All Forum Posts by: James R.

Has anyone else submitted receipts to Airbnb for damages, let's say for $200 and they come back and say that they approved reimbursement for $150?  That's bs.  If the receipt says what it cost to do the repairs, that amount should be reimbursed.  

On another note, we recently had an epic snowstorm in New Orleans, where we own a property.   Our guests' flights were cancelled.  Airbnb cancelled the reservation the day before our guests' arrival, after we explicitly told them that we would not budge on our STRICT cancellation policy. 

To my knowledge, guests also have trip insurance.  Airbnb is supposed to take the hit, in the case of a natural disaster or storm etc.  The booking payout was for $1495.00.  After SIX phone calls (because you always have to speak with someone different each time) Airbnb CS sent an email saying that they "are only able to reimburse us $900.00"  WTH?  

I know that Airbnb keeps getting greedier and greedier, but this is in violation of our cancellation policy.  

Has anyone else experienced this kind of mistreatment?  If so, does anyone know of a lawyer, who can sort this out with a quick phone call to Airbnb?  

One of the easiest things that you can do to "talk" to the algorithm is search your property and heart it.  Tell everyone you know, (make it easy and text them the link to your property) to heart it.  This tells the algorithm that people are interested in booking your property, even if they don't book it.  Also, tell them to scroll through ALL of the photos to the end and leave the page open for 15 minutes.  The algorithm measures interest by these activities and pushes your listing higher to the top.

Also, go into the Airbnb page Insights, Performance, Views to track your page views.  When you see an uptick in views, you are very close to getting your first booking.  If you don't get a booking (views go up and down everyday) lower your nightly price a bit more.  For example, people look to book about one month out, so for January you might not get any bookings.  Focus your nightly pricing on February and continue to work your pricing one month out.  Also, under Insights you can see your conversion rate.   

Ok. I called VRBO CS and they told me that this woman actually reported my profile.  I guess, she was pretty angry about not letting her book off platform. She told CS that it was, in fact, me who was trying to get her to book off platform.  Very foolish of her, because the correspondence on the platform suggests the exact opposite.  

VRBO CS said they can see where this woman made repeated attempts to contact me off platform.  I was told that she has also been given a warning, so her attempt at 'revenge' actually backfired on her.  

Garrett, these packages sound like they are a hit for your properties.  I'm always impressed with people's creative ideas!!!  

Wow!  That is a failure on the owner's part, for sure.  We have these remote thermostats and they are GREAT !  We started seeing savings immediately after the installation.  We can remotely control the temperature, but if someone (a guest) manually changes the thermostat, it overrides our remote settings, which is what we want.  

I agree with Michael.  We have our Guide Book on the counter in the kitchen.

People like to have something to look through, plus other guests leave flyers from places where they ate etc. with notes like, "Great food" etc. written on them.  These are the best recommendations.  

Thank you Michael Baum for your response.  I was thinking about trying it to maybe boost bookings for our Wisconsin property. 

Hello Fellow BP'ers!

Who has listed their short term rentals on the HomeToGo Platform and if so, have you experienced good results?  

Hi Pat.  Maybe something like, "We're glad that you enjoyed your stay with us and we appreciate your rave review, but we aren't sure why after liking the place so much, you only gave us 4 stars".  Prospective guests will read this and understand that your place is great and this guest was either not being totally honest, or they had an expectation that they didn't share with you prior to or during their stay.  At any rate, a response to their review is always good.  Some of our guests tell us that prior to booking they read our responses to guests.  It also signals that you are a real person and not a faceless corporation with automated responses.