Looking for advice from an expert STVR manager

[Andy Whitcomb]

Hey guys! I have owned and managed STVR's since 2015 and have developed a pretty decent nack for it. I've leveraged my background as a furniture designer to create unique and beautiful experiences for guests, and they pay top dollar to stay at my properties. I've been a superhost for years, and we have been 95-100% occupied since long before covid.

My business partner and I currently have 3 cabins, and we really want to scale up to buy more. We have incredible returns and plenty of investors wanting to jump in with us...

But..

The management of these properties is killing me. It was no problem when we had one cabin, then we had 2 and it was still manageable, but once we added the 3rd cabin it get exponentially more crazy. It seems like every day something is going wrong! For example, the other day one of the jets on the hot tub broke. Not a big deal, except then all the water drained out and our guests couldn't use the hot tub overlooking the river, which is a huge selling point. I had to refund them $300. Then, since I couldn't the part to repair it for 2 weeks, I had to message every guest who was coming in and either give them a discount, cancel their reservation, or try and reschedule to another date. These are cabins in the woods, so we have issues like power outages, neighbor's construction noises, internet outages (a big deal when people are planning to "work from home" at the cabin), guest thought they reserved two nights when it was only one, cleaner forgets to show up... all sorts of things that add up.

It seems like the littlest issue gets compounded into much larger issues that cost us lots of money. I'm sure I'm not the only one who deals with these things. So, my question is: What are professional STR managers are doing to keep operational, maintenance, and cleaning issues to a minimum and everything running smoothly? 

And, a second question... If I were to hire this out to a manager, would they actually be able to do a better job then me or would it be worse because they aren't as invested?

[Collin Hays]

Originally posted by @John Underwood:

I doubt most PM'S could do any better. No one has a better interest in your sucess than you.

They would not be able to get a hot tub part any faster than you.

Just get a good handy man that can order the part and install so that you don't have to spend too much time on problems.

Sounds easy enough.  We recently took on a client for this very reason - a hot tub issue.  Apparently the hot tub was giving problems and it took forever to get someone out to look at it.  And finally, when they did, the repairman told the owner "this will cost more money to repair than to replace."  

Have you tried to buy a new hot tub lately?  6 months wait.  

So after weeks of angry guests and refunds, he joined our program.  Before he even signed his agreement, our manager went to his property, torn down and rebuilt the motor, repaired the circuit board and 2 leaks, and it was working that day.

Lots of sunshine pumping on self-management, whilst tossing shade on PMs, that isn't quite accurate.