All Forum Posts by: Pam Smith

Sorry to other hosts

Thanks for your quick reply Bruce. Of course I worry about them doing this to other guests, but they also know where my house is and information about me, so that worries me. 

Hi everybody-

I knew this would happen eventually, but this is our first instance of a guest leaving our place a mess. The rate is over $900/night and so we were crossing our fingers that perhaps it wouldn't happen so soon. What were we thinking? Lol!

There's a broken wall

Vomit left in the garbage can without the garbage being emptied

Dirty dishes left everywhere and obviously not a single check-out instruction completed

The front door was actually left open not to mention the other doors left unlocked. 

Linens all stained

Questions:

Is it worth leaving a bad review for the guest?

Is it worth contacting Airbnb to get money for the broken wall?

They lost the house key, which is supposed to be returned, otherwise there's a charge, which is in our house rules. Do we ask Airbnb to charge them for this? Do they do that?

We were also charged quite a bit more from our cleaning crew. Would airbnb ever cover this or charge the guest extra?

Thank you in advance for all of your help!

Do people use separate rental agreements when using VRBO and Airbnb?

Just went through this.  We live about 3 hours away so it probably took us a bit longer to do this.  From close on the house to posted listing with photos it took us about 3 weeks.  We bought most of our furniture from Wayfair, Amazon and Ikea.  Also bought a nicely used Room & Board couch on Facebook Marketplace. We tried to have everything delivered directly to the house but since we're further away, we did rent a trailer and drive a bunch of stuff up there too. I kept a spreadsheet of everything that we purchased, from where and cost.

Most kitchen items were purchased from Ikea, Amazon and TJMaxx. Towels from Costco and sheets from Kohl's. Just scour these forums to get a good, complete list.  Our first couple of guests also left us some suggestions on would love to have, such as a cheese slicer.

Thanks everybody for your feedback! 

Hi all-

When creating my listing on VRBO I noticed that you can have guests pay up to $99/stay for up to $5000 in damage protection. I believe it's through a 3rd party insurance carrier. Does anybody use this for guests? If so, have you had to file a claim and how was the process and end result? If not, do you do anything else, outside of a security deposit and STR insurance, for damage protection?

Thanks!

@Luke Carl Thank you for your response! Would you mind sharing what your target occupancy rates are for 30/60/90 days out? We just listed our first Airbnb/VRBO in a very seasonal summer market.  Pretty much will make 90% of our revenue June-August and fall weekends in Sept and October.

Hi everybody-

Just curious what types of custom rule sets people use for Price Labs, if any.  I'm wondering if I should set some pricing rules around different occupancy targets? Thanks so much for your help!

@Mike Shulman have you tried Your Porter? If so, do you like Smart BNB better? I'm thinking about using Your Porter but there templates are not great.