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What I learned:
Have 3 sets of linens for each room.
Things you should never run out of:
Toilet paper
Soap
Hot water
Hardwood floors, if kept clean and polished, appear cleaner. A robo vacuum saves time and your back, and you won’t have any dust bunnies under the bed!
Folks who ask for discounts are potential trouble.
I was scolded by Helsi for responding to old threads, called a childish name by a former mod all in my first week. I do think we can do better job being welcoming to new members and I will try and set a better example.
RR
I love everyone’s lists!
Some things I’ve learned and (maybe unfortunately) had to put into use:
don’t be shy about enforcing rules, AirBnB won’t penalize a host for breaking up a party or kicking people out for whatever reason. Times where I might have been shy and timid about any backlash from the platform, I remembered this forum and dealt with the issue immediately like a mean camp counselor.
document, document! Reiterate everything via AirBnB message, even if it’s “Hi there - confirming that we just evicted 9 people from our space at 11:20pm.” No he said/she said the next day, and pictures are worth a thousand words!
“heads in beds” vs. stable pricing. For us we toe the line and will sometimes lower our prices to fill our calendar, but that depends on the month and whether we have IB activated.
lint rollers!
I thought of another important lesson:
Record details of every reservation (name, cell phone, dates, etc.) OFF of the Airbnb platform. Some use a notebook, some a spreadsheet. I use my Outlook calendar. Anything, as long as it’s not just on Airbnb.
I felt welcomed but made lots of mistakes. I would rather be reprimanded gently by you folk than have egg on my face with a paying guest. I read tons and tons. I spent 6 hours reading on this forum one day. Things I learned
Washcloths and sheets are the price of doing business, you should not charge for them
If something happens at your rental and its out of your control, like the drunk neighbor guy that gets busted in the next door yard in the middle of the night, , you do not have to make amends to your guest. We are not responsible for those things
Stay away from fire pits, too much risk for your listing
Most guests are great but the ones that will burn you will ask for special stuff right up front, beware!
All hosts and listing are different and some prefer white towels and some prefer colored towels. Do what you can afford and what keeps the heads on beds
Keep changing stuff if what you are doing doesn’t work until you hit your sweet spot
Have a back bone when you are dealing with disrespectful guests
Engage your neighbors to help you, treat them right, reward them for their help
Hosting is very rewarding
Sorry, but still my least favorite thing about this forum even though I can laugh at stuff I may not agree with. I told everyone about the comment about Trump being like the monster that wouldn’t die when he survived covid. I laugh everytime I remember that
That sounds like a lot of work. Can I ask why? I’ve had minor hiccups with the Airbnb site/app, but never anything that made me think “I need to manually duplicate all of this information”. If nothing else, I always have the email showing the original booking (and any modifications).
If there was a good reason to do this, it would also seem like there should be some way to automate this. Perhaps something that could be done via “IFTTT” or similar.
I definitely could see having the date and price/night in a spreadsheet being very useful for trying to optimize pricing.
I go back and forth on this. The ‘gross factor’ in scouring dirty sheets is substantial. I’m not squeamish at this point (3 years of hosting 4 listings and doing 99% of turnovers myself), but I’d way rather do the fine-tooth-comb lint-roller inspection with a set of sheets have been washed/bleached/dried.
Why not do the inspection as you are making the bed? Seems like the washing/drying process will at least remove a significant number of hairs (especially small ones), and it will also prevent letting your own shed hairs contaminate what you thought were already inspected hair-free linens.
It’s not a lot of work. It takes a minute. Hosts have had situations where Airbnb has suspended their listing for some reason, or there’s some tech glitch where the booking gets erased or the host can’t log into their account. Meaning they have no way of getting in touch with upcoming guests if they haven’t stored the phone numbers and other info elsewhere. That info isn’t on the notification emails.
Fair enough. I suppose that could happen.
I do think that someone could probably write a fairly simple program that would make this happen automatically. Probably charge 99 cents for it on Google Play/ App Store and be a pretty sweet (if not overly specialized) little tool…calling all developers…
I know I’m old-fashioned, but I’m a pen and paper gal myself, so couldn’t care less whether there was an online tool. It takes me no more than one minute to write the guest’s name, phone number and booking dates in my little book.
I do, and I still find hairs, just fewer. Hair is the bane of my existence. My last guests qualified as a supershedder event.
RR
It takes me about 30 seconds per reservation—if that. I copy and paste from the Airbnb reservation notice to my Outlook calendar. I wouldn’t bother with an app. I use my calendar to manage all kinds of tasks and commitments. It’s exactly where my Airbnb reservation data belongs.
I use a channel manager so I do not need to copy the information it gets done for me.
Another reason to have all the guest information in my own database is for marketing purposes. I encourage direct bookings.
RR
We had just had the dog that must be the reason that most hosts charge extra for dogs. There were so many hairs it must have been bald by the time they checked out. We’ve had so many dogs stay and we have never seen dog hair like this…and the best part is that he stayed in not one, but two, of our apartments. For only one small cleaning fee and at our cheaper solo-traveler rate for a studio. Sigh. (Because of a plumbing problem, we had moved the guest from a studio to a 2-bedroom.) I ticked the “would not host again” box just out pure practicality 
(well, not just that, before I get eaten alive)
I promise never to book your place with my dog. She’s a constant shedder and about twice a year she goes through a major shed where I sweep up 2 dustpans full of hair every day for a couple of weeks, no exaggeration. And it floats around like tumbleweeds, inserting itself everywhere. I could fashion another dog out of what she sheds.
The only great thing about her coat is that it’s pretty and nothing at all sticks to it.
It’s not necessary, you are more than welcome to book. There is no way that your dog is like this dog. I have always had a dog, my whole life, and we have had at least 200 dogs stay in our airbnb units. And I have never seen a shedder like this dog. I 100% think that he has a metabolic issue or something, it was bizarre. And it was unfortunate that we had to put him into the second apartment, it may have just been a breaking point, lol.
It’s happened to me when the Airbnb website went down. It doesn’t happen often (maybe 4 times out of 800+ bookings) but it’s nerve wracking when it does. I have quite a few same day, one day bookings so sometimes communication is very time sensitive.
Luckily it came back online in time for me to send the check in information to my guest but after that I at least write the phone number associated with their account on my calendar with their name. It takes few seconds and saves me worry when the site is malfunctioning.
What an interesting idea, I’ve never considered that. Do you leave them to roam and tell the guests the schedule? We have a lot of longer term guests that might appreciate help in vacuuming.
I also have two robo vacs that supplement my other multiple vacs. I only use mine in the Airbnb room when I’m turning over the room. I agree with Nordling that they are great when they fit under the furniture. If I left it in the guest room for a longer term guest I don’t know if I’d trust them to empty it and properly clean the filter.