All Forum Posts by: Robert Carter

@Luke Carl it didn't come through Airbnb. I was direct message through our STR Instagram page. But normally I funnel it thru Airbnb because that's where I predominantly receive bookings (I don't have a direct booking site yet). I'll try houfy and also check out the other options. Thanks

Thanks @Lisa Graesser didn’t think of houfy.com. I’ll check into it.

@Luke Carl not trying to be vague. Really just received an inquiry outside of Airbnb which I normally use to book my rentals and they wanted multiple specific dates. I wanted to know the best way to move forward if the guest didn’t want to go thru Airbnb due to fees. Wasn’t sure what was the preferred way to gather payment since they won’t be checking in until 9 months from now. 

I have a potential guest that would like to book the weekends next fall for all football home games. When it comes to receiving payment how should I approach this? Is it standard practice to ask for full payment, half of payment upfront then other half a month before they arrive, a deposit then they pay every month until 30 days before they arrive? Should I also put the payment schedule into the rental agreement? Any assistance would be great. Haven’t dealt with this before usually I go through Airbnb but this guest came across my property thru Instagram and doesn’t want to deal with the Airbnb fees, which I can understand.

@Daniel Chun that’s fantastic. The power is on now. It took about 10 hrs. The guests were very appreciative and thanked me for keeping them informed on updates. I will definitely provide flashlights and portable chargers moving forward.

I’ve been communicating with the guests every 90 mins or so. It’s been about 8 hrs without power but my neighbor saw the power co truck working on some power lines on the next block so hopefully the worst is behind us.  I just wanted to be prepared to have some sort of an answer if the issue continued longer than expected. I appreciate everyone’s input.

I'm in the Richmond VA area, I just talked to my next door neighbor and was told usually when a line goes down it could take several hours but if it is a larger problem it could take a day or so. I just want to prepare myself for what actions will be needed if it takes more than several hours to resolve and how do I communicate that back to the guest during these COVID times we are in.

@Joe P. @Ken Boone Yes it's a STR and the guests booked thru Airbnb. I'm trying to look at the situation from the worse case scenario which means power won't be available for a few days. What is my role as host in this situation do I reach out to the guests to begin that process or should I wait a certain time period? As of right now the guests have been understanding but I'm sure after a few hours it will begin to wane.

Never encountered anything like this before so this should be a good learning experience. Guest reached out to me to let me know there isn’t any power in the house. I’m sure due to the Tropical storm we are experiencing today. I’ve reached out to the power company and they don’t have an eta. Is there anything I can do for my guests while the power company resolves the outage?Hopefully it won’t be more than several hours but I want to make sure I keep communication lines open with my guest during this time. Good thing they are out of the house. Any tips or advice would be great? I hate when things are out of my control.

These are definitely good practices if you already have quite a few str properties or are scaling. I’ve notice sometimes that checkout time is more the issue. When guests are still in the house after the checkout time, what are people doing to combat it? Are you calling, texting, emailing them or are you automatically charging them a fee?

@John Underwood thank you for the recommendations, I have everything but the video evidence but will store it moving forward. I never would have thought people could or would dispute a stay after the stay, I was more focused on cancellations beforehand.