All Forum Posts by: Peter R.

@Jon Crosby I like that approach!  I've offered 50% refunds before, and I've had a few where I'll give 100% refunds if they're in the ballpark of the cancellation deadlines.  But so far nobody has requested a refund within a day or so of the check-in, I'll remember that approach if it happens.  Excellent topic!

@Leigh Ann Smith I've gotten pretty good at natural language instructions for guests who I need to speak with outside of Airbnb.

@Kevin Lefeuvre I didn't expect them to move this quickly! But I think I agree with a few other posters in the thread, instant booking is going to be forced next.  But hopefully not anytime soon as I think the majority of the Homeaway hosts are not ready for that.

But the Airbnb model of "if it's available, you should be able to book it instantly" is coming to Homeaway at some point.

The 24 hour penalty is interesting too, although they're calling it a protection measure, lol. I see a lot of hosts with sub 70% response rates, I was never sure how those hosts actually made money with that kind of customer service, I wonder if this is aimed at those hosts to clear them from the playing field and reward hosts with high communication rates. 

In general, to speak to some other comments, my Airbnb bookings tend to be very much tech-oriented travelers.  Millennials are a good portion of that for Airbnb.  Homeaway does skew older and they do tend to ask for discounts more often.  But Homeaway is also 100% of my bookings that are 30 days or more, I've never even had an Airbnb inquiry for that long, let alone a booking.

Most, if not all, major chain furniture stores that I've been to have offered design and delivery/placement services at no cost if you buy all the furniture from them.

That would get you 90% of the way there I would think. The rest being linens, dishes, flatware, etc. 

Electronics like locks and Internet would probably be something you need to pick and set yourself to maintain control over them.

 In my opinion, yes, with a caveat.  Vacation rentals in popular vacation spots can earn much more than LTR in the same location but I don't think a seasonal VR can out-earn a LTR where the VR is only popular for one or two events a year. 

To give you an idea of summer pace in a FL VR on the beach, here are bookings from some of my VRs, redacted for privacy:

It's a pretty active month so far across all booking engines, a few holes here and there but overall the summer hasn't impacted booking rates just yet but it IS different from a winter pattern where you'd see many more long term 30 day blocks.

I'm a fan of Florida's Atlantic Coast @Lily Ardila specifically the Space Coast, and I'd be happy to help if I can.

How many bookings are you talking about here?  I ask because it may be worth it to offer the current guests an incentive equal to the booking fee plus a little more to cancel the booking on the old VRBO account and re-book on the new one.  

This only works if you want to get the reviews on the new VRBO account and those reviews are worth the discount to you.  More reviews (assuming 5 stars) would equal more trust from future renters but how much that's worth is something on you can make a decision on for this rental.

As a few people mentioned, you should charge them something.  The bar analogy is a great one @Jon Crosby 

We have a set rule that 2 weeks before any open date are friends and family eligible with the exception of peak season weeks in the case of someone really wanting an advanced booking.

But in general, if the date is open on our calendars and it's 2 weeks or less out, it's all yours for a reduced rate.

That rate is our rack rate + 10% usually. What it actually costs us to operate the rental plus a small markup.  If I'm wanting a review I'll sometimes run them through a booking engine but these days I save the fee and I'll settle for Facebook or Google reviews with some instagram shots while they're on-property. 

@Account Closed  I'd say total cost for everything above, including Google WiFi, was about $800, give or take sales on any given day.  

Google WiFi is for the set, however, not per individual WiFi puck.  So a set will cover most large homes or a medium sized multi-family in this case, depending on layout. 

On the repeaters, it really came down to guest convenience and trying to minimize hassle for me.  It's admittedly been a few years since I've tried the repeaters but in the past, they usually had their own network SSID requiring the guest to hop between them as they move around the property.  With these mesh networks like the Google one, it hands them off automatically and looks like one huge wifi network to the guest. 

Plus, although I didn't write it up, I like to segment networks so that guests are one one and stuff I use are on another. More of an advanced setup but it's possible.  I also rotate the guest network password occasionally from afar without being on site. 

However, I am paying for all that convenience, I realize. :D

So far we've not had to visit the property to correct any of this setup in quite some time, battery changes are the most common item but are usually handled by the handyman on a routine visit for something else. 

As for cameras, I confess I'm at a loss, I've not yet found a cost effective and easy to install/maintain off-site backup solution yet.  I hesitate to recommend anything that uses an on-site DVR as essentially that's a huge single point of failure if it gets stolen/destroyed and live backup cameras usually cost some $XX.00 per month PER camera and are suspect in reliability. 

Have you run across anything good in this area?

Yep, Spectrum over here.  We're doing the 75Mbit plan I believe. I've heard nothing but horror stories about the Frontier acquisition of FiOS so I'm staying away from them even if I could get it, but so far it's just Spectrum as an option so no real choice.