All Forum Posts by: Ariel Smith

@Lumi Ispas I am actually referring to my property in Indio, CA which is just outside of the Palm Springs area - still pricey! But yes, you are correct that it is very market, and even property, specific.

@Lumi Ispas gotcha. We charge $175 for each clean and pass it directly to guests. They seem to not have a problem with it at all even for stay of only 2 nights (our minimum)

@Luke Carl I have had experience using the Airbnb guarantee 3 different times so far. It has been a smooth process for me each time because I made sure to thoroughly document everything with photos and make sure all guest communication is through the Airbnb platform. Each time was decided in our favor rather quickly and we were reimbursed. We have not seen a need for any additional insurance coverage.

@Luke Carl if it was the high season on a weekend for me no way. That's when I do the majority of my business and I would literally not make money if I did that. I would offer to compromise in saying that they are more than welcome to stay during the week at a slightly discounted rate. It is a business and is not just your vacation home that you bought for pleasure. You bought it to make an income and if you let them stay at any discounted rate, they are taking away from your income.

@Lumi Ispas are you paying out of pocket cleaning fees? All of my guests pay the entire cleaning fee so there is no cost to me. I haven't heard of a host paying out of pocket for cleaning fees.

@Ande Andrea which cities are your properties located in and do you own them?

@Leigh Ann Smith yes you can sync them directly. From Airbnb you go to Calendar <> Manage Settings <> Availability <> Sync Calendars 

From there you can get a link that you go into your VRBO calendar and edit. Then you can do the same vice versa with VRBO and get their link and enter it into VRBO

@Leigh Ann Smith I know that between VRBO and Airbnb, if you sync your calendars both ways on each site, simply blocking the calendar will cause a "booking" on both platforms. I'm assuming this would help with the issue you are talking about

@JT Alexa you can also check out Airbnb, VRBO, CHBO, etc. Many of them have monthly discounts for 30 days + or would be willing to discount

@Kevin Lefeuvre that makes sense. From our experience though when the lease is under the company name it is a much different eviction process and corporations are easier to evict (if it comes to that).  Most of the companies we dealt with though are very legitimate and their employees take good care of the unit. Just make sure you thoroughly vet the company you are dealing with as anyone can technically make a "company" to try to rent.