's going to add to the guest experience. So make sure that you have recommendations. We do that in two forms. One is we have a single page printout in the property that has top three cafes, top three restaurants, and a bunch of little bullet points for some walking distance restaurants or locations, grocery stores, pharmacies, things like that. But then we also have a digital guidebook and sky's the limit. With your digital guidebook, you can put in as much as you want in there. So make sure you have recommendations to provide a good experience for your guests. Number five, this is kind of in line with communication and guest messages, but we want our guests to feel like we care about them, right? So this happened to me while I was staying in one of these Airbnb's recently is that they sent the checkout message like two days before even gonna check out. And what. And you know what I was thinking? I was like, oh, wow, they really aren't too worried about me staying in this property if they're already telling me how to leave. That's just what I was thinking. So make sure that your automated messages are set up to go out at the right time. We send our checkout messages the day someone's checking out, just a couple hours before as a friendly reminder. So make sure double check your messages just to recap those five things that will take away from our guest experience. That's too much automation, so no personal touch whatsoever. Number two is some sort of remnant of prior guest experiences or your experiences if this is a personal property. So make sure you've got a clean slate so someone can build and make their own experience. Number three is having a company feel. Now, that's not to say that having a company feel means you're going to have a bad experience, but guests like a personal touch, especially on the Airbnb platform. Other OTAs, other platforms attract a little bit a different type of guest. Booking.com, for example, is more traditionally people that were staying in hotels, so that might not be as important, but in the Airbnb world, it started with experiences and personal hosts. And so if you are operating a company, try to take as much of that company feel out of there as you can. Number four, and this is a big one, is not having recommendations or enough recommendations. So make sure you're going through periodically and updating these and adding a few in there and not just the recommendations, but why you like them. And number five, is sending out checkout messages or something, some sort of communication that lets your guests know that they're not really valued. Right. And they're kind of just another number. They're just another reservation. So we want it to be as personal possible. I hope that gave you a little more insight into experiences. It really is one of those things that can really drive your income up, can really drive your occupancy up. And we want to make sure we're doing everything we can to make sure our guests have an amazing experience and they keep coming back. So one thing happened during my travels these last five weeks that really affected my experience and, and I didn't mention it here, but it is something that I guarantee will get you a bad review. So, sorry, but you're just going to have to stay tuned until next week. Until then, I hope you are having a wonderful day. Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you soon.

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