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

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

[00:00:04] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.

[00:00:05] Sarah: And this is the–

[00:00:06] Both Annette & Sarah: Hosting Hotline.

[00:00:08] Sarah: If you want to get your question answered in the Hosting Hotline, all you have to do is go to hostinghotline.com. Please do it because we love answering these questions. It is so fun for us, and we love helping other hosts.

[00:00:18] You might think you have this unique challenge, but I promise you, you are going to help so many other hosts by asking these questions, just like John today. I feel all of us feel John right now in how frustrated he is with all the free Facebook groups that he’s a part of that are for Airbnb hosts. Let’s help John out with his question.

[00:00:37] Question: Hi, Sarah and Annette. Hey, I’m new to hosting, and your podcast has been pretty helpful. Actually, incredibly helpful. Thank you. I’m in a ton of Facebook groups, and the most common question I’m seeing is, should I charge for this or that? It could be a stained towel, broken plate, a mark on a chair, all the way to wall damage or broken tiles or something. There are just so many opinions, and I’d rather just hear from the experts. What’s the cost of doing business and what’s not? How do you decide?

[00:01:07] Sarah: We feel very passionate about this question, John, and we are thrilled that you asked it.

[00:01:12] Annette: Actually, we should turn the mic on before we actually turn the mics on because we go on rants. I went on a rant. Actually, I’m going to rerant. Instead of Annette Grant, I’m going to rerant. I went on a rant that I was just thinking– I’m just historically going back through every towel, plate, wine, key. Honestly, there have been just a minor few things, and the guest has a completely shattered TV. Guest has paid for it. But John, I just want to share that it really is so few and far between. My rant was very little things.

[00:01:50] And number one, I know in my own house, I break towel. I break plates. I get my makeup on my towels. I’ve had a wine glass break. I’ve had a pen on the couch and got a mark. So I’m thinking of my own damages that I’ve done. I think that the malicious intent is so few and far between, but the things that you’re mentioning, we definitely want to answer your question.

[00:02:14] There is a cost of doing business, and those minor things we absolutely agree those things are the cost of doing business. But if there is something major, you mentioned like tiles being broken, wall damage. If those things are much larger and the guests probably might have– depending on how it happened, I’m sure they would have told you about said damages.

[00:02:39] And while damage is like, is that their suitcase is just coming in? Then no. Or is it like they threw something through the wall is much different than the average mark on the suitcase.

[00:02:51] Sarah: I’ve got some image of a guest just taking their luggage and like hoisting it at the wall.

[00:02:55] Annette: No. Then something bad happened there. But, John, I think there has to be a threshold for you. And again, it’s what’s your average daily rate? What’s your property? But again, the first things that you are mentioning, and this is for all hosts, if it’s a missing fork, spoon, wine glass, the towels, the sheets, you got to let it go.

[00:03:16] Sarah: John, you’re a new host, so I don’t know if you already set up your property or if you’re in the process of it. But when you buy your towels and your silverware and your plates, buy more than you need. In our storage areas, we have backups of the plates, of the silverware, of obviously kitchen hand towels, anything that’s just–

[00:03:35] Annette: Glassware

[00:03:36] Sarah: Glassware. Things that like Annette said, you probably accidentally break in your own home just by being a normal human being. Have those backups so when a glass does go missing because maybe a guest dropped it on the floor and accidentally broke it or a plate is chipped, you’re like, oh, no big deal. I can just go back down there and back down to my storage room and bring up and replace it. I can give you some hard facts, John. I don’t know how many properties are managing. You’re new to hosting. Let’s assume you’re hosting one.

[00:04:03] I do think for you, John, you can leverage AirCover as your first line of defense. Okay. Well, you don’t even connect with the guests, and Airbnb will help you. Although, I still want you to think about the time it’s going to take you to document a broken plate or a stained towel, and then go to AirCover.

[00:04:22] You could spend that time instead reaching out to past guests and ask them to come stay with you again and start building up your repeat business business. That’s the problem I have with some of these hosts in these free Facebook groups because not only are they bringing such a small challenge to the forefront and then they take the time on these free Facebook groups to absolutely go in on these guests who are our customers. They could have spent all of that time and not been so negative and think of ways to grow their business instead.

[00:04:53] So when you’re wondering, John, should I be recouping money on this damage? The time it’s going to take you to do that is it better spent getting the $5 back for the plate or the 20 bucks back for the duvet cover or 40 or 50? I know duvet [Inaudible]. You know what I’m trying to say here. Think about that cost and time ratio and what’s more important to you at that time, John.

[00:05:17] And then I’m going to give you this. If you’re hosting one property, you might want to consider enrolling in some sort of damage waiver program. We work with Superhog. They’ve got a good one. I’ll put the link in for Superhog in the show notes. The cool thing with Superhog is they don’t approve or deny your claims.

[00:05:35] They will give you the funds. They do keep some funds for processing fees. And I’ve talked about this on the podcast before, John, but you can also have a damage waiver program in house. So every stay, you could collect, again, like Annette said, it depends on how big your property is and how high your ADR is, your average daily rate.

[00:05:53] I assume my property is around 100 bucks a night. So my damage waiver might be 10 bucks, five bucks, 10 bucks. If you have a higher end property and you’re asking 200, 300, 400 on up a night, you would take that damage waiver and you would increase it. And in your house rules and on your website and anywhere else you can, you share with that guest that this damage waiver is collected to cover any accidental damage during their stay.

[00:06:17] And that way, over time, this damage waiver account builds up. Actually, we use Relay banking. I’ll put Relay in our show notes because it’s awesome because you can, within seconds, open up a new bank account under your business banking. And I have a damage waiver account in Relay, and so I can watch this account grow.

[00:06:36] And when things do happen, instead of taking the time to reach out to the guests and figure out how I can be kind and ask them for the $75 because they got blood on my duvet cover, which was probably accidental and they didn’t mean to do it anyway, I can just pull from my damage waiver program, pull that money, replace my duvet cover, and spend my time doing something that’s going to add to my business in a reoccurring fashion. How can I improve it?

[00:06:59] And I can tell you, John, that my threshold is $1,000. That’s what you asked for. It takes $1,000 for me to think about if I’m going to– because I have my damage waiver program in place. The biggest thing that happens is stains on the couch, which my upholstery company will come and clean it for us for a couple of hundred bucks. It’s so [Inaudible] that usually it’s no problem getting out.

[00:07:20] One time a guest hit a ping pong ball in our dining room and it hit the TV and it cracked the TV and the damage waiver program replaced that. So the guest was like, so apologetic, willing to replace it, and I won them back by saying, hey, it happens. We put the ping pong table in the same room as a TV. I’m not going to make you pay for it.

[00:07:43] Annette: We were just discussing this too, John. It’s for you and all hosts. You might see something broken after a specific guest. Let’s say it’s a piece of furniture, a bed, a chair, anything in your home, you might notice after a guest is checked out and be very quick to place blame on that guest that just checked out.

[00:08:01] But it could be something that was happening over time because we are hosting a lot of guests and just assuming that the damage was from the last guest, it’s a touchy subject. So I just want to put that out to everybody that sometimes, especially with furniture, it’s very hard to pinpoint who exactly potentially, let’s say, broke X, Y, Z part of a piece of furniture, because there might be normal wear and tear over time and then someone was, unfortunately, “the straw” that broke the bed or the chairs back. So just be careful also when placing blame because you’re not sure.

[00:08:40] Sarah: We were humbled one time. A tile was broke in front of the fireplace. There was a floor tile that had a big crack in it. And I was like, ah, well, what could have happened that– did you move a piece of furniture? So should I not move the furniture around? And I was considering reaching out to the guest because I didn’t want it to happen again. It’s tile. We had extras. It’s an apartment building. Another apartment, that same tile cracked. The installation was subpar.

[00:09:09] Annette: Got to be careful when you’re pointing fingers.

[00:09:11] Sarah: I know. Especially when you are– first of all, competition is fierce. We do want people to refer us and come back. And so if you’re going to nitpick over– and I will argue with the Annette a little bit.

[00:09:22] If you have a little bit of DIY know how, getting a tile out and putting a new one in or repairing drywall is actually not that deep. So as hosts, because I know a lot of you maybe aren’t DIY aficionados, or you haven’t done a whole lot of construction work, and that’s okay, but I want to tell you that those things are actually not that hard to repair. The bigger things we need to be worrying about is our preventative maintenance. Those are the expensive things.

[00:09:50] Annette: I think my wall damage, the one I charged for specifically, someone had a drone inside.

[00:09:56] Sarah: Wait, did they run the drone into the wall?

[00:09:58] Annette: They did. It was doing a photo shoot. I didn’t know there was going to be a drone. Okay. Hold on. Hold on. Let me rephrase that. I was not doing the photo shoot. There’s not a drone zooming over the top of me.

[00:10:10] Sarah: Did you charge more for the stay?

[00:10:12] Annette: Yeah, but you know what, caution to everybody. The photo shoots, man, that specific one, they moved all my furniture. They damaged three different things on my wall. And I did charge them for that because it’s like, look, you’re a company, and you blatantly took things off the wall. You had a drone inside. The last thing I want to mention really quickly too, as we were just saying, be careful who you point fingers to. We’ve mentioned this on a past episode, but I want to bring it up again.

[00:10:36] You also have to be really careful when there’s large groups in your home too, because maybe a guest of a guest left the damage or maybe a kid and it was in another room that maybe the actual person that booked it has no idea about. So you really want to tread lightly when you’re bringing up these damages to your guests. Because if there’s a lot of rooms, somebody might’ve done something in a room they had no idea about. So just tread really lightly on that. But John, that’s a great question. But hopefully you’re going to have just amazing guests and nothing–

[00:11:07] Sarah: No, you’re going to have damage, and it’s okay.

[00:11:10] Annette: Yeah. I like that you’re prepping for it, and it’s all in the delivery too, and bringing it to the guest.

[00:11:14] Sarah: Yeah, just ask yourself, is it worth reaching out to the guest and figuring this out and taking the time to do that? Or could you just replace it and move on? I think that will really help you, John, as you’re building your own business, because you get to make the rules for your business.

[00:11:26] And I know that’s why you’re asking, but it’s up to you and how you want to handle these. But our opinion, it’s the cost of doing business. Focus elsewhere. With that, my name is Sarah Karakaian.

[00:11:36] Annette: I am Annette Grant, and together we are–

[00:11:37] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.

[00:11:38] Sarah: Talk to you next time.