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My management company wants to implement an access portal to our house WiFi to capture email addresses. The intent is to help build more direct bookings so the emails will be used for direct marketing of future bookings of their group of properties.
I’ve worked hard to make our house feel like an escape. Most of our guests are from New York City. My management company can’t understand why I would object. Am I out of touch with current trends, or am I right that guests at my mountain retreat should not be greeted by data capture software? Does anyone here use this and are guests ok with it?
I’d run a mile from this. Personally, I would find it unacceptable as a guest. That is, if I knew about it. Would guests know?
Would your management company use the email addresses exclusively to contact your previous guests to stay with you again or would they use them for other marketing for other hosts / businesses too? More than likely the latter.
You have no control over their usage of that data. Who knows what they will do with those email addresses? I can’t imagine a scenario that will benefit you exclusively.
I would be very wary of this because email marketing worked fairly well at the beginning of this century but not these days.
Remember with your management company that you are the client. They work for you and you’re the boss. If you don’t agree to the data capture simply tell them so.
By the way, the best way to capture email addresses is simply to have a guest book with a column marked ‘email address’. Then the guest has the choice. But that is information for you and not the management company.
Data mining your guests? Give me a break. I often exchange email addresses with guests, letting them know if they ever want to return, or have friends who might be interested, they can contact me directly. All have been forthcoming, but I can’t imagine being so rude or sneaky as to try to obtain that info behind their backs.
If it were me, I’d be looking for new property managers- no way I’d want to do business with people who think stealing guests’ private contact info is okay.
I leave a business card in the rentals. It’s double sided, with a photograph of our gorgeous view on one side.
On the other side is my business phone number and my email address. Guests can take the card or leave it - they usually take it. A lot of repeat business comes that way.
What does “greeted by data capture software” mean? Is this like the pop-up page you get when first connecting to some WiFi networks where you have acknowledge that you won’t violate their terms and sometimes provide some login info. These are common at hotels and airports but thankfully becoming less so.
Anyway, if guests are obligated to give their e-mail address to get WiFi access, you should expect complaints and I would be surprised if it’s not a violation of Airbnb’s terms of service to do this.
Edit: I looked into StayFi and it is a splash page that guests get when they first access the WiFi. There’s conflicting information where it says “guests can opt-in by entering their e-mail” but also says the “every guest must enter their information”. I’m not sure if it violates Airbnb’s terms, but I bet it does, and you would definitely need to find out first. It’s going to be annoying to guests to be certain and you may get complaints in reviews. The real benefit is to your management company, not your listing.
What she said. This sounds like the property manager is getting some kickback from this, and NO WAY I would share guest email addresses with anyone except Air.
You should report this to Air. And DO get a different “property manager”. You deserve better and so do your guests.
Data Mining is just WRONG! Your management company doesn’t want to help you – they want to help themselves make more money selling off the data from your guests!
I would get a new management company ASAP; better yet I would manage my rental myself.
Thanks for confirming what I think. It is not at all the experience I want our guests to have. My house is in the mountains with unreliable cell service so there really is no choice but to accept giving over your email address.
I didn’t consider that AirBnB would have a rule against this. Thanks for suggesting it. I’ll look into it.
I live in a state that requires registration and my registration card specifies that I do not share registration information other than that required by law. I would not want my info shared.
I used to ask guests for their email addresses when they were leaving, in order to send them special offers. Which I tried and still have never got a repeat guest. I guess our listing is a “Special Trip never to be forgot” type of place.
I wouldn’t want to give a management company my email address. We give all our guests the private password information to access the wifi available.
