Tim Hubbard shares what he learned from getting soaked at an Airbnb in France. Simple fixes make a difference: add an awning or umbrella at the door, use short door codes instead of long digital workflows, put Wi-Fi passwords on QR codes, and include weather notes in your guidebook.
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Bonjour. Well, that's my best French accent. I just spent a bit of time over in France and I want to give you a couple insights that I learned this week. Things that you need to consider for each and every one of your properties. Stay tuned. Let's jump right in.
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I'm your host, Tim Hubbard.
Welcome back to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. I'm back from a recent trip in Europe stuffed full of croissants. Yes, I ate a lot of croissants. I don't know if I pronounced that right either. I haven't yet learned French. It's on my list to do. We'll be working on that one sometime in the near future. But I want to talk today about guest expectations. We talk about that a lot. I got caught in the rain when I was over in France. We went out to a nice dinner and we're sitting there kind of like on an outdoor indoor patio thing, and the rain started coming down and we did walk there and we're close enough to our Airbnb. I was staying there with family, so it was a really amazing location. It was. It was right at that point where, like, it would be almost insulting to call an Uber, but it was still a little far to go with the rain pouring down. So we made the trek. We went for it. We sort of hid under awnings wherever we could so we didn't get too wet. I love the architecture in France. Oh, my gosh. I gotta say, it's one of my favorite cities in the world in terms of architecture. But anyways, we get back to our Airbnb, which did not have an awning, and it also had the world's longest lockbox code. I'm serious. I don't think I've ever come across a lockbox code as long as this one. This was not an ordinary lockbox. It was actually a digital lockbox to get the key out. And with the rain coming down and touching the digital codes of the. Of the lockbox, it was hard to input the code, the incredibly long code. And yep, you guessed it, we got incredibly soaked. Made for a fun experience, right? Definitely not the host's fault. But I just wanted to bring up a couple points because a lot of times we don't really think of this. A lot of times our guests get caught in the rain, you could say, because they headed out from our apartment and maybe they didn't have good insider information on the city. Maybe they got caught in horrible traffic at certain parts of the of the day or whatever it happens to be. They didn't have the insight they need to make the ultimate experience. So in this situation, of course, having an awning on the property would be really nice. If your property is in a place where you get some serious rain or snow and your guests need to check in and it's a long walkway or something like that, it might take them a little bit of time to get in. If you have an awning or you can add an awning there, well, that certainly helps. Umbrellas are also really nice to have. So if you're in a very rainy place, not a bad idea to have a little pot or vase or whatever you would call it with a bunch of umbrellas in there. So your guests see them as they go out. Right. So our entrance is important and the easier it is for our guests to get in the property, the better it is. I actually left out that before we got to our Airbnb door, there was another common area door which had another digital code. So it was one digital code to get into the common area, another digital code, the longest one I've ever seen in my life to get the actual key out of the door. And then finally we're were inside. So this host had something going on with codes. They actually had one of those incredibly long WI FI passwords. This is I. I've seen some long ones in my days, but I'm just going to read this one off because this is still happening out there. This WI fi password was cjpc5s f v48kmh f3zse52. Can you believe that? That is. That's really long. So these days we have the ability make that something special, you know, like hours, for example, is just relaxing. That's much easier to remember than that crazy set of numbers. You better believe you're going to have guests calling you, saying that your Internet does not work if you have a code like that. We also have the option these days to have a little QR code, depending on what sort of router we're using, where your guests could just scan it and connect automatically. That makes it really nice. They also have the Stay FI routers available if you're planning on doing marketing. I think we should all be doing marketing for our short term rentals, but that'll allow you to collect a lot of emails. So I'm always learning from My travels. These are things that I've already learned in the past with my rentals, but I just wanted to bring them up. Remember that the easier it is for your guests to get in, the better. The more you plan for the unexpected, or the more you keep your guests aware of what could potentially happen, the better will be for them. If you're in a place that gets tropical storms, for example, have a guidebook. We should all have guidebooks we use hostfully. But put a note in there about the weather that you don't want to get caught in the rain. So it's still a really good experience. I love traveling. It opens our minds, it gives us ideas, it allows us to see the way that other people live, which I think is the most special thing about it. You know, we're born in these places and a lot of times, a lot of us never leave. Our families are there and we have commitments there. But just getting out and exploring a little bit can really open our eyes up. So I hope that gave you just a little bit insight. Change your WI FI password if you haven't already. Get rid of digital lockboxes if you have one out there and just have a digital lock on the actual door. Try to have the shortest code possible. Hopefully you're using a system where you can control those codes remotely. Hopefully you're using one that just controls them automatically. We use lock state so all of our guests get a unique code just for their reservation and programs automatically. Of course, we do always recommend having a backup lock box just in case a guest has a problem with the digital lock. So take another look at your entrance. If there's something you might be able to do to improve it, your guests will thank you for it. So just a real quick short one for you this week. Try to keep your guests from getting caught in the rain. They will thank you for it. Until next time, I hope you have a fabulous week.
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