All Forum Posts by: Jon Martin

You could also try cold emailing hosts who have listings with good bones and in good locations who struggle with the design. Also agree with suggestions above regarding facebook groups. Good luck!

Sucks but it happens. If you get another similar complaint you may want to post some photos of the surrounding area or mention the "eclectic transitional neighborhood with tons of character" in the description in order to frontload the expectation a bit. 

Otherwise I agree with the above comments about keeping after customer service. If it's not too late you do have a window where you can ask the guest to change their review. Either way, from this point forward provide the best experience possible to your guests so that you can bury the bad reviews with more good ones- most guests won't bother to search back that far. 

Quote from @Patricia Andriolo-Bull:

Just use calendar not market maker. 

That's exactly the problem. When I go to the calendar to change the price, it tells me that I can't because I have MM on (even though it hasn't changed a single price). When I click to go to MM tab, the popup screen blocks the toggle switch where you turn MM on/off. It's stuck in a Catch 22 endless loop. Incredibly clumsy roll out on VRBO's part. 

Thanks @John Underwood  I was able to change the prices on the app! 

Trying to raise my prices in VRBO around some football games. Already raised them on ABNB & Houfy. When I try click on the dates, it won't let me change them because Market Maker is turned on. When I go the Market Maker tab, a pop up immediately goes over the MM toggle switch, blocking it, and says I need 5 comps for MM to work. So I pull up some neighboring comps, hoping that if I add the 5 comps to MM, that screen will no longer pop up and then I can then turn off the toggle switch. When I click on that link, it takes me to an almost blank screen with a search box for property ID. However when I try to add a neighboring comp, the search doesn't even work. Tried doing this on another web browser thinking it could be stale cookies and nope, same result!

While I don't have enough experience with either company to say one is better or worse for hosts than other, I've always found VRBO to be the far clunkier and less user friendly by miles. This is further confirmation of that, because MM never even adjusted my rates in the first place and now it's impossible to turn off. Sat on hold for 20 minutes only to be told that it has to be escalated to IT. 

VRBO needs IT serious help in the User Interface and Experience department. Thanks for listening to my ted talk. 

Quote from @Toni Escuder:

 I actually read somewhere recently that hosts should aim for a review average between of 4.6 and 4.8 ( or something like that) because only 5 star reviews means you are leaving money on the table and giving in to guests demands too often. 

Most places I see in this range don't look so great and a quick scan through the reviews makes it easy to find what they are doing wrong. I would also disagree with the "demands", I can't think of any situation where I have given into a demand or unreasonable request and my rating is 4.99 with 70+ reviews. 

That said I do agree that perfect ratings set off alarms for most, there have been studies with Amazon reviews about this. I would also agree that you probably don't want a 5.0 in the "Value" section on Airbnb, because if the guests think they are getting a deal then you are probably leaving money on the table. 

As for the OP, apologize if it is a legitimate grievance and you are at fault, then explain how you will remedy the issue for future guests. If it's absurd, point out what was good about the place like the Pool Maintenance comment above. Keep it short and sweet. As time goes on, the bad reviews will sink further and further back and your service will improve. 

Also- helps to check-in/follow up and humanize yourself with the guest throughout the process from post-booking through their stay. Especially important to send a message shortly after they check in to ask if there's anything I can do to make their stay better. 

I think some of you are reading this wrong because it is worded vaguely. It is not required to be disclosed to guests but IIRC it is to buyers. Lots of states have similar laws. 

Market is so constrained that it would have to be some horror movie type stuff to justify that kind of discount, and even then someone would still take it for 1/3 of that discount (at worst) nowadays

Quote from @Wilson Hunter:

Where are all the Short Term Shop people? Are they still active on Bigger Pockets?

I always cringed at the knee-jerk "only STR invest in vacation markets" advice. I think we are seeing how that played out.

Because on the surface it looks cheaper. They want you to fall in love with the place and visualize yourself there, so that by the time you get hit with the final price you have FOMO if you back out. 

I did an ABNB search compared to a hotel for a Big Island trip and initially it looked cheaper than a hotel by several hundred dollars for 4 nights. Once all the fees were added, it was a wash. 

Agreed with all of the above. I will add that oftentimes the fixed costs with installing any kind of pool (fence, pump, permits, excavation etc) are so high that the marginal cost of a plunge pool vs something more standard is relatively small. Therefore, if you are already spending $30K all in for something not much bigger than a hot tub, why not spend another $10-20K for something that a family or group can enjoy and actually play in together? 

The above are made up numbers that will vary based on your market and local regulations but you get the idea. 

I wouldn't bother with condiments. Those jars/bottles can still get gross, and it ends up another item in a long list that you have to keep up with. For coffee I have 2.5 oz packets of ground coffee, sugar packets and creamer pods. Food wise I just do olive oil, spice rack, table salt, black peppercorns with grinder, baking soda & powder, and microwave popcorn. 

Think about the basic items you need to make a few meals that you wouldn't want to buy for a short stay because you would never finish them. I don't do large containers of flour or sugar because I know that someone will make a cake and wipe it out, leaving me with yet another item to worry about. Someone used a ton of creamer pods a few weeks ago and my only explanation was that they used it for Alfredo sauce or something. If they want it that bad they have to earn it!