The Top 9 Questions You'll Get AFTER Your Guest Checks Out | The STRR Podcast #102 | Tim Hubbard

So we get asked lots of questions as short term rental hosts, right? But as we know, if you've been listening to this podcast, we don't need to personally respond to all those. We can automate a lot of them. In fact, we can automate the majority. But there are still questions that you're going to get asked. This is part three of a three part series on the questions that you will get asked after running your short term rentals for a while. These questions are specific to when a guest has checked out when their reservation has ended. I've got nine questions for you this week. Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches where we'll discuss investing in real estate, but with a specific focus on short term rentals to help you build wealth faster with as little headache as possible.

So if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know my team and I have managed a heck a lot of reservations. Hopefully you listened to the first two parts of this three part series on questions. We've been asked a lot of questions. We've sent and received over 140,000. So we've got a little bit of experience with this, a little bit of street cred, I guess you could say. But I want to break down this week nine questions that you guys are very, very likely to guess. You will get asked in fact all of these questions at some point. So these are after a guest checks out after the reservation ends. The first part we're pre inquiry questions. So before a guest checks in your property. And the second part of this three part series were questions that you'll get while a guest is in your property. So let's just go ahead and get started. Question number one, you will get when someone's reservation ends. So maybe they haven't actually left yet, but the reservation's over, they're gonna ask, can I have a late checkout? Hopefully they've asked you a little bit in advance. Hopefully you have your answer already set up for this. Our team and I typically don't allow late checkouts just because it makes it really hard with all the operations. Most time our housekeepers are there ready to clean the unit as soon as that checkout time arrives for us. That's 11:00am Number two, can I extend my stay? Sometimes people ask us very last minute when they're checking out and so that will come up, they're going to ask you if dates are still available. If they're not, maybe you've got another place to put them. But if not, unfortunately that's just what happens when we do things super duper last minute. Number three, is there anything we need to do to check out? So we send our checkout instructions to all of our guests a few hours before their checkout time. And they're very simple. Usually it's just, hey, if you don't mind, please turn off the lights in the AC unit and lock the door behind you. We don't ask them to take out the trash. We don't ask them to pile up the linens or anything like that. Course you can if you want to, but guests are going to ask you what they need to do to check out. Number four, I left my blank at your property. I left my most common. It's a, a phone charger. But sometimes someone leaves something a little more valuable and they will certainly leave items in your property. So you need to have a way to kind of manage that. We have storage spots on a lot of our properties, so we will store some things in there for a period of time. If a guest asks for them, we're happy to, to ship them back. You know, if it's something valuable, if it's going to cost us a lot to ship, then, then we would charge them for that as well. But most common thing you're going to get are phone. Phone chargers. You're going to get a ton of those because people don't really come back for those small, little, tiny things, but people are going to leave items. So make sure you've got a plan to handle that. Number five, we checked out, but can we leave our luggage at your property? Up to you guys, how you want to handle that. Most of the time we can't really allow for this because we either. Usually we've got another guest checking in, so. But, but you will get asked that it's nice to have a recommendation form if they can't leave their luggage there. Maybe you have a favorite cafe nearby that you can recommend where they can hang out with their luggage and use fast wi fi and drink some good coffee and all that stuff. So number six, where can I leave my review? Or can you leave a review for me? Some people building their Airbnb profiles or building their, their traveler, their guest profiles want you to leave a review right away. We're always going to leave reviews for our guests and so that one might come up. Actually, it will come up. Number seven, I accidentally took your blank. This is probably going to be something like a garage remote or a parking pass or a set of keys or something small that the guests just accidentally took. Maybe they were using it during their stay and they rushed off to the airport, they rushed off to go wherever they need to be and they forgot something. So that'll come up, some sort of miscellaneous item. And then they're going to ask, do you want me to send it back to you? Well, hopefully they ask if. If they should send it back to you, and that's up to you to handle that. So it's always a good idea to have backups for that stuff. Backup garage remotes, backup keys, anything that you need for your next upcoming guest that's crucial, like keys to get in. Really good to have backups for those. Number eight, I accidentally broke blank. So this is nice that the guest is telling us. Of course, our housekeepers are going to find out if something's broken as well, but someone may write you and say, I accidentally broke the t. The tv, hopefully not the tv, but I accidentally broke bedside lamp. It fell off the table. Or I broke a vase, or I broke some wine glasses. How do you want to handle that? It's good to have response. It's good for your receptionist, whoever's helping you with your guest messages, to have saved response, just ready to go. Because the better prepared you are with the answers, just the smoother everything goes, the better experience your guest has, the better experience your team has, just the better it is overall to be prepared. So if it's something, a large item, then we're usually going to ask for some sort of compensation. You know, if it's something small, if they broke a wine glass, that happens all the time, then we're not going to ask for them to, you know, send us $6 for a broken wine glass. But if they broke a whole bunch of glasses or they ruined a whole bunch of towels, then we are going to ask for some sort of compensation. And. And we would file a resolution if that's something that we need to do. So, number nine, this is going to happen sometimes after guest checks out, they get home, they view their invoice, they view how much they spent, and they're going to say, I got charged incorrectly. Now, if you're booking directly through Airbnb, that's going to be pretty cut and dry, right? They handle all that. But if you're booking through your own platform or you're on other platforms where you're actually charging the guest, maybe there was something that got messed up there. But most all the time, or actually all the time, we have the reservation booked and the guest knows exactly how much it is up front. They may have misrepresented read something, unfortunately, but you will get that question. And how do you want to handle that? Do you want to work with them? Most time in our our situation, we've got a reservations cut and dry, so we're going to go ahead and stick with that. So those are nine questions that you will get as a guest is checking out or after they've already checked out. And again, it's better to be prepared. The quicker we can respond to our guests, the better the experience they're going to have, which means the more positive reviews you're going to get, the higher your properties will go up in the search rankings and the more money you will make with your short term rentals. So if you don't have answers for all those, just prepare them. Won't take very long. And until next time, I hope you have a wonderful day.