All Forum Posts by: Ken Boone

 Yes it takes about 4 hours to reach temp as long as you have a 240 volt connection to the hot tub.  If you have a 110 volt connection you should consider replacing.

I appreciate @Nathan Gesner opinion and there are a lot of people that do share his opinion. I however, complete disagree for an STR, especially if you are in a market with lots of guests and same day turnovers.

If this was your personal hot tub I would agree, you can keep the chemicals balanced and only drain it and clean/refill every so many months. An STR hot tub is a completely different beast. 

1) Hotels and fitness centers have staff that are checking chemicals twice a day to ensure the appropriate balance is being addressed, STRs do not have that luxury.

2) You can educate your guests all you want.  In every set of instructions about the hot tub, i.e. info sent out to guest, info on sign by the hot tub, info in cabin manual, info on the hot tub cover itself, we explain all the those things that they should be doing.  Reality - guests don't care - They are going to come in from hiking all day, all sweaty and dirty and jump in the hot tub. Ladies who have body lotion and other stuff on will jump right in the hot tub without rinsing it off.  Guests do not care and 90% are just going to jump in the hot tub.  That is the reality. All those things can eat up the chemicals very quickly and lead to an unsanitary condition.

3) Absolutely ZERO guests wants to hear that you did not drain clean and refill the hot tub after the prior guest. I want to jump in that hot tub with my kids after 8 other strangers have been in that same water doing who knows what - said no one EVER.

4) Depending on the market you are in, it may be required to drain, clean and refill after every guest.

I have 4 hot tubs and two of them are on wells.  My cleaners handle it for me which is standard in my market and the markup to drain, fill and clean is only around $25 on top of the cleaning fee if I am not mistaken.  At $150 each time I understand why you are thinking that way though.

Again this is my opinion, but I have seen what guests can do to hot tubs in only 48 hours.

Don't do it. Not worth it. It always takes time. If you have a guest and the fridge goes out, the stove goes out, the AC goes out - whatever it is, has to be done ASAP. The warranties always take a lot of time, and you will either end up filing a warranty to find that it is going to take too long and then purchasing something else the same day, or you will end up giving refunds back to guests while you wait on the warranty to be handled.

I learned this the hard way when I first got in to rentals. Relying on a home warranty = bad customer service to your guests.  No way around it.

Can't really say for sure in WNC, but on the other side of the Smokies, the mass sell off didn't happen ...yet, because these folks paid too much for the STRs and are still thinking they can get out without losing money.  Just about all of the properties for sale now that were bought in 22-23 are still priced higher than what the market will bear.  Most of these buyers will have to sell at a substantial loss to get out and have so far been unwilling to do that.  They are holding out for unrealistic prices.  A lot of people will not sell until it hurts too much. I know a few that are in this situation.

WNC may be different as you said that a lot of the properties work well as STR and owner occupied homes and as rates come down you will have a bigger pool of buyers being investors and owners. That is not going to be the case for most of properties on the other side where I am at, where most STRs will not work as owner occupied.

So I'm on the other side of the Smokies. As far as saturation goes when the boom was hitting we started seeing regular homes and even mobile homes get converted to "cabin/chalet" rentals. In other words homes that are really not STR level homes were turned into STRs.

I believe those homes will revert back to just being SFH. As far as all the other STR that will be sold because people bought wrong and our upside down, I think they will stay STRs so saturation level is not going to change much IMO.

I do believe that we will start seeing better prices as people start to try to get out from their monster debt with properties that are not doing what they thought they would do. 

I do however think the market will stay very competitive.  

 No, the subscription fee is like $699/year.  But instead of paying VRBO I think 8% for each booking, you only pay 3% per booking.  So someone who only books casually on VRBO might be better off not doing the subscription, but if you book a lot it will pay for itself real quick.

One of my cabin's is up on a knob off a mountain in the Smokies so different environment than you but the issues are probably the same and they all revolve around winter, albeit I am guessing yours will be much worse than ours.

Mild scenario is where guest are at the cabin and a snow/ice storm hits while they are at the cabin.  In this case, the guests can't get down the mountain and nobody is coming up.  So for this scenario there are 2 things we do.  Alert the guests when we know there is a possibility of a storm and recommend they bring enough food and drink to sustain them for a few days.  The second thing we do is leaved some canned good in the cabinets just in case.

The worse case is the same as the first but they lost power.  This means, no electricity and no water as the well can't pump - which also translates to you get one more flush on each toilet and then you are done.  Also means no regular heat source.

We always leave the cabin with a good wood supply in the winter, fire starters, lighters and such to ensure they will have a heat source.  Again, it's back to alerting guests of the possibilities.  They can use water from the hot tub or fill up a bathtub to have water for flushing toilets.  But again its about recommending to them to pack a sufficient food and drink supply if a storm is possible.

We also to try have ice melt and snow shovels on hand, extra blankets and stuff like that.

To mitigate some of this think about a full time back up generator to keep the power.  

I have instant book turned on.  Been doing it this way for 6 years.  I was recently in Nashville and decided to stay the night and needed to rent a place for the night.  I booked a place that did not have instant book turned on - it was a new host.  Once I booked and realized that, then I was stuck - waiting... to see if I would get a response in time for me to check in.  Fortunately it worked out but it took about an hour to hear back.

I realized then I want to know when I book something that I got the booking at that moment.  I probably won't book any place that does not have instant booking turned on in the future.

If I am not mistaken, instant book is a search criteria on one of the platforms, and if you are not doing that, then your pool of potential customers is smaller by some degree.  I don't know how significant that difference is though.

#1.  When a guest grossly breaks your house rules from the beginning.  Evict immediately with no refund.  Just make sure the OTA backs you up. A guest that will grossly break your rules will not respect your property. 

#2. When you get that bad guests that starts complaining and wanting partial refunds if a refund is in order do not pay out the refund until after their stay and after your cleaner lets you know all is well.  Do not give in to any guests that will threaten you with a bad review.   If you give in to their demands they will still give you a bad review. Be fair and nothing more.  

#3. Sometimes things happen and partial refunds are in order.  Treat your guests fairly  when there are issues.  Treat them how you want to be treated.  It’s not all about the money - it’s also about building a reputable business.