How We Became Airbnb Superhosts! (BEST TIPS)

Unknown Speaker 0:02
This is the digital nomad quest podcast with Sharon Tseung. teaching people how to build passive income, become financially free and design their best lives.

Unknown Speaker 0:14
Hey, guys, it’s Sharon. And I’m Sean from good sweet homes. And today we’re gonna talk about how we became super hosts. So we’re currently only Airbnb being one property. And you guys might have seen it on a previous episode where I talked about how we moved from the Bay Area to Dallas. And then we rented out our property on Airbnb as a mid term rental, basically 31 nights or more, and it makes up for the mortgages of both the Bay Area home and this Dallas home. So the challenge with this was that we’re gonna get fewer views, right, because they have to be 31 Nights plus, but the nice thing is, is going to be booked out for a long period of time where there’s not that much turnover, I would say it’s not as hard to manage because of that. But that just means like, every experience has to be really good for the guests. And if anything goes wrong, it’s gonna be hard to boost those reviews. So first, let’s talk about the requirements for becoming a super host. So the first requirement is to have at least 10 bookings, or at least three reservations that total 100 Nights. So since we are booking on a midterm basis, all of our bookings are at least 31 nights, and some of them have been for much longer than that. So we obviously clear that a long time ago, with our Airbnb, we didn’t have too much vacancy. But we did have this one period, maybe like 30 days or so that we didn’t have a booking in August or so. And we use that time to fix up the property even more. The next thing is you want to maintain a 90% response rate or higher. So one thing I recommend is to get the Airbnb mobile app because you will get notifications ASAP. And that’s how we’ve been on top of it, we’ve been able to get an email and then like Airbnb notification if we ever got a message. So we would always reply right away. But since we have one of those electronic locks on our door, it actually sends automated messages to our guests with a new code when they book it. I also did scheduled in some of these prepared messages like a day before they check in, I give them a check in instructions, again, a little welcome package. And right before they leave, I’ll send them a nice check out list as well. So having the automated message obviously helps a lot because it gives a booking details right away, we don’t have to always copy and paste that over to the guests. So they have the check in and checkout instructions right away. And then you also want to maintain less than a 1% cancellation rate. So you have to treat this like a business, you can’t just cancel on your guests and say actually, we can’t do this anymore. That’s after they booked it, you shouldn’t just cancel it right? Again, you got to treat this like a business, it’d be very inconvenient for the guests if that ever happened. And I don’t think that’s ever happened. For me. If I booked an Airbnb, they usually don’t ever cancel. So make sure you don’t do that. Make sure that if you’re listing on multiple sites that there’s no overlap or something like that, where you have to cancel. And lastly, you have to maintain a 4.8 or above rating and evaluate your record every quarter for the past 12 months. So every core year a new chance to become a super host. So during our journey, we were well on our way to become a super host. And then we had a problematic guest. So this guest was one of those problem guests who are very vengeful, and wrote us a negative review to spite us because we didn’t accommodate all of the requests. We were very accommodating hosts, but one of the requests was to stay another month. Now unfortunately, we already had a guest booked for that week, we couldn’t just cancel the next person’s booking right as part of cancellation rules. And we said, look, we can’t let you stay longer. They got really mad at us. They trashed our place. That was a one star review. Like Sean said, we were very accommodating. Like literally we met up with them when they checked in because they wanted a desk in one of the rooms. So we brought a desk over to their room and like made sure they were happy. It was very unfortunate that they wrote us a negative review and things they really mess up our place. They left it really really messy. They had a newborn child and they were flushing down baby wipes down the plumbing. And this is an older home. So a lot of those baby ways were getting caught in the drain backing it up causing all these plumbing issues, but then they wouldn’t tell us about it. It was only later in review, they wrote oh my god, this guy’s plumbing sucks. There’s a health hazard for my young child Don’t ever rent this place. And we didn’t know about this and then come to find out it’s their fault. And the proof that we have is because after they left our place, they found another place and we saw from their review that the same issue happened that landlord was failing out I was hurt my natural view. She told me not to. But to be nice. This other guy left them a very scathing review and basically replayed all the comments that we had about them. So yeah, they basically said the baby wipes situation all these things because we’re like maybe it’s our fault or something but it actually was their fault. They were doing this messing up their plumbing and ours so they’re basically just terrorizing a bunch of Airbnb landlords in the Bay Area. So in the Review they also said a lot of things that weren’t relevant to the Airbnb itself. They’re saying the city is this way and all this stuff. So when we talk to Airbnb, we were actually able to get the review removed because it was violating Airbnb review rules. We were very fortunate to get that review removed, especially because it wasn’t truthful. We didn’t even know this was an option till we were going to a conference and we spoke to a friend who told us to do this to speak with Airbnb about the situation. So as a tip make sure to speak with Airbnb if you think the review was violating Airbnbs rules on reviews and see if you can get it taken down. Now let’s go over some of the things I think we did a good job on

Unknown Speaker 5:00
Want to get us to that super host status? Like Shawn mentioned, we have been very communicative with our Airbnb guests. So we always make sure that they check in while we ask if there’s any issues. We try not to bother them too much, though. So we’ll check in maybe once and then if they ever have any questions, we’ll answer right away. Next, I would say when you are creating your listing, you have to be very honest with what the listing is like, you will have photos that really represent the situation of the house, if you have security cameras in certain areas, you have to disclose that. So make sure you disclose that as well. So it’s really about managing expectations, right, if they expect an amazing, amazing spot, but then your property actually under delivers, they’re going to feel like they didn’t get that value for their money, they’re going to feel like they had a bad experience. So make sure you are honest with the listing. Another thing that we did was we made sure to stock all the essentials, so they could have a comfortable time, we always give them some extra toilet paper rolls, we felt the bottles of shampoo and soap we also do in dishwasher soap and even some candies just to make it feel a bit happier. And then tying that to the next tip is you kind of want to have like a welcome kit like a welcome basket. So we have a basket with a card saying thanks for coming to our Airbnb, we give them some candy and things like that. And we also give him this guestbook this guestbook has all the instructions on how everything is used, how to take out the trash, how to use the laundry, all these different things. And that leads me to the next point, which is to provide information on the local scene. So in our guestbook, we also have pages where we tell them here are some fun things to do here and there. And there, this is where to eat. This is where you can go out at night or something like that, right. So you give them the instructions on not only your place, but also what you can do outside of the place. So another thing that we do is we always listen to customer feedback, and we take the reviews very seriously. So we mentioned that one star review, we didn’t take that one super seriously because they were reading all kinds of things that weren’t true. But we do get some honest feedback once in awhile, like one of our guests said that we need more pots and pans in the house to sit okay, we went back to Marshalls and we bought a bunch of pots and pans and put them in the house. So now that you’re having more issues with cooking, we also try to make your place as comfortable as possible. So my family has owned this home for the past 30 years. And we’ve never even had an air conditioning unit in the property. But we know that guests want to have that nice sensation. So we actually install an AC unit into the property. So make sure to make the place as comfortable as possible for your guests. And then the next tip I have for you is to make sure your property is thoroughly clean. So the way we have it is we have cleaners who actually come in and do a full light turnover. And because it’s a 30 day stay, they do deep cleans every single time. So we pay extra for that. And not only that, we have someone else to come in to check if everything is in order, make sure everything is clean. And they do kind of like a FaceTime walkthrough with us. So we can check and see if everything is up to standard. And we even made an SOP for that person to go through the room and check certain spots so that we know that everything is okay. So cleanliness is obviously one of the biggest things that’s most important for people like if we go and travel, we don’t want to stay in some dirty place that has unclean sheets and stuff like that. So you want to make sure everything’s fresh and in order. Lastly, you also want to check pricing. So you want to check the pricing of the neighborhoods around you and make sure that your price is comparable to those especially if you want to meet that first criteria of at least 100 nights or at least 10 trips, you want to make sure that you get bookings where you’re not pricing the property too high where people don’t want to book. So you can use Airbnbs tools just to check around or you can use mashvisor, which is a helpful tool to see the averages of your city. And you can also use air DNA to help you with that as well. So also check seasonally because sometimes in the more busy months, you can charge more. And then for the slower months, you got to reduce your price so adjust accordingly. So we’re really excited about being a super host because it doesn’t tell a few benefits. So one is obviously having the badge when you have the badge people will trust you more that this property is nice that you guys are good hosts that they’ll get a response if they book something and have questions. So having that bad gives people more of a peace of mind. It also makes it easier for people to find our listing through search because some people click that superhosts filter and now we’re gonna be on it. Another thing is we may be featured in promotional emails to guests so that’s actually very exciting. It’s more marketing for our property. And then lastly, they have this Airbnb coupon as another benefit which basically means every year you maintain the super host status you get a free $100 Airbnb coupon I think we’re the most excited about it because of the badge and just more visibility to the property. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode on how he became a super host and I hope it gave you guys some tips on what to do when you guys are hosting your Airbnb. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Please make sure to rate review and subscribe. It really helps our podcast grow. And thanks again. I’ll see you guys in the next one.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai