One year as an AirBnB host: What have we learned?
E and I moved houses in mid-2018, and our new place had a nice little carriage house apartment above the garage. Over six months we (mostly E honestly) fixed it up, with the goal of getting it up on AirBnB before the 2019 SuperBowl Weekend, which was being hosted in Atlanta. We hit that goal, and are closing in on one full year of AirBnB hosts. So, what have we learned?
1. Settings matter. We don't allow stays shorter than 2 nights, and we do charge a cleaning fee (as well as a security deposit - more on that later) and we do offer discounts for longer-term stays. As a result, about 30% of our occupied nights have been true "weekend" stays, and 70% have been people coming for a week or longer - sometimes upward of 6 weeks. This is helped by our location - we live in a highly walkable area, close to attractions and one performing arts venue with national tours, one college campus, and downtown. Aiming for longer stays has definitely cut down on the amount of "effort" it takes to manage the unit. We also don't allow for instant booking - even though we don't share wall space with the guest, we do want to know who is in there. We clearly spell out house rules and expectations as well, and so far, no one has tried to use it as a party house.
2. Scheduling maintenance is really hard. If your hosting calendar is pretty full and something critical breaks, you definitely are relying on the goodwill of your guests to some extent to get things fixed. There have been at least 3 occasions where scheduled maintenance (scheduled purposefully when there would be no one in the unit) got delayed in starting and the fixes overlapped with our guests' arrival. Being very communicative and up front about the situation as it is happening and offering compensation when needed and before the guest asks for it is really the only thing that a host can do, and most of our guests have been very understanding. We try to have the unit in the same condition that we would expect if we were the ones traveling, which means it's usually spotless and very tastefully decorated - so when the starting situation isn't as we would like, we immediately communicate about it.
3. The person booking should also be the person staying in the unit, if at all possible. There have been a few situations where we have allowed someone to book the unit for a friend/partner - when all are adults, this is usually fine. For example, one person who booked us lives in our neighborhood and didn't have space to host a visiting friend, so booked our place for their friend. That ended up ok. The spouse who booked the space for their partner who was coming to a trade show for a week ended up ok as well. The situation where we got burned occurred when a parent booked the unit for their college student kid and their friend who were doing a pre-semester start course. The occupants left our place with damages, and we ended up adding a security deposit for all stays going forward because of our experience tallying the damage and negotiating with the parent, who wasn't really willing to see that their kids didn't treat our place very well.
4. The system both penalizes hosts for canceling. Regarding aforementioned maintenance, we had one issue that, until fixed, meant that the unit shouldn't be occupied. We had to cancel a stay (which we hated to do, but it was necessary as we couldn't get someone out for a repair over Christmas/New Years), and that immediately generated a "cancellation review". While we can get it removed, it's taking a lot of documentation on our part to work with the system to do that. Rightly so, I think - it's just an additional headache.
Overall, a decent experience and only one truly inconsiderate guest. Not too shabby, considering we had no idea what we were expecting!
1. Settings matter. We don't allow stays shorter than 2 nights, and we do charge a cleaning fee (as well as a security deposit - more on that later) and we do offer discounts for longer-term stays. As a result, about 30% of our occupied nights have been true "weekend" stays, and 70% have been people coming for a week or longer - sometimes upward of 6 weeks. This is helped by our location - we live in a highly walkable area, close to attractions and one performing arts venue with national tours, one college campus, and downtown. Aiming for longer stays has definitely cut down on the amount of "effort" it takes to manage the unit. We also don't allow for instant booking - even though we don't share wall space with the guest, we do want to know who is in there. We clearly spell out house rules and expectations as well, and so far, no one has tried to use it as a party house.
2. Scheduling maintenance is really hard. If your hosting calendar is pretty full and something critical breaks, you definitely are relying on the goodwill of your guests to some extent to get things fixed. There have been at least 3 occasions where scheduled maintenance (scheduled purposefully when there would be no one in the unit) got delayed in starting and the fixes overlapped with our guests' arrival. Being very communicative and up front about the situation as it is happening and offering compensation when needed and before the guest asks for it is really the only thing that a host can do, and most of our guests have been very understanding. We try to have the unit in the same condition that we would expect if we were the ones traveling, which means it's usually spotless and very tastefully decorated - so when the starting situation isn't as we would like, we immediately communicate about it.
3. The person booking should also be the person staying in the unit, if at all possible. There have been a few situations where we have allowed someone to book the unit for a friend/partner - when all are adults, this is usually fine. For example, one person who booked us lives in our neighborhood and didn't have space to host a visiting friend, so booked our place for their friend. That ended up ok. The spouse who booked the space for their partner who was coming to a trade show for a week ended up ok as well. The situation where we got burned occurred when a parent booked the unit for their college student kid and their friend who were doing a pre-semester start course. The occupants left our place with damages, and we ended up adding a security deposit for all stays going forward because of our experience tallying the damage and negotiating with the parent, who wasn't really willing to see that their kids didn't treat our place very well.
4. The system both penalizes hosts for canceling. Regarding aforementioned maintenance, we had one issue that, until fixed, meant that the unit shouldn't be occupied. We had to cancel a stay (which we hated to do, but it was necessary as we couldn't get someone out for a repair over Christmas/New Years), and that immediately generated a "cancellation review". While we can get it removed, it's taking a lot of documentation on our part to work with the system to do that. Rightly so, I think - it's just an additional headache.
Overall, a decent experience and only one truly inconsiderate guest. Not too shabby, considering we had no idea what we were expecting!