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@aelilya I can’t express enough how much I appreciate your thoughts/time/energy with this. You shared some truly brilliant copyright. It’s perfect. Everything about this suggestion will be utilized at some point in this STR journey.
However, I’m going to hold it from this guest. They check in just 5 days from today (2-day booking). I feel like we have her in a decent enough place from our other interactions. So at this point (we haven’t interacted in 3+ days), I just don’t think it would go over. And although I’ve been wrong about how some guests will end up being (read: impossible to make happy), I have a decent enough feeling that between the listing itself and how we’ve interacted with her, can should win her over. That doesn’t make anything about your suggestion imperfect in any way. Thank you so much again.
We are also brand new in this sub-market (“Glen Oak Rim” if you go to our listings @ socalstr.com). This is also the same notorious power outage listing from another thread. We’re in the establishing-ourselves phase and are actually guilty of being one of the dreaded undercutting/newbies. ~ducking and hiding~ Once we’re solid, I’ll have your confidence.
Now let’s just hope we don’t get another power outage!
@RiverRock Be sure to check back in and let us know how Christmas books up. I’m sure you’ve posted your listing a thousand times, so my apologies up front. Care to share here?
@CatskillsGrrl This will all come to it’s conclusion in about a week. I’ll definitely let everyone know how it shakes out. Finger, toes, arms, legs crossed!
LOL! I kid. I did it in the beginning, too, but mostly because Air made me (20% discount thing I thought I had to do & not smart enough to jack my price to make up the difference). Oh, and I wanted to get those first 5 reviews.
Imagine the delight of the established hosts in the area to see my first review was a 4 . Everyone knows that story so leaving it there.
I’m one house. You have a stable. You’re clearly at a different investment level and income goal. That impacts how you approach things. I felt INSANE pressure to earn the first year because, well, that’s a lot of $$$ to invest and not make your ROI goals.
I have lived in fear of this since I started seven years ago, and it has never happened to us yet.
So, no, I’d say it’s not common.
Our most common pricing issue is AirBnB showing a low-season discounted “gap” rate when guests search without dates. A few potential guests have become belligerent when they put their dates in (full week in high season) and are asked to pay a much higher rate (2-3 times as high),
It’s not common in that it doesn’t happen every week, but it does happen. I usually tell the guest that it’s travel industry standard - which it is. Most people are familiar with the fact that flight and hotel prices fluctuate a lot.
I’ve been known to be nicer and say “as you know” before the industry standard part. I might add that Airbnb fixes our prices which is true as we use Smart Pricing. (Along with plenty of manual edits of course, but still…)
Don’t dread requests for a discount. Just tell the guests that you can’t offer discounts, that your prices are comparable with other rentals nearby and that your place represents great value for money - assuming that it does. I have a saved message about this as it’s a fairly common question for me. It probably depends on location, price range and various other factors.
Remember too that some people are just programmed to ask for discounts. Some are just smart-arsey, with some it’s a cultural thing, others do it because it’s second nature in their profession (antique dealer, used car dealer etc.)
And don’t forget the sting of the up to 20% Airbnb fees that are tacked on to the booking at the end.
A reasonably priced listing that the potential guest has done the mental math on …. Suddenly looks very expensive at the payment end of the transaction.
Is there already an entire thread about this somewhere already?
We also get a lot of inquiries of guests browsing without dates and thinking that “gap” rate (if I’m understanding you correctly) should somehow be honored. I always refer to it as a “blended rate” but I have no idea the factors that get it there. Our rack rates are 3x what that blended rate (non-date search rate or “gap” rate) can be all because we deeply discounted a few days leading up. . .
The guest is currently there and has been for a couple days. She’s been a little high maintenance. Arrival day, we went back and fourth on getting her an early check in. We ended up getting her in there an hour early. When she arrives, she gets lost (so we needed a phone call, she didn’t want to read my instructions). Kinda one of those people that wanted to get lost - so she got lost - you know? The next day she started by telling us how amazing the place is (good!). But then asked if we had an umbrella (we don’t). But said she’d understand if we didn’t have one (good too). We told her that we love her idea and we’d get one for future guests (actually not a bad idea).
She leaves tomorrow so fingers and toes crossed that she’s ultimately happy and we get the 5-star on this one! As I’m writing this, it occurred to me that she’s there completely alone. And this listing is a lot of house to be staying at solo (3BR/1.5B/1,250 sq/ft). Just a little strange!
One more (hopefully happy) update hopefully tomorrow night!
You can’t figure people out sometimes. A friend of mine who hosted for years had a repeat guest in her one bedroom studio who never used the bedroom. The woman stayed many times. It’s not that the bed isn’t comfortable, it’s great- I slept there myself several times. And the bedroom is much quieter, being at the back of the house.
But this guest always slept on the couch in the living room, which is a hide-a-bed, she never even opened it into a bed, just slept on the couch, which is right in front of a window facing a busy street. Go figure.
Sometimes we’re close. However, this time we were too far away (2+ hours). And 100% agree. If we were down the street we’d absolutely bring one!
We even considered having our crew on the ground bring an umbrella by. However, whenever we engage them for an unscheduled house visit, we pay them a minimum of $50 (even if it takes them 30 mins or less). We just didn’t feel like it was worth the expense. We also try not to use these 911/unscheduled visits when we know there are going to be much bigger problems that we’ll really need our crews for.
Would have cost less for you to ship them an umbrella!
I’ve ended my Amazon Prime subscription for various reasons that will engender off-topic shenanigans if elucidated, but I acknowledge the service is handy for “emergencies” as defined by the buyer. Which probably explains their $1.8 trillion market cap.
Right! We had an oven snafu recently. Oh, it was heartbreaking. Dude was there with his girlfriend and it was BOTH of their birthday! On the same day! They were trying to bake the birthday cake! And the oven isn’t working. My fault completely. How awful is that?
We had one of our crew run to the grocery store and get a cake and bring it out to them. The listing is in the fricken middle of nowhere, so the whole thing took over 90 minutes to get done start to finish. Between the cake and compensating the crew member, it was $100.
I like the term “orphan days” - hadn’t heard that one before! We are just the opposite with ours though. When we have just a day or two unbooked on the calendar in an otherwise full month, we actually bump the price UP! (we welcome the day off and if someone books at the higher rate, we’re OK with not getting a break!) Almost every time they book at the higher rate on a last minute basis, and so far, no complaints.
Umbrellas in December?? I have put my umbrellas away for a rest/ a short while/ no guests during the stormy weather / rain/ upgrading which keeps coming to us!
But having some nice solid real teak ones ready to put out, ( not the cheap-ass matchsticks glued together “teak”) that withstand any high wind on a very heavy iron base are recommended.
I assume it is hot and sunny there near Julian!
We are lucky to own one of these old battle-axe teak ones in our high wind area, and the other one is a crank up but good metal and shade material. We found that one at the dump, go figure…
. Everyone knows that 
story so leaving it there.
