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

[00:00:04] Annette: I am Annette Grant. And together we are–

[00:00:06] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.

[00:00:07] Sarah: Let’s start this episode like we do each and every week, and that’s featuring one of you who is using our hashtag on Instagram, #STRShareSunday. If you use it, we’ll find you, and we’ll share you here on the podcast, to our email list, on Instagram on Sundays. Annette, who are we sharing this week?

[00:00:21] Annette: This week we are sharing @beachnboard. So the word Beach, the letter N, Board. And what I love is on their logo is BnB, Beach n Board. Well done. I’m going to tell you, this Instagram feed is one of the best ones that I like that I’ve seen in a long time. It is so vibrant with color.

[00:00:42] All of the houses look amazing, beach houses, and I see myself in this house relaxing and beaching it. But please go to their feed. There’s a couple of things I want to call out. They have an amazing use of color, and it pops on their Instagram feed, so I’m sure it also pops in their listing to guest, and they do just pops of color throughout the house in different rooms, whether it be some wallpaper or cabinetry or a piece of furniture.

[00:01:15] The other thing I really want to call attention to is go to their actual website, beachnboard.com. So nice and clean and just a really good representation of their properties. And I think it is well done.

[00:01:28] They have this little area. It says like, let’s chat, which is like, hey, I’ve got some questions. They have tours of the properties, which I think is amazing. They actually have two video tours of both of their properties. That, I think everyone, if you could add that to your to do list for the year would be amazing.

[00:01:49] And their videos are about a minute, 40 seconds long. So check those video tours out. I think video tours are going to be the future for guests to really see themselves in the property. So if you can put that on your list of things to do, I would add it. Beach n Board, well done. Go give them a follow. Watch those videos on their website.

[00:02:09] Let’s get on to the episode, Sarah.

[00:02:12] Sarah: I was inspired to share this content with you because I need to remind myself of this content often. So I want to make that disclaimer right off the bat, is that I have not perfected this in all of my years in hospitality, since I was 16 years old, working in bars or restaurants or something, and I still have to practice this.

[00:02:33] And so I thought it would be really good for Annette and I to talk about this today and hopefully get you in the habit of just remembering why we’re doing what we’re doing, why we’ve chosen this vertical to, yes, build wealth, and especially now post COVID, a lot of us are asking ourselves, are we in the business of, it’s not passive income. It’s very active, and it’s through hospitality.

[00:02:58] And I looked up the definition of hospitality just now, and it’s the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers. I was on Instagram, a little while ago, just perusing randomly. I was just, as you do, scroll, and I came across a host’s Instagram account. I don’t know who they are.

[00:03:20] It’s just a random exploration of Instagram. And I was watching her stories, and it was her account where she features her property and all the things that she offers, but in her stories, she was complaining about guests’ complaints. She was venting in her Instagram stories about guest complaints. And I don’t think that’s the place to do that.

[00:03:46] And I see it run rampant too in the free Facebook groups where it’s whatever it is Airbnb Hosts whatever. There’s so many of them. But you get in there, and just to see what people are talking about, what problems are they having. Annette and I do that all the time, just to stay on the up and up of what’s going on in the industry.

[00:04:01] But so much is, it’s like the guest’s fault, and like, there’s no pleasing the guest. And it’s all very blaming of anyone but ourselves. And so Annette and I wanted to give you a different perspective today, how to look at some of these challenges that are going to come up if you’ve chosen this industry and how you can actually reframe your mindset around what it actually is, and I would say 99% of the time, it is not the guest’s fault. It is our fault. Whether or not it’s something that we can control or not, it is still our problem to solve.

[00:04:37] Annette: We are in the business of serving our guests, and that’s the bottom line. This is where you have to look in the mirror and have a chat with yourself of like, how am I handling my guests asking requests? Most people are in the thick of their busy season right now. We know. It gets daunting, but we want to share some specific stories that taught us lessons along the way that were impactful for us and hopefully these stories will impact you and have you just rethink and take a deep breath and celebrate being in the business of service.

[00:05:19] Sarah: I like how you said that Annette, the business of service, because the first story isn’t revolved around a hospitality business or company, but it is revolving around a service-based business. So we just hired a company to put a new roof on one of our properties that we manage for someone else, and I know that the contractors get a bad rap around their levels of service, but this company in particular was incredibly well reviewed on Google from various different projects, more than 50 reviews.

[00:05:56] That’s pretty darn good for a con, so I was very excited to have this company work on this building. And, okay, day one, they’re parked all in our parking lot where our guests park. And then they’re on the roof and they’re just throwing things off the roof into the parking lot, onto the sidewalks, on the side of the building, in the front of the building.

[00:06:16] That’s where people walk, so it’s not very safe. So we reached out to them and said, hey, there are people who stay here and reside here in this building, and we need to tighten up the safety. They replied, okay, no problem. We’ll do better. The next day, they actually taped off entrances, because it’s a big apartment building, and there’s exterior doors that lead into individual apartments.

[00:06:40] They were using yellow tape to tape off. Without communicating with us, they were doing that. So guests were going to leave, and there’s yellow tape at their door, and they’re like, what is going on here? We were not notified that they would be doing this.

[00:06:53] And we are on our properties pretty much every day, but there was a couple hours where we did not catch this, and this guest tried to leave their apartment. And so we reached out again and said, we need to increase the level of communication, and you need to be more thoughtful that there are people going in and out here.

[00:07:09] Annette: I can only imagine this guest. I would be–

[00:07:12] Sarah: Irate, and they were.

[00:07:15] Annette: What is the interaction with the guest at this point in time though? Because it is your responsibility, even though the–

[00:07:20] Sarah: So the guest is reaching out to us, and this is also something where we edited our SOPs when we have contractors on site because we hated the fact that they had to tell us this was going on and that we didn’t already know. It’s like, we now need to reach out to the contracting company and get the daily update of what is going to happen this day regardless.

[00:07:40] That’s another story. I want to focus on this business, and so that’s twice we’ve reached out. We reached out a third time, a fourth time. Finally, I call the owner of the company, and I was calm, but I was very firm in how– because I texted him, gave him a heads up, hey, I am frustrated. We need to chat this out. And his response was, I understand. And that upset me because you don’t understand.

[00:08:06] My team has reached out to you four or five times at this point and nothing has changed, so you don’t understand how much this is impacting our business since that week that this all happened. The two weeks that it happened, we got two three-star reviews from our guests, rightfully so.

[00:08:22] I would have been upset too. And our neighbor, our community member who knows that we’re an operating short-term rental, is complimentary of how we handled it. She called us irate with how this business was treating her property too.

[00:08:37] the, And so as the company owner was telling me how he was sorry and apologizing to me, he was not offering up any solution. In fact, he said, if there’s anything I can do, please let me know. That also made me upset. Why do I have to have a task to figure out what’s going to make it right? I want you to think about ways that you think you could turn this around.

[00:08:59] The project was going to be over the next day. It was too little, too late. I have so much to do at this point. I don’t want to think about how you can make it right. So I just wanted to share that story of the communication that’s happening. There’s no action. Yes, on the other end, so many of us use the Airbnb app or email to communicate, and some of us are leveraging VAs.

[00:09:23] And I just want to make sure that when you are doing those communications, what are you doing to take it a step beyond there, to make sure when you say I understand, or we will take care of it, that there’s action following that communication, because that’s where this company fell short.

[00:09:36] He did not know that we reached out several times and it still wasn’t being nipped in the bud. And I think that’s something that we need to be careful of. Especially if you’re a remote host or you’re really leveraging communication, what are you doing to take a step further?

[00:09:51] That’s our first story. And how his apology, and we’re going to reference this throughout the episode, is baseline. It’s actually not even really baseline yet. It’s like, okay, thanks for the apology, but now what? Annette, do you want to share your story now where you were the service provider who got–

[00:10:11] Annette: Yeah. And I thought I was crushing it. I had a couple stay in one of my lofts, and they were going to be there for at least a week, maybe even longer. And they had reached out. There were some, to them, missing items. And there actually were some missing items. This is before any inspections, anything like that.

[00:10:33] All of my sharp knives had gone missing, and clearly, I don’t know where they all went, but they were all gone. And while she communicated that there were some other things, I had bedside lights, but they were really dim, and they really weren’t for reading, she was like, my husband and I like to read at night. We like to each have our own bedside lamp, and the ones that you have are not cutting it. I was like, okay. I hear that. I agreed with her on that.

[00:11:04] Those were the two things that really, really stuck out to me. Oh, the other thing that had happened, the reason she even called me in the first place is the Wi-Fi had gone down. I could not get anybody out there to fix the Wi-Fi for like– it wasn’t just a normal router issue. They were like, we need to schedule an appointment to come out.

[00:11:25] So, of course, the guest had also gone through all of the triage of trying to fix it themselves. And they were there to work, and I didn’t have any sort of backup Wi-Fi at this point in time. But the one thing, I was like, you know what? I’m going to crush this right now. So I went to Target right away. I’m like, I’m going to get her nice lamps, I’m going to get her all new knives. I’m going to deliver it on her doorstep within the hour.

[00:11:50] I’m like, I’m going to crush this. Well, I did that. I messaged her right away because I didn’t want to bother her. I was like, hey, I just left you lamps and the cutlery were on your front door. Let me know if you need anything else. And she was like, thank you. This is the other thing that happened. There was a crazy rainstorm that night and a freaking leak happened the next day.

[00:12:13] Sarah: This is how it always happens.

[00:12:15] Annette: However, I thought that I was like, oh, you know what? There was one other thing that I couldn’t remedy at that point in time. They didn’t really care for the style of chairs I had at the dining room table, and I didn’t have a workspace, and they were also working from home.

[00:12:30] This was way before COVID, and so there was nothing I could really do about getting new dining room chairs during their stay. Here’s what happened at the end of this. So this was middle of the night call. There was a leak. I still remember getting that text message. This really was a 3:00 in the morning text message. I had to take buckets, yes, buckets, to them. It couldn’t get anywhere.

[00:12:51] So it was just like, you guys can all know how your stomach feels. But her response to me really is what shook me to the core because I thought my delivery of getting them the lamps and the knives, I’m like, she’s going to be so impressed by this, dropping them off within the hour.

[00:13:09] And in a review, she private messaged me. He was just like, hmm, not really. I had to take out all the packaging of the lamps. I had to wash all the cutlery. She’s like, that’s not what I wanted to be doing. Thanks, but no, thanks. It should have just been here already.

[00:13:27] When she said that, part of the work that she had to do, I was like, she’s so right. That’s so annoying that– and as I thought I was like a superhero host. She’s like, no, first of all, that should have been here. Second of all, now I’m doing work. And the whole incident really made me think about I wasn’t at baseline. I’m pretty sure I ended up refunding them some money, but also, they didn’t want refunded.

[00:13:50] They wanted their Wi-Fi. They wanted their reading lamps. They wanted the chairs that they wanted. And they were also vacation rental hosts, by the way, and they had been hosts for years and years on the West coast somewhere. And so I felt really actually supported by them because they were giving me this feedback in a caring way. But I want to share that if you think something is getting the stay back to baseline, it probably isn’t. Not probably isn’t, it isn’t.

[00:14:17] Sarah: It’s also not enough.

[00:14:19] Annette: Right. It’s not enough just to get them– if they have a request for something like, oh, there’s no wine key and you have it there in the next– I think that stuff should have been there in the first place. And I think that’s the thing where you get so many requests from all over the place. You’re like, oh, I took care of that. You feel like, I took care of that. I gave them the solution. But it really doesn’t bring it to baseline.

[00:14:39] Sarah: Well, something you didn’t mention either is that, and again, it’s out of Annette’s control, is they were coming from another stay that didn’t go well. Right, Annette?

[00:14:46] Annette: Right. They had left another location to come to my location.

[00:14:51] Sarah: So they’re ready to nitpick anyone. so I can already see where someone is venting in public about how they were already coming and they were already annoyed by everything. There’s nothing I could do right. It’s like, but you didn’t do it right. You didn’t have a backup if your Wi-Fi went down for a longer stay. I’m there. I can also roast myself.

[00:15:14] I’m not trying to get on Annette, but she didn’t check the knives before they checked in. The chairs, it’s a personal opinion, but it’s something to take consideration. But when we fall short, when we make a mistake, when it isn’t what was advertised, their perception is their reality.

[00:15:31] And we’re in the business of hospitality, and so it should excite you when a challenge is brought your way where you can take that opportunity and up level for them. And sometimes, everyone, when we make mistakes and we bring it to baseline, that might cost us money. And then we go above and beyond, and that might cost us money, that mistake does take you in the red. But I want us to understand that–

[00:15:58] Annette: It’s an investment in your business. It’s actually an investment also in the entire industry. That’s the next thing that I want to layer in here, is that that guest that had had a bad experience somewhere else and then moved into my place, they already have all of this history of a bad short-term rental stay, and then I was layering upon it.

[00:16:23] And so I want to share that too, of like, you never know the last short-term rental experience that your guest had. And you might be paying for the sins of the father. You might be paying for the sins of the last STR host. And that’s something to keep into consideration also, is if they’re like, okay, it happened again. I’m shooting my shot with a short-term rental, and we’re falling short again.

[00:16:49] And so that’s where I think it’s like really important to understand that history there of either their past stay or their history of just their day. How did they get to your home? Was their flight delayed? Did they get a flat tire? Just so many things that are layered upon there.

[00:17:07] But let’s talk about how we can coach ourselves to get to that baseline, but then going above and beyond. Do we have that triage ready? Because also, some people are like, once you strike out, you’ve really got to do like a grand slam to win them back.

[00:17:27] What are the plans that we should have in place, Sarah, to really go above and beyond there? Is it that monetary? People don’t want refunds. When things are wrong, of course, I’ll take the refund but I never want the money back. I wanted things to be right in the first place.

[00:17:45] Sarah: That’s the thing. I think actually it’s not above and beyond. So first of all, I think baseline is the thing that you did to make it right. It’s the bringing of the knives and the lamps. That’s baseline. And then, whatever you would do after there to try to win them back, that’s actually not above and beyond. That is trying to get them to what they were expecting of your stay.

[00:18:06] Annette: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:06] Sarah: You know what I’m saying? And so sometimes it is a refund and you have to– this is the art of hospitality. This is the challenge that should excite you. I wonder, I’m just trying to think about how I would have maybe handled it differently, Annette, just being hindsight’s 2020, whatever, but asking or maybe offering them, okay, you didn’t have the knives. Could I treat you to dinner? And while you’re at dinner, I would love the opportunity to make sure that you have the knives in place and the lamps in place.

[00:18:34] And then you leave them something else in the unit that wouldn’t cause them to work. So maybe it’s not going to a specific restaurant, because maybe they don’t want to go to that restaurant.

[00:18:42] Annette: Mm-hmm. Right.

[00:18:43] Sarah: Maybe it’s like a prepaid visa gift card, or if they’d like to stay at Airbnbs, maybe it’s an Airbnb for a future stay to get them to come back again. Anticipating the needs of that specific guest. I can tell you actually something where we messed up recently.

[00:18:59] We have a sofa that the legs were wobbly, and it actually broke. Or they were wobbly, and they hadn’t broke yet. And we had a handyman come and fix it. And he told us, he was like, listen, I fixed this as best I could, but you probably want to invest in a new sofa soon or–

[00:19:17] Annette: It’s going to happen again.

[00:19:19] Sarah: You need a whole new base apparatus to make this sofa. And I don’t know what was going on with it. We had a guest come, and the leg broke on her. And it was 11 o’clock at night. And she was irate. She was not happy. When your team starts to share what’s going on and your team also has, whether it’s your business partner, or maybe you have a co-host who helps you with messaging, or a VA, and they’re also bringing their anger to situations like, I can’t believe– why shouldn’t you just go to bed?

[00:19:51] This is not the conversation our team had, but this is where it could go. Your team is sharing toxic feedback about how dare the guests bother us right now. And how dare she’s so upset about this so late at night. And making sure that you’re not taking that opportunity to go to that side of the issue, but you need to go to problem solving mode.

[00:20:10] I could not get a couch to her. She was only staying for two nights. There’s no way I can get a new couch to her. I knew from the handyman that it could not be fixed. Did she care that we already had a handyman out, and he fixed and we paid to have it?

[00:20:21] Annette: No.

[00:20:21] Sarah: No, she does not care about that. All she knows is there is one leg down on the floor, and the other three are up right.

[00:20:26] Annette: Ugh.

[00:20:27] Sarah: Okay? So we did some digging in the conversation, and we figured out why she was coming to town, and what we could do to make it better. So the next morning we came, we removed all the legs. So it just sat on the floor. And that’s not even baseline. No one wants to sit on a sofa that’s on the floor.

[00:20:42] Annette: You know how I feel about lowrider sofas.

[00:20:44] Sarah: I know. So we’re below baseline at this point. We come the next morning. We move all legs. We’re below baseline. Then we leave a handwritten card. And the first thing in the handwritten card is hospitality 101. It’s reiterating how frustrating this must have been for her last night. She was trying to sit down and relax and enjoy watching TV and the sofa broke on you. And we cannot imagine how frustrating that was for you.

[00:21:05] So we reiterated why she was frustrated. We were more mad about it than she was. That’s what I think I’m trying to drive home, is sharing with her how upset we are that this happened to her under our care. You have to be more mad about the problem than your guest is.

[00:21:21] Annette: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:22] Sarah: So that your guest is almost maybe feeling like they need to defuse you, because it’s like, no, it’s okay. And then you have to make a gesture that makes it right. So we, of course, left her a very generous prepaid gift card for her to use. Which by the way, you can get one to have your logo on them, which is really cute thing to do.

[00:21:37] So the handwritten card, the couch on the ground, she’s leaving the next day, and then a generous card so she can go out that night if she wants to have a meal or take it with her. She didn’t have to use it in town. We did win her back. She did leave us a nice review. And you had to shoot your shot. I didn’t want to ask her what can we do to make this right because I also don’t want to make her think.

[00:21:56] Annette: Right. Agree with that. And I just love the incidences. For some reason, that incident that I’m talking about with these lamps and these knives, literally, I think it was six years ago now, but it was so impactful on me the way that the woman had shared, like, I shouldn’t have had to do any of the assembly or the put back.

[00:22:18] And that is the stuff. It stung, but unless she would have told me that, I would have never changed my mindset about the baseline type stuff of just getting them what they need isn’t enough. That’s not hosting. If someone requests something, giving it to them isn’t hosting. That was such an eye-opening experience for me of trying to just really take care of somebody and understanding that it was just baselining for her. I wish I remembered her name.

[00:22:50] Sarah: One of our really experienced friends who has a large company was saying how sometimes they’ll have guests who are upset because the weather’s bad

[00:22:58] Annette: Sure.

[00:22:59] Sarah: Because they’ve come to have their family vacation, and that has nothing to do with you and your company, but guess whose problem it is.

[00:23:06] Annette: Yours.

[00:23:07] Sarah: It is your problem.

[00:23:08] Annette: Beach to sandy, water to wet.

[00:23:10] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:23:11] Annette: That’s, I think, the ownership piece of– right. The whole Wi-Fi situation also, I thought I was doing as best I could. I’m like, I’m going to have somebody come out. It’s like, well, they don’t want somebody coming out.

[00:23:23] Sarah: They don’t want a guy in [Inaudible].

[00:23:24] Annette: They don’t want to have to reset the router. Everybody knows what a nightmare it is for the Wi-Fi. And I even did get them the hotspot. I thought that took care of it. Have you ever tried to use a hotspot? That’s not working. That ain’t working.

[00:23:38] Sarah: It’s tough. Hospitality is a really rewarding industry to be in because when you nail it, you feel so good. When we got that on there, we celebrate as a team when that guest wrote that review. Because then you have to do your thing. You got to do the gesture. You got to get to baseline, and then you’re not doing above and beyond, like I said. You are then making it right by–

[00:23:59] Annette: Ooh, I have a curve ball I’m going to throw about the five stars.

[00:24:02] Sarah: You don’t deserve it.

[00:24:03] Annette: Hosts, listen to us. I know all of us really want these five-star reviews, but have you, I’m going to share this, ever left the five-star review? And it might not just be for a host. It could just be in general.

[00:24:20] Sarah: And you felt guilty because I didn’t deserve it.

[00:24:21] Annette: Yeah.

[00:24:22] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:24:22] Annette: So that’s also where I like want to check myself on how many good reviews because people pleasers are like, you know what? I don’t even want to leave. They were nice, but deep down, you–

[00:24:34] Sarah: We’ve recently done that.

[00:24:36] Annette: Right.

[00:24:36] Sarah: We stay at a short-term rental. We actually met the host. He was so sweet, everyone. He was so cute, but where his vents, dusty. You guys, so dusty, so caked on. The drawers, you pulled, and there was hair and all that.

[00:24:52] Annette: It’s rough. I think that’s my message here too, of like, I’ve been on this excellence kick lately of like, what is excellence just personally? And actually, after I’ve left some short-term rental, I think. But that is the thing of like, I also want to offer to all of us. We toot our horns all the time about five-star stays, and it’s like, but are they?

[00:25:18] Sarah: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:19] Annette: I just kicked myself in my own gut, if that’s possible.

[00:25:23] Sarah: No, but I think that’s really powerful because that does happen more often than we all, all of us–

[00:25:30] Annette: Right. And no offense. Let’s talk about this couch lady. You got the five-star review, but if we really boil it down–

[00:25:37] Sarah: And then my handyman told me like, you probably should replace this sofa. I should have replaced– that was my mistake. It is my fault. I knew it.

[00:25:47] Annette: Right. But that’s the thing that I am really striking a chord with myself right now of like, when people say good job or five-star review, it’s like, but is it really?

[00:25:58] Sarah: But is it really?

[00:26:03] Annette: Actually, I’m going to challenge everyone. Do you know you’ve gotten a five-star review, even though it wasn’t a five-star stay? And just sit in that of like, yeah, we– because we champion that all the time. Like, oh, I I saved the review. And it’s like, sometimes–

[00:26:21] Sarah: And that’s where we take the private feedback. Okay, we got the five-star review. Hopefully they gave you a private feedback, but even then it’s like– and sometimes the guest never told me. They don’t have to tell us.

[00:26:32] Annette: That’s not their responsibility.

[00:26:33] Sarah: That is not their responsibility. I’ll give you another example, and I’m trying to rectify this one. We have some sleeper sofas, and I have them in these really lovely kits. I’ve got a little sign on top of it, says they’re clean and laundered and ready. They’re lidded. So you don’t wonder how dusty they are because they’ve been sitting on top– I’m like, okay. But it’s in a closet, not in the living room. It’s in a closet in the bedroom. And a guest told us– super sweet of her. She told us in the review–

[00:27:03] Annette: After she checked out.

[00:27:04] Sarah: After she checked out, that her son slept on the sofa because they couldn’t find the sleeper sofa. And of course, immediately you were like, why didn’t you just ask us? But you know why? Because she didn’t want to. She’s a Sarah and she does not want to reach out. I don’t want to call anyone. I don’t want to message you. I have things to do. I’m here for whatever.

[00:27:26] Annette: This is a great message too. How many guests, we should have ran the stats ahead of time, have checked in to that unit? It’s years and years and years of stays. Probably thousands of people have checked into that.

[00:27:41] Sarah: This is a newer unit.

[00:27:42] Annette: But your other ones that have the same situation.

[00:27:45] Sarah: Well, like our property together at our townhome, that’s in the bedroom in which the bed is. There’s a trundle bed that you could unfurl. But I just never thought that like, oh, of course, they’re going to– because we say it all the time. We say that. We say, oh, guests open up every door and every– well, these guests didn’t. They didn’t want to go looking for it. They wanted it to be easy.

[00:28:03] Annette: If it was in a bedroom closet too, in their defense, they might have thought it was for that bed and they aren’t allowed to use it.

[00:28:09] Sarah: Or like backup bedding for the bed or something.

[00:28:11] Annette: I shouldn’t touch that. That’s for somebody else.

[00:28:13] Sarah: You’re not wrong. And we’re not just fixing it by having a lovely framed message right next to the sofa. We’re also going to put a label when you go to pull out the sofa. We’re also going to put it in the welcome book. I’m going to try to meet my guests where they’re at as many places as I can. That is baseline, is, if they go to reach for it, it should be there.

[00:28:35] And if it’s not, and if they didn’t tell us, that’s not our problem. And so even we tell you to stay at your property before you open it up, of course, you know where you kept the sleepers. So you’re not going to think that that’s going to be an issue.

[00:28:47] Annette: Or you know how to get there and somebody is like, I can’t find this at night. And you are like, what do you mean? And it’s like, I’ve never been in your town before.

[00:28:54] Sarah: Here’s the thing too. We’re human. I also don’t want you to turn off this episode and be like, well, now I’m defeated. That’s not the point of this. You’re going to lose some, and you’re going to get that three or four-star review, the best of us. It’s going to happen. It’s turning those into opportunities for yourself, for your team, for our whole industry.

[00:29:14] And I think one of those opportunities is when you’re in those free Facebook groups, when you’re on your Instagram stories, when you’re at a picnic or wherever, don’t bash our customer. You know what I mean? Even the guests who come and have a party in your place, despite your rules, there is something that you’re not doing to communicate or able to nip that in the bud better to force it down their throat that property is not a good fit for them.

[00:29:39] Even that extreme, if you can get your mindset there, that is a hospitality mindset of always having ownership of every negative thing that happens in our business and making them into learning opportunities for our businesses. I’ll stand by that.

[00:29:55] Annette: I’m a little defeated over here right now. I have a lot of reflection to do about these fake five-star reviews.

[00:30:02] Sarah: Also, I’ll get vulnerable. Once I got the property count up to where I could have someone help me with the guest messaging, because I was wearing them so heavy, any feedback or question where you could tell they were frustrated, I was wearing it so heavy.

[00:30:20] And I would solve the challenge. I would bring it to baseline, and then I would take it to where it’s supposed to be, and then I would try to go above and beyond and see if it worked, and then I would wear it on my heart for so long after that because I was so disappointed in myself.

[00:30:34] Annette: No, it’s–

[00:30:35] Sarah: And I had to put a buffer in there because I found customer service representatives, co-hosts, whatever you want to call them. They were better at that than I am. Speaking of that, if you are at a place where you have someone helping you with communication with your guests, make sure that you equip them with maybe this podcast episode, with words they can and cannot use, with ways to empower them to make it right without having to call you first, because taking too long to solve a challenge that a guest is having is also a problem.

[00:31:06] Annette: Yeah, financially empower them to make– if it is a gift card, if it’s calling a service person to get out there ASAP, because time matters, even just giving them $100 or $200 carte blanche, make sure that you make– obviously they need to turn the receipt, let you know, but how can you empower them to move forward quickly to make it baseline or try to start making it better than baseline for the guest.

[00:31:32] Sarah: You got to get to the baseline, then you can do better than baseline, and then you got to go above and beyond. And yeah, I know there’s a lot of talk about how sexy it is to just hire VAs and have them run your company and your business and to communicate with their guests. And I want that for you so you don’t feel like you’re always tied to your phone and you can’t ever get a break.

[00:31:49] But just make sure that you understand the power you are giving that human being who communicates with your guests, and make sure you understand the language they’re using. Give them a decision tree. As challenges come up during your training, of handing off that baton to them, make it a requirement that you go over, okay, what did you decide to do?

[00:32:07] Annette: Trust but verify. Like, okay, how do we solve this? Coach through that.

[00:32:13] Sarah: Right. I just want our industry to be–

[00:32:17] Annette: I know I got some work to do.

[00:32:18] Sarah: Incredible. Because it is. I was like, what if someone is watching this woman’s Instagram stories and they’re thinking about booking the place and all they see is her venting about the past guests who came and how terrible they were. I don’t know. I’m like, well, I’m going to bring all my family and have a big whatever there.

[00:32:37] My family gets a little cray cray. I, of course, try to reign them in, but we all know. Of course, we want them to behave at our properties and follow every rule and read our whole rule book, but I’m not going to lie to you. There are times when I didn’t book the place, and of course I’m going to be respectful, but–

[00:32:53] Annette: Sometimes for me, I am not using a makeup towel. I’m just letting you know.

[00:32:57] Sarah: You don’t use the makeup towel.

[00:32:59] Annette: I reach for whatever is there, and if it is white, it is going straight on my face, because my face is wet. I can’t see. And I do it every single time. After I wet my face on the white towel, I’m like, oh my gosh, there’s makeup, but it’s too little too late. So I have zero malicious intent. I literally do it ever. It’s almost like a tick now that I almost can’t do it the other way because I’m sure hosts everywhere are wanting to throw their whatever that they’re listening to this on through the wall.

[00:33:27] Sarah: Before we wrap this up, I also want to bring up hosts leaving guests reviews because it is a platform built on trust, whether it’s an OTA like Airbnb or Vrbo, our own direct booking website. And we need to do that hosts. I want you to be honest in how they get–

[00:33:45] Annette: That’s hard–

[00:33:45] Sarah: But I don’t think when they stain your hand towels or when they leave a stain on your sheet or when they brought their pet and they didn’t tell you. I don’t know. I just feel like–

[00:34:00] Annette: Remember we broke that one lady’s chair at her short– it was clearly almost broken. It was on our first road trip together, the wicker chair. That thing was already broken, but we re-broke it. But things happen, even with the best guest’s intentions.

[00:34:14] Sarah: Sometimes we’ll have members in our private group. That’s why we have a private Facebook group in our mastermind, because it is monitored by Annette, myself, our team, our coaches, because we want it to be a safe, productive space, and the free ones are not.

[00:34:28] But they’ll complain that a guest brought a pet, and they didn’t notify them. Okay. Where do you state that pets must be announced prior to arrival? Is it buried in your description? Is it house rule number 19? Because I know I’m one of them. I’ve got a ton of house rules. I’m going to list it all just to help me with liability. But truly, are we meeting where our guests are at? And like, okay, this day and age, a guest should know if you’re bringing a pet, there’s probably a fee to it. Maybe they don’t.

[00:34:57] Annette: But should they? Why should they? Like a hotel.

[00:34:59] Sarah: A hotel, you walk in, the hotel front desk probably see you. We don’t have that in our world. Listen, if it happens once or twice, let it go. If it happens often, then it’s probably on you and your communication.

[00:35:15] Annette: Mm-hmm. Yes.

[00:35:18] Sarah: Also, remember sometimes they’re service animals, and they don’t have to tell us they’re bringing the animal. Anyway, I hope the message is getting clear here. This really is just to strengthen all of us. We have to win the trust of the traveler, and we have to do better when we do make mistakes.

[00:35:33] Even if we feel it’s not our fault, how we respond and how we get them to baseline, beyond baseline, and then above and beyond is in our control. And it’s actually that that should excite you about being in this industry. I had a hotel manager who I talk about all the time, Francois. He’s still a GM at all the fancy hotels in New York.

[00:35:55] The amount of ownership that man took any time one of his staff members misstepped, he owned it. He helped us support him in owning it. But I just remember learning that from him, of, you should be excited to solve challenges that our guests bring to us, even the most discerning guest. You work at a high-end hotel, and the complaints these guests have, but man, you thrive off of solving it. Or you thrive off of anticipating it.

[00:36:27] Annette: They’re all valid. We might laugh. It’s like, no, those are the expectations.

[00:36:32] Both Annette & Sarah: Absolutely.

[00:36:33] Annette: Those are the expectations.

[00:36:35] Sarah: I would love to know what you guys thought of today’s episode. Do you have a different viewpoint? What do you do to solve challenges to get from baseline, beyond baseline, above and beyond? Let us know. DM us on Instagram or write us at hi@thanksvisiting.com, and thanks for listening. With that, I’m Sarah Karakaian.

[00:36:52] Annette: I am Annette Grant. And together we are–

[00:36:53] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.

[00:36:54] Sarah: Talk to you next time.