All Forum Posts by: Dave Stokley

Quote from @Brandon Schmidt:

Quote from @Dave Stokley:

Check out peerspace.com

Should help with rates, at least. We’re experimenting with this as a way to supplement income on some of our upscale airbnbs. Don’t have enough data to share any results yet. Good luck!

 Hey Dave, I'm curious to followup on this and see how it's worked out for you?

 It didn’t 

I charge 25% in Cleveland, which is about the going rate around here.

You need to ask yourself (or tell us) what exactly you’re looking for. How involved do you want to be in the operations? Are you willing to answer guests questions every day? Coordinate landscaping and snow removal? Find your own cleaners? Re-order supplies when they run out? Coordinate maintenance? 

I’ve never personally used Evolve but I’ve also never met someone that’s been happy with their service. Vacasa is also a big national company and you’re probably not gonna get a high-end product from them either. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of awing. 

I recently heard the CEO of STR Insights say that 60% of the top performing properties are managed by LOCAL management companies, which I think are also probably responsible for the vast majority of happy clients.

Curious to know what you’d pay for a service like this. We only offer full service management but a local city is considering requiring something like this. To me, as a manager, this sounds like you only want to pay me to handle the dirty work, which would be a hard pass. Interested to hear the details though.

Quote from @Tom Gimer:

Bring back the NO SELF-PROMO rule. It worked just fine.

Pretty sure this is still a rule, no? Every time I see it I just click the “report” button and say self-promotion and it gets taken down pretty quickly.

For what it’s worth, I’ve got a lot of business from these forums simply by being helpful and answering questions without any of the self promo stuff.

We ask people to do the dishes because it helps keep our cleaning fees down, and take out the trash because we don't want ants. Don't think it's a big ask, and anyone with a shred of respect for their host would do this as a guest anyway.

Quote from @Trent Reeve:

Quote from @Dave Stokley:

Quote from @Trent Reeve:

Quote from @Dave Stokley:

To preface this, we manage about 60 listings and do the vast majority of our bookings on Airbnb. We are just now considering a direct booking site.

We're on Guesty Pro, and looking into using their platform. The biggest downside for me is that if we ever leave Guesty or they go out of business or something we don't own the site. We're also looking at Boostly, which is more expensive but also more feature-rich and we own it.

The thing that has always kept me from doing it is the cost of replicating what you get from Airbnb for your 3%: payment processing (that'll cost you 3% alone), a massive marketing engine (what will it cost you in time/money to drive thousands of monthly views to your site?), AirCover (not as bad as the haters say...in fact I've never not got paid), and no guest reviews or customer support. 

 why cant you get what you get from Airbnb, but also have a direct booking site? great for return guests that want to save money. And with some, you can push direct booking reviews to VRBO, and you can get comparable Aircover insurance.

You can, you just have to pay a lot more for it.

Like I said… “the cost of replicating what you get from Airbnb…”

depends on your definition of "a lot more"

Indeed. What are you spending on yours, and what have the returns been?

Quote from @Trent Reeve:

Quote from @Dave Stokley:

To preface this, we manage about 60 listings and do the vast majority of our bookings on Airbnb. We are just now considering a direct booking site.

We're on Guesty Pro, and looking into using their platform. The biggest downside for me is that if we ever leave Guesty or they go out of business or something we don't own the site. We're also looking at Boostly, which is more expensive but also more feature-rich and we own it.

The thing that has always kept me from doing it is the cost of replicating what you get from Airbnb for your 3%: payment processing (that'll cost you 3% alone), a massive marketing engine (what will it cost you in time/money to drive thousands of monthly views to your site?), AirCover (not as bad as the haters say...in fact I've never not got paid), and no guest reviews or customer support. 

 why cant you get what you get from Airbnb, but also have a direct booking site? great for return guests that want to save money. And with some, you can push direct booking reviews to VRBO, and you can get comparable Aircover insurance.

You can, you just have to pay a lot more for it.

Like I said… “the cost of replicating what you get from Airbnb…”

I use it in Cleveland and think it's solid. They key is that you have to use the paid version so you can see the actual comps it's using and make sure they're actually good comps. I've been playing around with Rabbu recently too and think it's interesting.

To preface this, we manage about 60 listings and do the vast majority of our bookings on Airbnb. We are just now considering a direct booking site.

We're on Guesty Pro, and looking into using their platform. The biggest downside for me is that if we ever leave Guesty or they go out of business or something we don't own the site. We're also looking at Boostly, which is more expensive but also more feature-rich and we own it.

The thing that has always kept me from doing it is the cost of replicating what you get from Airbnb for your 3%: payment processing (that'll cost you 3% alone), a massive marketing engine (what will it cost you in time/money to drive thousands of monthly views to your site?), AirCover (not as bad as the haters say...in fact I've never not got paid), and no guest reviews or customer support.