All Forum Posts by: Ken Boone

Quote from @JD Martin:

Good job - did they throw you off the platform after that? 

Good question!

So if I am understanding you right it's like a gym membership for your guests. We use something similar to this. At one of our cabins we lost our resort pool amenity. There is an RV park down the road that offers yearly membership for cabin owners which allows their guests unlimited access to their olympic size pool and catch and release fishing pond. We pay around $300/yr for this access for our guests. The pool is only open form Memorial Day to Labor Day. At that price point it is worth it for us and our guests definitely go use their pool.

So I'll answer your questions and give you my thoughts.

1. Yes as long as there is a pool - indoor for year round use would be best. Would be willing to pay more for year round use of a heated indoor pool for sure.

2. My max occupancy at all my properties is 8.

3. Again, if there is a pool and it is in close proximity to my properties, I would have to understand the value add and understand if it helps to increase my ADR, or rather just gives me a competitive advantage giving me a higher occupancy rate. So for the pool service we get now, I would probably end up paying up to $600/yr for this with its limited 3 month time frame it is available. I can tell you my ADR went down when we lost the pool amenity in the resort. The off site pool does not increase my ADR, but rather adds to my package.
4. Again it depends on everything I mentioned in #3

Bonus Q #2 - 10 minutes.  More than that IMO is too far.

Bonus - my thoughts on your plan.

Before I go there let me explain my properties, 3 of my properties have private indoor heated pools, all of my properties have hot tubs, arcades, theater space, etc.. 1 of my properties has a sauna. 2 of them have coffee bars. Soon to be all 4.  I'm in the Smokies market.

In my market, which is really all I can talk about - I think the hosts that would be interested would be hosts that have very few to no amenities. Unfortunately these hosts are going to be the ones that are not going to want to pay much for what you have to offer because they are most likely not doing well. The hosts that would be in the position to pay premium won't need your service as they have plenty of amenities.

I don't think you will get many people to your place to use a public hot tub.  Just don't see it happening. People love my hot tubs, but they like the privacy factor and being at home if you will. 

I think the only thing that will draw the business will be a pool, a large indoor heated year round pool. That would be the driver that would draw people. If you had the pool, then the small gym, arcade corner, coffee bar you could throw in there, but IMO, the guests will not be coming for those things, those are small nice extras. The pool would be the driver.

I guess what I am saying is unless you are doing a large indoor heated pool open year round, you are not going to have a big driver for what you offer. If you had the pool everything else would be great add ons.. drop the hot tubs.

The reason the pool is the driver is because you can have hosts then who have tons of amenities, but everyone doesn't have a pool and that is probably one of the top amenities anywhere.

That's my 2 cents and that is about all that's worth.

I am using Hostaway and they integrate with Google Vacation rentals. I just started doing this in January. Across 4 properties I have only received 2 bookings from Google Vacation Rentals so far. Having said that I think they are having a hard time telling the difference between a booking from Google Vacation Rentals and a direct booking if you have that running. This is because Google Vacation Rentals ends up pointing to your direct booking website.

I did not get it drafted by a lawyer, I started with some templates I found from others, then modified it along the way and included verbage that my insurance company required for me to have in it.

Hey Amy,

I have used a rental agreement outside of AirBnb and VRBO for about 8 years now. My insurance company required me to have a signed rental agreement. So my understanding is that if you do this you need to disclose that guests will need to sign your rental agreement as an additional condition for renting. If the guest doesn't want to sign the form, absolutely let them cancel. If they can't agree to your rules, you don't want them in your STR. Period. In 8 years doing contracts across 4 properties I have never had a guest book and then refuse to sign it. EVER. So what I am saying is that issue about guests getting a refund because they don't want to sign, is not a substantial issue.

For years I used Guesty for Hosts and they did not have the ability to provide guests with a digital rental agreement so I used SignNow. I used Zapier to automate the whole process.

Since then I moved from Guesty for Hosts to Hostaway and they have this functionality built in. There are other PMSs out there that do the same.

So the sad truth is that it does take money to make money. I know there are people all over the internet who can tell you that you can get in to real estate with no money and maybe that works for a small few. But the risks are enormous. 

The biggest issue that gets people that try to jump in on the bare minimum is things never go as planned, and you have to have reserves to cover that. Bare minimum means no reserves, and next thing you know you are over your head. You especially don't want to be in that position with young kids.

I would personally focus on other ideas to make money to increase your cash position before jumping into a real estate investment purchase. Yes it does take money to make money, however, money is not the only way to make money. You can trade talent, skills, time, expertise for money. I would focus on how to increase your cash position given your situation, skills, time and expertise, then once you are in a better cash position, jump in to real estate. There are a lot of pitfalls in real estate, especially when starting out. And usually it takes more money to get out of those pitfalls.

I wish you the best.

I don't mind risk at all, but it has to be balanced. 

Quote from @John Underwood:

My best strategy is to use VRBO.

 HAHAHA!! Too funny!

Quote from @Jeffrey Hodges:

My understanding is VRBO is the best for houses and Air B&B is best for condo hotels. I plan to list on both and also Google Vacation rentals. Thanks for the post

So one thing about google vacations is that you just can’t list on google yourself.  You have to have a PMS with integration to google vacation services and right now there are several PMSs that don’t integrate with them. 

I’ll tell what I did a few years ago.  I swapped all my smoke detectors out with wired ones with a 10 year lithium battery.  No more midnight calls of a smoke detector going off due to battery issues.  

Quote from @Michael Baum:

I haven't tried it @Christina Hennessy. I have thought about it but I have been hesitant due to the nature of FB marketplace. I don't want any scammers coming around or those looking for a steal.

 So when I run FB ads through my business account, they are just ads so they don't hit FB marketplace. In fact, I never hear from the guests that book via the FB ad other than when they book. 

Now posting in FB marketplace is a whole different story for sure.