Cost of STR Virtual Assistants

[Matt Buck]

I manage 6 listings in Maui and am looking to onboard some VAs to help wi HTh day to day management. I found a company with Airbnb trained VAs for $150 per listing per month (and price decreases with more listings). Thoughts on the cost of this? 

For additional context, this is 24/7, 365 day monitoring. The VAs will handle guest communications, coordinating cleaners and handyman calls, calendar management, ordering supplies, claims and resolutions, admin tasks etc. ”Unlimited” hours. 

I’m sure I can hire my own VAs for cheaper but am looking for a balance between ease/efficiency and cost. I would love some outside input! 

[Tyler Winget]

Matt are these 6 listings the only ones you manage? Do you intend to grow your management portfolio?

Have you thought about transitioning to a PMS? Guesty has proven beyond helpful.

It funnels all of your listings and accounts into a SINGLE, uniform inbox. The app is seamless. You can also have your cleaners download the app and have specific user-permissions to allow for task-based scheduling and cleaning checklists. Ultimately allowing you to automate the scheduling of your field-work. 

I say this because it may make you re-think having VA's, at least at this time. Just because the VA's know how to do the work, does not mean they know your property like you do, and thus, you'll still have to teach and guide them for the few months (at least).

Have you thought about maybe hiring one of your cleaners to provide chatting assistance? Or a college student interested in real estate seeking internship experience? 

**

To conclude the ramble - the VA service sounds like it could be helpful, maybe you should try it out for just one of your listings and see how it goes? That way you'll be able to see if you can scale with it easily. I highly recommend you checking out Guesty in the meantime as it sounds like your main issue is scheduling cleaners, when really, there's an easy solution for that.

Book Rec: 

"ClockWork - Design Your Business to Run Itself" - by Mike Michalowicz

Side note - Matt I'm jealous of you being in Kihei, I was there a few months this past Spring, beautiful place. Will hopefully return early 2023, maybe we can link.