All Forum Posts by: Nathan Bisson

Hey @Alex Dixon, great visual representation! Looks pretty similar to our tech stack. I've been using Hostaway for a few years and generally like the platform and the support.

We made a recent switch from Turno to Breezeway for better vendor/maintenance coordination. The early consensus is that it's an upgrade, but we have yet to really put it through its paces.

Stayfi has been great for locations where we have several rental cabins and want to maintain that resort-like feel. For individual properties, we've recently started using a QR code system for wi-fi and email capture to save on costs. Along with the rest of the stack, it all starts to add up as you scale! 

Hey @Josh Carpenter, we do something similar to Andrew. 

We have a house that can accommodate 8 guests, but frequently parties of 2-4 guests want to book it. As a way to keep our base rate and cleaning fee from being cost prohibitive for those smaller groups, we charge an additional $25/guest over for parties over 4. 

I agree that most folks don't like seeing the cost increase as they enter the details of their stay (myself included), but this additional cost is usually split by at least 2 parties or even 3 when there are 8 guests staying. I think this allows us to stay more cost competitive with smaller groups, who may actually be the majority of our stays over the course of the year. 

If you decided this strategy is not for you, then I would agree with Lauren and just up the base rate and drop the cleaning fee. While Airbnb shows the total price for better transparency these days, there is still a bit of sticker shock when guests inevitably look at the cost breakdown. 

Great question! You might think so, but so far we haven't! I think part of it is that we build a relationship of trust with our cleaners and make them feel like we are partners (which we are).

We pay our inspectors an hourly rate. Unfortunately, we do not have the manpower or budget to send them after every turnover, and frankly, we shouldn't have to. If we did, it means we need to have that hard conversation and get a new cleaning team.

When we find a cleaning deficiency, we will send our inspector out more frequently in the subsequent turnovers. As things improve, the frequency becomes less and less. 

While the cleaning owners do not like the doc in pay, they know that it would come out in the wash at some point due to lost clients over quality. (cleaning pun intended).

Hey @Kevin Luttrell, I have to second what @Andrew Steffens said. We pay weekly via ACH. 

You may be able to get away with a monthly payment, but that's a lot of labor your cleaning staff needs to float until payday. If it's a single cleaner or small team, that may be a tough ask.

We used to pay via Turno for convenience. One of the biggest drivers of change was quality assurance. We found turnovers were being paid in full, despite shortcomings in the cleaning quality. The weekly delay in payment now allows us the chance to have our cleaning inspectors review the job beforehand. 

We will occasionally adjust down the cleaning payment to offset the cost of our inspector if they find deficiencies in quality and need to spend time improving things before the next guest.