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[00:00:00] Sarah: Hello, everyone. Welcome back for another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

[00:00:03] Annette: I am Annette Grant. And together we are–

[00:00:05] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.

[00:00:06] Sarah: And this is the–

[00:00:07] Both Annette & Sarah: Hosting Hotline.

[00:00:08] Sarah: If you want your hosting questions answered, all you have to do is go to hostinghotline.com, ask your question, help so many other hosts in the process, plus Annette and I absolutely love answering these. And if we don’t have the answer, we’ll bring someone in who does. This week we’re helping Brandy squash parties.

[00:00:26] Questions: Hi, Annette and Sarah. I wanted to ask if you have any recommendations or no way to handle this. We continuously have guests because we live on a 10-acre property, and we also live on this 10-acre property, so it’s our private residence as well. But we continue to have guests that will break our terms and conditions, even though they’re stated very plainly that we do not allow parties or gatherings of larger sizes than six.

[00:00:48] It’s happened twice in the last two months where guests will tell us, oh, it’s not a party. It was just a wedding ceremony, and we only invited 12 people or 15 people. And I find out about it in the middle of the situation. The last one, I walked in on their middle of their vows and was like, what’s going on here?

[00:01:06] There’s lots of cars and lots of people. I was told only two people were staying. So it lent itself to like, I live on property, and I have to go down and interrupt the gathering because I don’t know what’s going on. It’s happened twice. So what do you recommend when this happens? Is it for me to physically go down there and stop the party or just stop the gathering?

[00:01:28] Or should I just message it, take photographs of what they’re doing, and then send it in? I do allow small gatherings, but it’s at a different price rate because the way they use the property is different. What do you recommend here?

[00:01:42] Sarah: Brandy, we feel you. Actually, in one of our last–

[00:01:45] Annette: Wait, I just want to know, Brandy, please tell me you walked in when they were like, is there anyone that–

[00:01:51] Sarah: Speak now.

[00:01:52] Annette: Speak now or forever– is this a party? Sorry, Brandy. I know that probably was not funny, but walked in on the vows.

[00:02:01] Sarah: I hope you can laugh about it once it’s done.

[00:02:03] Annette: We need to have a whole other episode on you walking in on the vows. Because I don’t know what you look like, Brandy, but I have this whole facial expression and the whole crowd gasping. I’ve made up a lot of things in my head on how this situation went down.

[00:02:16] Sarah: That is good. And also, hey, it’s uncomfortable for you, Brandy. I’m sure you did not want to be, first of all, leaving what you were doing to go and interrupt these people’s vows who– yeah.

[00:02:25] So we have some suggestions for you because we were actually just masterminding with our group, Hosting Business Mastermind, about this very topic. Because we have someone who is in an exact same boat as you are. It’s the perfect home for large gatherings, and she does allow them too, but like you said, a different price point. And we actually had this conversation with one of our members, Kylen, years ago, and so we’ve been monitoring the improvement of guest behavior, I guess we’ll just call it, on our property.

[00:02:55] Annette: We’ve cracked the code.

[00:02:56] Sarah: Yeah. We thought we cracked the code several months ago, and we told her to follow up, and it’s going really well. So we’re excited to share it with you right now, Brandy, which is, drum roll, please. Thank you, Annette.

[00:03:09] Annette: The good old telephone.

[00:03:10] Sarah: Phone call, Brandy.

[00:03:12] Annette: You mentioned in your terms and conditions. So explicitly, in your house rules, this is where you want to CYA and let people know about the usage of the home and that that is a different price point if they’re wanting to have a private event.

[00:03:28] What we love is Kylen reaches out immediately after a reservation is booked and requests a phone call that they just chat about, I’m trying to think of exactly the way that she says that. But having a phone call and chatting with the guest. And we’ll let you know. You might lose a reservation or two, but that’s okay. Because then you’re not busting in on vows. People understand how to use your property, and you are making more money.

[00:04:04] Sarah: And I can tell you too, Brandy, I used to manage a very large vacation rental. I could sleep 16 people, and we had a strict no event policy, period. So not even for a different rate. And this is also what helped us really connect with the guest. We try to keep most conversations in email or via text message.

[00:04:23] Annette: On the app.

[00:04:24] Sarah: Right. So that you can have a track record. But in this circumstance, and I would put it in your house rules in your terms and conditions everywhere that you request, like Annette said, a phone call, and then you call them after the booking comes through and you have a conversation with them and make sure they truly understand what you mean by the no parties or parties if you pay this certain rate and how many guests they expect.

[00:04:47] Really set expectations, voice to voice. I can tell you from my personal experience, this was always a really great experience for our guests. They actually loved connecting with me. Kylen, our member has also reported this has been very good for her business, and it’s rare when it doesn’t go well or it’s not what they expect.

[00:05:05] And actually the guests will say, our intentions are going to break your rules. And so we’re actually not a great fit. Or the price point that you want to charge us isn’t within our budget, and that’s okay.

[00:05:14] Annette: One thing that Kylen has done really a great job at is just removing the word party. So wedding party is historically the term that’s used. It’s a wedding group. It’s a wedding stay. Because just starting to float the word party around insinuates maybe they could have an after party or before party, or just party in general. Even if you’re saying the wedding party, you just want to make sure that language gets very clear also.

[00:05:39] Sarah: And you can also phrase this, Brandy. Instead of it being like a, let me check in on you, make sure you’re not going to break up my rules call, it’s more of a call for you to understand how you can best accommodate their stay. So if you ask questions like, how many vehicles do you have on the property? Any special needs accessibility that we can help you with? Do you have any recommendations that you need from us to share with your group?

[00:05:59] And as you learn about why they’re coming to stay with you, you can start to see red flags or trigger words where you can start to assess either they didn’t book at the right rate, or they’re not a good fit for your property

[00:06:09] Annette: And I love this too, asking like, we want sure that we can contribute to your beautiful special occasion. Kylen has some other words in here too, like, do you have any other recommendations in the area? So it’s just qualifying and making sure that everybody’s in alignment.

[00:06:26] The next thing we want to offer to you and all the hosts out there listening is instead of that awkward knock on the door things, there is a product that we have a partnership with called Minut. It’s noise monitoring, but it can also do crowd detection. And what’s beautiful about this home security sensor is that once it’s detecting a crowd, it can do automated messages for you.

[00:06:50] So I think the first line of defense is sending those automated messages, letting the guests know that you maybe detected a crowd. I think that way it’s not as abrupt as you knocking on the door. There’s some other ways to automate and to send messages. And then that way also, if you have these automated messages, it gives you time of how are you going to respond to every single person that might potentially have more than the allotted guests at your home.

[00:07:20] But we’ll put a link to Minut in the show notes to give everybody comfort. They are actually an official partner with Airbnb, and so that is something that we advise everyone to put in their property because it is a way to have that, a non-invasive detection of noise, of the crowd, smoke, all of those things that you can make sure that your house is being used the way that you have intended for your guests to use it.

[00:07:45] Sarah: To piggyback off what Annette said, what you need to do to anyone who wants to implement a home security sensor is on the OTAs, and in your home rules, and in your terms and conditions, makes you sure that you have it and where it’s at, and that that is not to be tampered with. And also share your standard operating procedures if you would get alerted to a crowd being detected.

[00:08:06] Let your guests know what will happen first is you will get an automated message from our sensor. And then if the sensor does not anticipate that the noise is going down, then it’ll send you one more message. After that, this happens. Either we come over there, or we send the authorities.

[00:08:19] Let your guests know in your house rules, everywhere and anywhere that you can, what will happen if your rules are broken. That way, you also don’t have to decide on the fly what happens. You already have it outlined, and you can just follow your protocol when it does happen. And that’s a great thing to happen after the fact. A phone call, I’m telling you, everyone, is a really great way to be preventative. You can connect with your guests.

[00:08:43] Annette: Yeah, just a great guest experience who calls.

[00:08:46] Sarah: No one calls anymore, so you’re going to be ahead of the game.

[00:08:50] Annette: Last but not least, I’m sure how you’re communicating this, but if you do live on property or next door to your property, I would make that very clear in the description because guests that think they’re going to potentially bring more guests or you are maybe not paying close attention, but you’re on the property, the more clear that you can make that to your guests, I think that would help also lower the risk.

[00:09:17] Sarah: Brandy, you’ve got this. Will you please report back to us if you implement the phone call or any of these suggestions? We love hearing how things end up turning out.

[00:09:26] Annette: And yeah, use this. This is a place where I think recognizing what people are using your home for and turning it into an opportunity instead of you having to be the wedding crasher.

[00:09:36] Sarah: We don’t want you to be the wedding crasher any more, Brandy? With that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

[00:09:41] Annette: I am Annette Grant. And together we are–

[00:09:42] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.

[00:09:43] Sarah: Talk to you next time.