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Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:05] You are listening to the Thanks for Visiting podcast. We believe hosting with heart is at the core of every short-term rental. With Annette’s background in business operation–

Annette Grant: [00:00:14] And Sarah’s extensive hospitality management and interior design experience, we have welcomed thousands of guests from over 30 countries, earning us over a million and garnering us thousands of five-star reviews.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:28] We love sharing creative ways for your listing to stand out, serve your guests, and be profitable. Each episode, we will have knowledgeable guests who bring value to the short-term rental industry–

Annette Grant: [00:00:39] Or we will share our stories of our own experiences so you can implement actual improvements to your rentals. Whether you’re experienced, new or nervous to start your own short-term rental, we promise you’ll feel right at home. Before we dive into the content, let’s hear a word from our sponsor.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:01:01] Hello. Welcome back. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

Annette Grant: [00:01:03] I’m Annette Grant, and together we are–

Both Sarah and Annette: [00:01:05] Thanks for Visiting.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:01:07] And we’re going to kick off this episode like we do each and every Thursday, and that is with sharing one of you our amazing listeners or viewers using our #STSShareSunday. We’re going to share you here on the podcast and our email list, on Instagram. We’ll tell the world about it when we see people at the coffee shops. Annette, who are we sharing this week? It’s someone very special to us.

Annette Grant: [00:01:25] Yes, this Instagram handle is very near and dear to our hearts and it is  @AllBelong.co. Again, you can find them  @AllBelong.co. And this is Amy and her amazing family. We have to admit Amy is a coach inside our program, Hosting Business Mastery Method. We have been Instagram friends with her for years. She’s in our course. She’s now a coach. And we’ll get to meet her in real life next month.

But this is such a big deal. She is launching a new property. She’s been working on this– are you ready, everybody– for years. This has been years in the making. It is a vintage caboose and it is drop-dead gorgeous, stunning. And guess what? It is in her backyard. Yes, it is on her property. I want you to go to  @AllBelong.co and check it out. 

Her whole entire family, her, her husband, her kids, they have put so much love into this caboose, so much so they’ve painted love on the side of this caboose. It’s amazing. They have redone every single thing inside this. I mean, they transported it, I believe, from West Virginia. 

It has been a labor of love. And I cannot wait for each and every one of you to please go follow her on Instagram to heart this property. Dig in. I want you to see what it’s all about. But here’s the thing. She’s getting it. It’s in Lynchburg, Virginia. 

And this property, we don’t even know how amazing the revenue is going to be for her. She is really creating an experience in her hometown. And here’s the deal. It overlooks a factory, overlooks train tracks. It’s almost really in the landscape. And she’s very honest about this in the enlisting. But this just is something that we’re so proud of for her because she has not stopped. She has no idea what this is going to mean for her and her family. But she has been all in on it, just like  @AllBelong.co.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:03:39] While managing some 30-plus properties, not only in her own area but also across the US. Amy truly is an absolute rockstar of an entrepreneur. She’s gone through some major life changes to find hosting as her new career, and that’s scary especially when you’ve got kiddos and her hubby’s all in on it. 

So if you don’t follow Amy yet  @AllBelong.co, please do. I’m sure she’d love a DM. Tell her congrats. Give her a pat on the back. I’m sure she’ll do the same back to you. And we’re just really proud of you, Amy. Congrats and thanks for being an amazing host. We cannot wait to visit you.

Annette Grant: [00:04:14] Everybody, go give it some love.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:04:17] All right. With that, let’s go on to today’s episode. It’s actually going to be a solo episode. We call it solo because it’s two of us.

Annette Grant: [00:04:24] No, it’s just us.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:04:26] It’s just us episode, everyone. And actually one of our members inside of HBM, which is Hosting Business Mastery method, this is where if you want to get more intimate, work with us, the only way we work with hosts on their businesses is in this program.

Annette Grant: [00:04:43] If you’re not in it yet, what are you waiting for? It is the place to be. It is the place to be.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:04:48] But if you’re not ready for it, we’ll, of course, be here for you in the podcast twice a week and on Instagram. But anyway, one of our members asked us, so she is a co-host and she said, “Hey, I would love to give a quarterly recap to my clients, let them know how their property is doing.” And I thought, you know what? This is not only a good thing to do for clients in a co-hosting situation, it’s also good to do for yourself in your own hosting business, whether you have one property or 50, 100, whatever.

Annette Grant: [00:05:16] We’re going to keep it real right now. We have been getting lots of emails, lots of DMs, lots of conversation inside our membership about bookings and where they’re at and what they say– 

Sarah Karakaian: [00:05:32] I feel like our bookings are down.

Annette Grant: [00:05:34] I feel like it’s a little bit of panic. And every time Sarah and I say data over drama. And when they stop and actually look at the numbers year over year, month over month, they’re like, “Oh, wait a second, it’s not as bad as I thought.” Because it’s something in hosting, I think you always look at that month. And we all know, like– we call it the Airbnb highlight reel- if your one month isn’t as good as the next, you start freaking out. 

But we really want you to look at your whole business holistically and start doing these quarterly reports. Obviously, if you have a business or a full-time gig, this is what you’re doing. You’re looking at your daily, your weekly, your monthly, and your quarterlies. And those quarterlies really give you a much more robust idea of what’s going on in the business. So let’s talk about some of the things that are in this report.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:06:28] And before we do that, it’s a really nice snapshot. It can be a lot to look at the year, whether it’s weeks or months. So to have quarters, there’s just four of them a year. And so you can literally print this off and put it on a table and see your whole year on four sheets of paper. 

And I do want to give a shout-out to one of our guest service agents Colleen. I think she listens to the podcast. Colleen is amazing. Colleen reminds me about data over drama. And I’ve definitely put Colleen in place to help me with that to save me from myself. And so I’m letting you all know, too, even though we preach these things, I know what that’s like to look at our calendar and to see some white spots. And then I love when Colleen comes in and she goes, “Girl, our average daily rate is up.”

Annette Grant: [00:07:17] And by the way, I know this happens to everybody that’s listening also. You’re on social media somewhere and people are touting their amazing revenue for the month. Listen, we don’t know what their expenses are. That could have been one month out of their whole entire career. So just put on the blinders, do the work and look at your numbers. So let’s talk about this report, Sarah.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:07:40] All right. So this report is– so if you’re watching here on YouTube, I’m just going to go look at it. And if you’re in HBM, I will give you an editable version of this so you can keep it for your own business. So what we have in here is we have three months. Obviously, there’s three months in a quarter. And what we do is in each three months we have a little block that gives this information– occupancy, ADR, which is your average daily rate. How you get that number is your total revenue divided by room nights sold.

Annette Grant: [00:08:13] Say it again. Say it again. Slow down.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:08:15] Average daily rate is the total revenue divided by the room nights sold. So how many nights you actually sold that month divide your revenue.

Annette Grant: [00:08:25] And of that particular month, that’s your ADR.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:08:29] And then you have rev par, which is more of a hotel stat, but it’s good to look at and know. It’s revenue per available room. So that’s your total revenue divided by room nights. So ADR is much more important, but Rev Par is good to look out too, so is occupancy. So again, for example, we’re looking at Q2 here. And we have April, May, and June. And on this piece of paper, we have three boxes. And so there’s a box for April, a box for May, a box for June. It’s a very small box, nothing fancy. This is very not fancy.

Annette Grant: [00:09:06] Just read through them, Sarah, so they can get just an idea of what you’re looking at.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:09:09] Occupancy, ADR, rev par, and total revenue.

Annette Grant: [00:09:13] Give numbers of let’s say April.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:09:16] Yeah, I’ll go ahead and do that. So in April we had a 73% occupancy. Our average daily rate at this property was $135.76. Our rev par was $99.56 and our total revenue for that month was $8,960.

Annette Grant: [00:09:35] And can you give some stats on the room bathroom count just to give them an idea?

Sarah Karakaian: [00:09:41] Great question. What property is this? This is probably our two-bed one- bath property. And what we do as well is we have those three boxes with that information. So there’s four pieces. There is occupancy, ADR, rev par, total revenue.

Annette Grant: [00:09:59] I’m going to have you rewind really quick. So Sarah gave you April. I’m going to have her just give you the– can you go ahead and give them the Q2 totals. Let’s tell them what all three months add up ended up being.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:10:10] Sure. So occupancy for Q2 was 72% occupancy. Our average daily rate was $148.33 per night. Our rev par was $111.38 per night. And then our total revenue for Q2 was $30,407.

Annette Grant: [00:10:27] So yeah, right. And so this is one of the things we want to expose you to. And we didn’t give you in each month, but when you look at that total revenue, $30,407, like, wait a second, it helps really like, oh, well, why weren’t we booked Monday through Thursday? When you can look at that larger number, it takes the sting out of some of those vacant nights. Because I will say that is something that we get addicted to in the short-term rental. It’s like, why do I have open nights? Why do I have open nights? And that’s why it’s so important to holistically look at that because that number just it’s all making it’s–

Sarah Karakaian: [00:11:09] And let’s talk about the number. Let’s talk about the 72% occupancy. So obviously, our goal is higher than that. It’s about 85%, 90% occupancy. We’re always shooting for that. But here’s what you don’t know about the property and here’s what I want to give you all permission to make rules for yourself. 

This home is in a historic neighborhood. Our neighbors are full-time residents. And it’s very important to this owner that we have the most amazing guests in this home. So we are incredibly selective with the guests who can stay in this home. 

Annette Grant: [00:11:36] Is there Instant Book? 

Sarah Karakaian: [00:11:37] Instant Book is on because we want to be selective. So if someone books that we’re not in alignment with, maybe they are local guests or something like that, we have the right to then cancel that reservation if they break the house rules that we have in place. So the owner of this property, as long as his expenses are taken care of and the neighbors are happy, he prefers the short-term rental model.

Annette Grant: [00:12:01] Right. If it’s not 100%, that’s fine.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:12:05] That’s fine for him.

Annette Grant: [00:12:05] It is better for the whole entire neighborhood that there’s not someone coming in every single day. That’s just what he prefers there.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:12:12] And so then for Q3 projections, we want to focus on rate and revenue because we know demand is about to go through the roof in our market. So we are preparing ourselves for a higher occupancy rate, for a higher ADR. And how can we do that? We’re still getting great guests. 

We want to make sure that we are getting the highest rate for key weekends. We have move-in weekend for OSU parents, weekend for– obviously, OSU have football games. So we are putting it on paper brain dumping all the weekends that we have ahead of us so that we can meet that yearly goal, that yearly financial goal that we have that we need to meet for our client or again, listeners, for yourselves. Treat yourself like your own client, honestly. 

And then we also have a little box where we can just gather some feedback from our guests, from the cleaning team, from people who are– I guess they are buyers. Because we are here to please people in this business. So we have some strengths and we call them opportunities.

Annette Grant: [00:13:14] Okay. Let’s hear them.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:13:15] So the strengths for this property is excellent May and June ADR. Highest grossing month, 556. So this is Q2, but we’re looking at June through August and we’re already showing some really strong numbers going into Q3. We received all five-star reviews for Q2 and then guests enjoy the attentive customer service because that really is our strongest point. It’s the one thing we absolutely can control. 

And the opportunities, we pushed rate in Q2. Our demand was high. We found our sweet spot. We sacrificed occupancy during some of these periods. As a result, the target ADR, will fall between 125 and $135, which will come from capitalizing on citywide sellouts while accepting lower-rated weekly business while staying within our cost per reservation. Again, we don’t want to pay for our guests to stay there. So we do have some minimums there that we’re making sure we’re always hitting.

Annette Grant: [00:14:08] This is what you do, everybody. This should be honestly a very exciting report for you to gather and look at. And the biggest thing is what can start to get really, really exciting is when you start looking at year over year and really get to dial it in, know exactly when those busy seasons are coming, knowing if you can tweak. 

This is where you can start to tweak the numbers a little bit and like, “Hey, what if I added an amenity that could add $50 a night?” Maybe it’s a hot tub, maybe it’s something else that would really make it stand out. This is where you can start to say, hey, if I’m still at this occupancy, what if I added that amenity and my occupancy went up just 5%? This is when you can start to forecast and plan ahead and really forecast your future. And that is where it gets really, really juicy, really good. And this is kind of like, oh my gosh, I don’t know these numbers.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:15:09] Yeah, I know these numbers, everybody.

Annette Grant: [00:15:10] But here’s the deal. Make it fun. Put something in your calendar where you’re going to sit and work this out. And here’s a deal, too. Don’t get overwhelmed. What I normally do is I’m like, oh, gosh, I want to do this for a whole entire year. Don’t do that. Just start exactly where you are. 

This is going to come out at the end of September. Go back to the beginning of this month and just start for this month and then you can still do this quarter as were are heading in to Q4. Maybe you go back to Q3 and work on that quarter and start moving forward.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:15:41] He may seem smaller than that practice for a week. Get your data for the whole week and just do these numbers in a much smaller scale and just see what those equations are like and what the data is like. That way, you can start collecting it if you’re not already. 

And what we do is for every month we have our property, we collect all this information. So when it comes time to do the quarterly math, we then go to the spreadsheet tab and we just pull the numbers on the right side and we can do that math. And with time it becomes actually not that crazy of a process.

Annette Grant: [00:16:11] And again, this particular report was for a client, but if you’re doing this report for yourself, here are some things that I might add in there. Go through your reviews and print those awesome ones out. Seriously, you’re going to have those days where you want to take deep breaths. 

But on those quarterly reports pull out your favorite review that you got just to reinforce your kick and booty like Sarah said an episode before like, “I really like to celebrate the small wins,” go through and you might be able to– like Sarah said hey, all five-star reviews, but maybe you put exactly I got 12 five-star reviews and pull out your favorite one there.

Another thing you might want to track too because I feel people this really weighs a lot on their shoulders is when guests cancel. If you could start to chart like, okay, every quarter there’s going to be one or two cancellations and then you can just anticipate when that’s going to happen. And it’s not as big of a blow. 

So be interesting in this report too. If you want to add in like, hey, there were two cancellations, but they got rebooked immediately or one cancellation was super late, I didn’t get to rebook it just so you remind yourself, and then at the end of the year, you can be like, okay, this is the cadence sometimes if there are cancellations. So you don’t take it as serious or just you can anticipate what the average potential cancellation here and there is for your property.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:17:38] And how amazing is it going to have this for your book of business? Let’s say you want to sell your property and you want to do an exchange or–

Annette Grant: [00:17:44] You want to go the bank and get a commercial loan on another property.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:17:47] Yes, it’s easy. Now you have not only that monthly data, but now you have this snapshot, too. You’re going to feel like such a boss when they ask you these numbers and you’re like in like 10 minutes, respond that email and just like, yes, I have it right here.

Annette Grant: [00:17:56] Yeah. Or you’re planning for 2023. You’re going to buy a new property, you’re going to put a new amenity in the current property, but you know your numbers.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:18:09] No this is cool too is we’ll give a shout-out to one of our members, Miranda. Hey, Miranda. She has done this and dialed this in so much and implemented some things where she can make more money without doing more work. And here in Columbus, Ohio, January is quite bleak. And so she’s decided that she already knows what her whole year is like, that she’s made this decision for her business that she’s going to travel in January. She’s not going to worry about guests the whole month. And as the CEO of your business, you can make that decision for yourself. Other people here might be saying, I could never do that, but maybe you could take a weekend off.

Annette Grant: [00:18:41] But you don’t know until you know your numbers.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:18:42] So anyway, I hope this was helpful for you. If you have a more robust report than I do, I would love to see it. Send it our way. We’ll give you a shout-out. But again, have fun with this and data over drama all day long. Are you really not getting more bookings or are you just pushing your ADR and you don’t need that high occupancy to get your goals? Awesome. With that, I’m Sarah Karakaian.

Annette Grant: [00:19:07] I’m Annette Grant, and together we are– 

Both Sarah and Annette: [00:19:09] Thanks for Visiting.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:19:10] We’ll talk to you next time. Thanks for listening to the Thanks for Visiting podcast. Head on over to the show notes for additional information about today’s episode. And please hit that Subscribe button and leave us a review. Awesome reviews help us bring you awesome content. Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to hanging out with you next week.