All Forum Posts by: Matt Mertz

Airbnbust 

Yes.  We require a $750 security deposit on our large 16 person cabin ($750 is 2x our cleaning fee).  We do this primarily as a psychological tool to respect our property.  Also we prefer to have this under our control rather than leaving it up to Airbnb's aircover.

We use OwnerRez which has integrations to payment processors, VRBO and Airbnb that allows us to charge the security hold.  Airbnb doesn't give you this capability without software as far as I know.

Since we've implemented this, we only had to draw from a security deposit one time.  We didn't need to appeal to Airbnb.  We just took $375 from the security hold to cover the big mess that guest left with no issues.

I believe the buyer's remorse problem will get worse in the Smokies because new construction hasn't stopped.  Travel demand seems fine, but increased competition from all the new construction can only drive ADRs down.

I'm with @Collin Hays though.  If your property has a great view or anything that can stand out from the competition, it will help.

We had great results from C&C Construction of East TN.  However I know they're super booked, even now.

We're listed on Airbnb, VRBO and our own site.  We have a 16 person cabin in the Smokies.

We launched on Airbnb in late 2021 and got onto VRBO 2022 Q1.  Our personal site was up and running 2022 Q4.

Booking stats:

2022 - Airbnb 51%, VRBO 49%, our site 0%

2023 (current bookings) - Airbnb 56%, VRBO 33%, our site 11%

Personally I see a lot of value listing on both Airbnb and VRBO in the Smokies.

 $750 security deposit.  Our cleaning fee is $375.  We have a cabin that sleeps 16 people so it's pretty big.  We feel $750 hits the sweet spot between being high enough to make people accountable without scaring them off from booking with us.

We have minimum stay rules in PriceLabs based on the seasons.  For example, I have 1/2 - 2/29 defined as slow season for the Smokies and a flat 2 day minimum rule for weekends and weekdays.  3/1 - 5/31 is better and we have 3 night minimums.  Here's our high season rule that I copy and pasted from PriceLabs:

Default :
Fixed Weekday: 3 nights Weekend: 3 nights
Last Minute :
Weekday: 2 nights Weekend: 2 nights within 6 nights
Far Out :
Weekday: 4 nights Weekend: 4 nights beyond 50 nights
Orphan Gaps :
Weekday: 2 nights Weekend: 2 nights for gaps between 1 and 7 nights

When we started we had high minimum nights set despite the season because we didn't really have any experience.

We have overrides for holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving.

We had the same concerns.  We solved it with security deposits.  OwnerRez has the systems in place to allow you to charge a real security hold on the guest's credit card.  It works with Airbnb, VRBO and our direct booking site (hosted through OwnerRez).

We prefer security deposits over damage/travel insurance because the guest goes into the house with money on the line.  We think this provides a greater incentive to behave.

In the time we implemented security deposits, we only had to dip into it once when a guest was super messy requiring another cleaning fee.  And we didn't have to deal with Airbnb AirCover to collect it.

One big cabin in the Smokies here.  First quarter of this year is more booked than last year (our first year).  I credit a history of good reviews and minimum day stay tweaks for the improvement.

Lots of vacancy for the rest of the year still.

We went a whole month (February 28 - March 23) before getting our latest booking.  Hopefully they'll keep coming in and the calendar will be as strong as our first quarter.

If you're looking for OwnerRez specific info, go to their forums and post your question here:  
Forums - OwnerRez (ownerreservations.com)

If I understand your question correctly, you can go into OwnerRez site -> Settings -> Door Locks (bottom right) -> Click Edit icon on your lock -> Integrate with Locks (screen) click Change -> here you will see a dropdown for the code generation length