All Forum Posts by: Leigh Ann Smith

I did get a 2-month booking within 24 hours of listing on VRBO, but the fees are really ridiculous.  The guest and I decided to just start with a 1 month booking to make sure it will work for her.  My fee was almost $50 and hers was about $100 for the 1-month stay.  That's just ridiculous.  There should be some up-front amount for the booking, but then the percentage should be much lower for longer bookings.

@Kevin Lefeuvre, so should I set my price higher on VRBO to leave room for the inevitable discount request?

@John Underwood, I understand that HomeAway and VRBO are the same company, but do I have to set up a separate listing for HomeAway, or does it just connect with VRBO?

@Bryant Amundson, does the land have any utilities running to it?  We spent about 25K putting in a septic tank and running electricity, water, a pad for the THOW and a road to our tiny house location.  Gravel roads are expensive, so don't forget to add that.  This is going to vary a lot for different locations.  Would you have to drill a well?  That would increase the cost quite a bit.

We have a federal employer ID (FEIN) for our original business. Then we formed a single-member LLC, so now we have the LLC doing business as (DBA) the original business. I would like to get a separate federal employer ID for the LLC because we will possibly be nesting other DBA's under it. We will begin reporting taxes and unemployment on our employees with the new FEIN. Since the LLC is single member, I was concerned that it might not be allowed to have more than one FEIN. Anybody have recommendations?

@Ariel Smith, are you saying that you can directly sync AirBnB with VRBO?  I thought I'd need a 3rd party app of some kind to do that.

I have heard that there are automated calendars that will combine both AirBnB and VRBO reservations, is that correct?  If so, can I also manually add reservations to that master calendar from outside either of those platforms?

I just spent an hour trying to run down why a hotspot in my unit was using data when no one was in there.  Then I realized that I had rented it to a friend of a friend that night.  Since she reserved privately, it wasn't on my other calendars, and I forgot about it.

I am hoping not to have to use a regular calendar program that would require me to enter all of my AirBnB and VRBO reservations.

I will definitely make that change, @Peter R.  I just went with the defaults.

With Airbnb, the guest has to pay in full when they make the reservation, and I didn't think through the possibility of someone showing up without having completed their payment.

I wasn't very clear about that @Kevin Lefeuvre.  She requested to stay until 8/12.  I suggested we just do 30 days to start to make sure the tiny house would work for her and so that she wouldn't have to pay the total for a 2.3 month reservation up front.  I have the additional time blocked off for her. That also gave us an out if we didn't want her to stay longer.  She had no reviews on VRBO.

Nevertheless, she HAD paid $573 for half a month already. @Peter R., the name does match her drivers license, however I didn't see any warning from VRBO about her not paying.  Hopefully this will be the end of the confusion.  

I guess there is a learning curve every time you start working with a new platform.

Well.  I went to look at it, and she had made the 2nd payment.  😅

I'm on it!  Thanks, @Peter R.