MUST-HAVE Amenity for Your Airbnbs In 2022 | Tim Hubbard

Welcome back to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. Not all of the topics in our short term rental world are super exciting for all of us. Sexy, glamorous, but a lot of them are really necessary. So this week we're going to talk about one that is definitely necessary. 100%, you gotta have it. Otherwise your guests are maybe gonna be a little frustrated. So let's jump right in. This week we're talking all about soaps for our short term rentals. 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. So it used to be when you stayed in a short term rental that maybe they had shampoo in the shower? Hopefully they did. I'm talking like five, 10 years ago when I used to stay at home and a lot of Airbnbs, it was really hit or miss. And depending on where you are in the world, it can still be hit or miss. I go to a lot of places and they still don't have it. Maybe in the shower or something like that. But in the US where most of us have our properties, most of the listeners this show, thanks for tuning in again, by the way. It's pretty much a requirement. We need to have it. We have to have it and we've got to have it in multiple places in our short term rentals. So not just the bathroom, but we need to have it in kitchens and powder rooms. We need soap for our washing machines, we need soap for our dishwasher. So I want to talk about some of the options we've used in the past and just a few things to consider about soap. So first off, we do need these in multiple places. I'm just going to start with the bathroom because that is probably the most important place where we have to have soaps. And it's also probably the place where we're more likely to get a negative review. Our bathrooms have to be spotless, so we've got to have soaps. Now, do we need to have shampoo, conditioner and body wash in our shower? Well, you know, they sell shampoo and conditioner combinations. Some people have different feelings about that. I mean, having something is better than having nothing, obviously. And as long as it looks clean, then I think you can get away with just a shampoo and a conditioner combination and then a body wash. Now, if your property's higher end, it doesn't cost you a lot to add a separate conditioner. Or something that's nice, right? So we're going to talk about whether we need to spend more money or not. But. But just having something in there. At least have your shampoo and your body wash. If you've got a shampoo conditioner that works. Now, should you buy regular bottles and leave them on the shelf? Well, you can do that or you can get refillable containers. And that's what we like to do now for several reasons. One is that when you see the little shampoo bottle on the window seal or on the wall or whatever it is, and if it's not full, then you just think about the other people that were using it, right. And now the same thing would happen if you're using a refillable dispenser and it's only half full. So you got to make sure that you're filling it all the time. But it's easier for your housekeeper to refill one of those refillable containers than it is some bottle. And so you can just get the gallons off Amazon or from Costco, depending on where you're at. There's several options online, so that's what we use. I think it's also nice and clean. Makes it easy. It's easier on the housekeeping. Make sure that we have it there. Now you can go, you know, when I first started, I had properties that I got the individual bottles, you know, the little luxury bottles like they use in the hotel. And you can do that. It's been hard to say whether that actually made a difference or not. I would say if it's a higher end property, it doesn't cost you that much more. And those things can be pretty, pretty nice. So we've been using the refillable ones because it's a little easier as we've been scaling with housekeeping, but also because it's, it's a little more economical. Right. We can buy in bulk and we can leave a couple gallons with our housekeepers and it's easy to stay on top of. So the bathroom is a big one. Of course, we do not want to have bar soaps. That's a big, big no, no. And I would say whatever you're using in terms of shampoo and conditioner, just make sure that it's full all. Don't get something that's like really overpower smelly. Right. You don't want that. Something more neutral the better. So also in our bathrooms we need hand soap, right. So again, we can buy individual pump hand soaps that are going to run out and they're probably going to be partially empty. And your guests are probably going to be thinking of other people that were using these pumps. Or you can buy refillable ones and just make sure that they're full all the time. Now you can get really nice looking refillable ones, right? That's probably the ideal way to do this. And I would prefer to get one that is a solid color so you can't see that it's partially empty. Of course, that's going to be one more thing for your housekeeper to check. They have to actually open it every time versus being able to look through. If it's transparent, they can see if it needs to be filled or not. So we need the hand soaps, we need the shower soaps. Up to you whether you're doing the little bottles or the big ones. For me personally, I think the refillable one's been best. And you can find the ones that we use on our website@restmethods.com just go to rest recommended resources. You'll see the one that we use now. There's other places in our rental where we need soaps, right? Especially right now with all the, you know, we're still dealing with virus stuff. And so people are more concerned about this than they've ever been. So we got to have soap in our kitchen as well. And there's very likely a couple spots where you're going to need. If you have a dishwasher, then you're going to need dishwasher detergent or liquid. However, I would recommend getting the little pods that they have now. They're way easier. You can just leave a jar under the sink. Leave a handful in there. Make sure you've got enough, especially if a guest is staying for a while so that they don't have to ask you for soap ever again. Right there. Guests shouldn't have to ask us for soap. So we can have that there. But now we also want to have dishwashing liquid just for the sink, even if we have a dishwasher. Because sometimes guests like to wash stuff on their own. They don't want to run it through the dishwasher. So make sure you have a sponge. Make sure you have a little bottle of dishwashing detergent under the sink or somewhere. That's just nice. And please don't reuse sponges. That is a. That's a big no. No. That's. That's stinky, smelly. Not gonna. Not gonna get you good reviews. So there's two options with our dishwashing soap also. Right. We can get a refillable container. Maybe you have a nice cool one that's labeled dishwashing soap. That came that way. You can, of course, just buy a bottle. The transparent bottles, I think that's the tackiest way. Or there's also the transparent bottles, but that come in individual units and those are kind of cool. You can get those in bulk off Amazon and leave a couple of those under the sink with a nice fresh sponge and good to go there in the kitchen. Now there's another place that we can use the pods as well, and that is for our washing machine. And I recommend doing the same thing, getting a nice little jar, leaving it next to the washing machine. This helps our guests. Well, first of all, they don't have to measure anything. They don't have to dump anything in there. They're, they're individually wrapped. They're super easy to use. If you haven't used them before, check them out. That's what I use personally. And it just makes it easier. You also don't have the risk of something overflowing or anything like that. And they're easy to stock. Right. You just buy a huge box of them and you fill those little jars. Or your housekeepers can fill those little jars during the regular routine, during the regular turn, I should say. So we can get all those pods at Costco's good. Sam's Club's good if you're in the U.S. amazon, of course, we can order all that stuff and we can send all this to our housekeepers. Right. If we're not working with professional housekeepers. So lastly, you know, there's a question on cheap versus inexpensive. And again, I think this depends on your property. It's one of those things that's kind of hard to determine. It's much harder to determine than it is, for example, having bad toilet paper, that is. No, no, you need good toilet paper. That will get you some bad reviews. People won't like it. So splurge on the toilet paper. But on the soaps, you can get something neutral. And you're probably going to get any bad feedback or anything like that. But if you want to take it one extra step, you got a luxury property. It's nice to have some nice bath soaps. I got to say, it's nice to have them. So if you want to go over that route, I say do it. It's only a few extra bucks and your guests will like it. But if you're scaling and you have a lot of more commodity type properties, Like I talk about on this channel and the ones, mainly the ones that I own, we don't get any negative feedback about our soaps. So I like to use the refillable bottles. They're easier to scale with, they're easier for housekeeping, they look nice and clean and that is about it in regards to soaps. So we could get into the subject on brands, but that could go on forever and ever. When it comes to a lot of these things, you know, it's just, it's, it's really easiest just to check reviews on Amazon or something like that. Something that's got thousands of reviews and good reviews. It's a pretty good safe bet. So make sure you've got your soaps and all your rooms. Consider using the refillable ones if you don't already. Really, I really suggest using those pods for your dishwasher and your washing machine if you have those in your unit, because those make it really easy for our guests. And that's what this is all about, right? Making it as easy for our guests as possible so that they have a great time, so they have a great experience and they leave us a great review. And you're not going to get great reviews if you don't have soap in your rentals. So there it is for now, quick episode on soap and I hope you guys are all doing well out there. Thanks for tuning in again and don't forget, you can send us your questions or comments@str riches.com you can view all of our past episodes. We also have our house rules in the show notes so you can get a copy of those. Make sure you're house rules are where they should be and you got them all in place, so check us out. Thanks for tuning in again and until next time, have a wonderful week.