All Forum Posts by: Pam Smith

We use Your Porter and have Schlage digital locks where the code generates automatically and is sent to the guest one day before check-in. It's worked great!

Hi Barb! I don't have any contacts in Palm Springs but just wanted to say we manage an STR from about 3.5 hours away and have almost everything automated. We have a great local cleaning crew, plumber and handyman and rely on this team to help us out. Nobody greets our guests in person. Please let me know if you have any other questions!

@Tanner Morrill Thank you so much! this is helpful! I had already called airbnb and they weren't super helpful.

Hi everybody-

We own a property that is a main house and a separate duplex in a touristy area that is seasonal. This is our first summer owning this STR property. We had a very successful summer where we had 1 listing that included the main house and the duplex as one entire property (sleeps 9 total). However, although fall is super busy in this area, we are barely booked, but our competition with smaller properties are booked solid. I'm thinking about splitting the property into the main house (sleeps 4) and the duplex (sleeps 5) as 2 separate rentals but don't know how to do this on Airbnb and VRBO without creating 2 separate listings. I was hoping to avoid creating 2 new listings and snooze this current listing, and instead use this same listing as the main house and create a new just listing just for the duplex, as the new listings won't have any reviews, but not sure if this will be possible.

Any advice or thoughts?

Thanks!

Great album...

Hello-

We have 1 STR in Door County, WI and our cleaners just informed us that they are not going to clean for individual STRs and only focus on their property management clients. Does anybody have any recommendations?? Trying not to panic!

Thanks!

This is our first summer with an Airbnb in Door County and so far it's done very well considering we didn't get it listed until mid-May. Fall hasn't booked up at all so it'll be interesting to see what happens. We don't plan on listing it over the winter so it's definitely a seasonal market for us, which means we need to make all of our cash flow in about 4 months.

@Paul Sandhu yes seriously I'm submitting an invoice for a lost key. We don't live in the area and I need to pay my staff to go out and make a new key. Time is money...

Hi all! Sorry for the late post. 

We got an invoice from the cleaners for the extra charge, referenced the lost key charge in the house rules and are working on getting a quote from our handyman. New guests checked in hours after these last guest left, so haven't had a chance to get the handyman in without disrupting our current guests. We submitted the lost key and the cleaner's' invoice to Airbnb and are waiting to submit the broken wall invoice. Airbnb support was essentially non-existent. Way too much time spent on chat and on the phone with really no help so next time, won't bother. 

We left a bad review for the guest and texted the guest to ask them if they know where the lost key is and let them know that the house rules were not followed. Never heard back.

We do have all electronic locks except for our patio door, which is the most convenient way in/out of the main house. Unfortunately, we spoke to a locksmith back when we started, and electronic locks will not work on this patio door. 

I'm going to add a refundable security deposit for all rentals as well and possibly charge $50 non-refundable fee to cover any small items that happen like this in the future.

Thank you to everybody who responded.

Thank you all for your advice! We have all digital locks except for one patio door that we cannot put a digital lock on, hence the key. I already left her a negative review and we've been in contact with Airbnb. Unfortunately, our next guest checked in right away but we did file the claim right away and our cleaners documented it all.