As AirBNB hosts, we love providing a great experience and great vacation in our homes, both the ones we own and the ones we manage for others. Through our experience managing and consulting with friends buying short term rentals, managing their property themselves and doing AirBNB arbitrage, we have seen a few common missteps that we ourselves had to learn the hard way. Here are our top 3 most common mistakes we’ve seen and done ourselves when launching and setting up systems at our properties.
Durability
One of the most fun parts of launching an AirBNB property is designing the space and making it your own. Especially if design is a strength of yours, all of the shopping and bargain hunting can be exhilarating, and then seeing it all come together on setup day can be the cherry on top. Getting swept up in the design can cause you to overlook the basics and designing for durability. A white couch may look fabulous in the space, but it will be a nightmare to maintain trying to prevent and remove stains. You may personally prefer glass wine glasses, but high end looking acrylic wine glasses will do just fine (and won’t break during the very first guest stay – something that happened to us). Keeping durability in mind from the beginning will set the space up for success in both serving the guests and preventing a lot of headaches and lost revenue replacing items that are not well suited for an AirBNB.
Functionality
Making a space feel intuitive and easy to use is another great way to create a positive guest experience. For example, we have started using labeling a number of items in our properties to make it easier for guests to navigate the kitchen, figure out which switch goes to which light and even for our cleaners to replenish supplies in the linen closet in our mountain house. It’s easy for them to see where the bath towels, spa towels and makeup towels go so we can provide a consistent user experience to our guests. We’ve also added framed signs with the WiFi password throughout the house and in front of every TV to make logging on easy if the Wifi ever disconnects. Although the labels and signs aren’t always aesthetically pleasing, countless guests have commented on how much they love our mountain house, and especially all the labels we placed everywhere. Having a beautiful space draws them in to book you place, but having a functional space wins them over once their already in your home.
Turnover Operations
Last, but certainly not least, is turnover operations. Everyone thinks of getting a good cleaning crew for turnovers but trash removal is a critical turnover operation that should be on the forefront of your mind. Trash removal is often an after thought, but arriving to overflowing trash barrels and a missed pickup can create a pretty terrible guest experience right out the gate. Early on, you’ll want to know what the different options are for trash removal. Does the town provide it or do you need to hire a private company? Do you have enough barrels and are they big enough? Which day is trash pickup and does it change for peak season vs. off season? Does it need to be brought to the street or can you pay an extra fee to fetch it from the side of the house? Does your property have space for a small dumpster? Can your cleaners take the trash? Can your maintenance person take the trash with them (ex. our hot tub maintenance company takes the trash for our mountain house). Is it easy and obvious to guests where to store trash in between pickups?
We made a number of mistakes nailing down this system at our properties and want others to be able to avoid the trial and error we experienced. Just keep in mind that people on vacation will usually eat out more and accumulate more trash than if they were at home cooking in for most meals. For our small 500 sq. foot, 2 bedroom cottage we provide three 80 gallon trash barrels so there is little chance of running out of room. You want to provide more space than you think you’ll need to you aren’t getting a call from guests, neighbors or the HOA that there is a problem. The best defense is a good offense in this case.