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Introduction and Welcome

Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:00] Hello. Welcome back for another great [00:01:00] episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian. I’m Annette Grant and together we are Thanks for Visiting. And this is the Hosting Hotline. The Hosting Hotline is where you, the host, can call in to hostinghotline. com, ask your hosting questions, and then we’ll answer them here on the podcast for you.

And so not only will you get the help that you need. But you’re going to be helping thousands of other hosts who tune in each and every week with this same challenge, whether they’re facing it now or in the future, we guarantee that you will help hosts across the world. And today we’re going to help Shannon.

Listener Question: Direct Booking Site

Hosting Hotline Caller Shannon: Hi ladies. Thank you so much. I just got done listening to the, is building a direct booking site worth it? And that was super helpful because I’m getting ready to do that right now. I have hospitable and Pricelabs. I have three STRs and actually four long term rentals, but my question for you, and I was not aware of the 15 percent, charge versus the split fee, so that was really, interesting to me.

So I’m, my, I have two questions. One is around that, around [00:02:00] increasing your rates 15% I’m guessing I can go into Pricelabs and set that across the board for my Airbnb listing. Not sure. I guess I’ll go to their support team and look into that. I’m new, I’ve only had these properties listed for about two months now and I’ve had some, I think great experiences from my guests and they’ve left the homes pristine and it’s been a great experience I think on both sides, but the guests are not leaving me reviews And I’m not sure why And I’m following up and all of that.

So anyway, I just wanted to know if you have any tips on how to get people to, leave a review and feedback without completely bugging them or spamming them. Thanks a lot. 

Sarah Karakaian: That’s a great question, Shannon. And thanks for asking it. 

Understanding the 15% Fee

Sarah Karakaian: I want to just catch everyone up on what she’s talking about with the whole 15 percent thing.

So we did an episode about, listen, [00:03:00] everyone talks about how direct bookings are you have to do it. It’s amazing. It protects you. And it does. And you probably should, but we would be doing you a disservice if we didn’t point out the fact that Airbnb, which is a newer thing, the past year or so depending on where you live, if you’re connected to a property management software, you automatically are now charged 15 percent per booking, which can make or break a deal.

Like if you’re looking at a home and you’re underwriting it and you’re looking at. Occupancy and average daily rates. Now knock 15 percent off of that or make sure you’re including that those fees in your underwriting, cause it can make or break a deal. Now, what we talked about in that episode was, and we’ll link to it in the show notes, if you want to listen to it, if you missed it is you can via your PMS or via Pricelabs.

do a rate multiplier. So whatever rate that you decide that you want to charge for that night, for that property, you can add 15 percent to it so [00:04:00] that the guest actually pays that fee. Now, that makes it more expensive on Airbnb, yes, but that is what would entice your guest to book direct with you. And that’s where this all comes full circle.

Now, I don’t use, I used to use hospitable. So, ask Hospitable if you can do the rate multiplier on Hospitable, because, and I also believe this to be true, but you’re welcome to ask Pricelabs as well, if you do it on Pricelabs, it would be portfolio wide across all OTAs.

So you couldn’t just multiply your rate on Airbnb, it would affect it on all OTAs. So in I use Hostfully, And if for any hostfully users out there, because we do promote hostfully often because that’s what we use. If you go to the, all the channel manager on hostfully, and under Airbnb specifically, you can set a rate multiplier to 15%.

So it doesn’t do it to Booking. com or to Verbo, right? Because I don’t need to, because VRBO is [00:05:00] 5%. Booking.com, you could do it for Booking.com too, depending on how, you know, would they charge you? I think it’s usually 10%. 

Annette Grant: The options there for. For all of them. 

Sarah Karakaian: So Shannon, I bet on Hospitable, they offer this and if they don’t, reach out to Price Ops and see how they can help.

So I just want to get everyone caught up with that. 

Tips for Getting Reviews

Sarah Karakaian: Annette, you want to talk about reviews? Yeah. 

Annette Grant: Second question 

is she’s having amazing guest day, but they are not giving her the reviews. And I heard you say. that you are following up with them. I would encourage getting ahead of it. And I’m wondering how, where you are starting to talk about the reviews with your guest.

The earlier you can start letting the guests know how important the review is to you, and mentioning it during their stay, is, is important. Is where you want to get ahead of it. Absolutely follow up, but you don’t want the review to [00:06:00] just be something you mentioned after they check out. We want to make sure we’re getting ahead of that.

Encouraging Reviews During the Stay

Annette Grant: That way, just like any sort of advertising, you need to hear something over and over again for it to register for you so we encourage starting to talk about that review very early even after they check in we want to make sure you Have a five star stay you want to start letting them know that five star is your baseline we want to make sure that you’re weaving that in way before you’re Following up with the review and Sarah was gonna read a little section We think in the way that we ask for the review and There’s something we focus on that we think helps the guest leave that review.

Sarah, do you want to read that small section there? 

Sarah Karakaian: Yeah. So Shannon, everyone listening, we use Breezeway messaging. This will automatically go out to our guests after they check out and it says, hi, guests, first name, it’ll enter their first name, we hope you had a fantastic stay during your visit to Columbus or wherever they’re visiting.

If you enjoyed your experience, it would be wonderful if you could take a moment to share your thoughts with [00:07:00] others by leaving us a review. Your feedback means the world to us and our small family owned business. If you have any suggestions for improvement, please feel free to let us know directly by replying to this message.

We value your input and are committed to making stays with us top notch. When I remind them that we are a small family owned business, we are not a billion dollar conglomerate called Airbnb. Remind them that there is a small family behind. that stay and how much it means to you and your business for them to leave the feedback for future guests.

You could also, I could probably make this message even better by saying that it would take, you know, I can give them the link because whether this is asking them to leave the review on Google, but if you’re focusing on your Airbnb reviews right now, you can let them know like this review will take you X, you know, three minutes.

Like do try one for yourself, right? And how long it would take you. I know hosts out there that will, here’s some other examples. We don’t do these. But you could do it where you essentially give them a template where they can [00:08:00] fill in. So you’re doing some of the work for them. They can copy and paste it and then fill in a few details.

I know other hosts. I don’t really love this, but they say it works where they take a screenshot of the fact that they just left you a review. So like you would take a screenshot of you leaving the review for the guest and say, I just left you a five star review. Would you mind leaving me one? So you could do that.

Annette Grant: The other thing we see often 

Creative Ways to Request Reviews

Annette Grant: Inside your home, Shannon, also reiterating whether it is, something on your refrigerator, in your guidebook, maybe even something framed, just again. letting them know how important the review is and not just getting lost in the sauce in messages back and forth.

So having something printed out inside the home again, just letting them know, and it’s kind of hitting them from a different direction and a different messaging. So that works too, especially like, let’s say, for instance, maybe it’s a husband wife that booked it, but the husband booked it on his account and the wife’s like, Oh, did you leave a [00:09:00] review?

Or it’s like, you know, Sarah and I, I, Sarah is. leaves reviews for every single thing that we do. I don’t care where it is. So like she’s our, our reviewer and our partnership. And so I will always be like, Oh, Sarah, she’s like, it’s already done. 

So that also having something inside the space, if they’re a partnership like Sarah and I or others, where it’s like, Oh yeah, we need to do that. So I also want to encourage you Shannon to put something inside your home, letting them know how important those reviews are to you and your small family owned 

business.

Giving you a couple examples. So we’ve seen hosts do this really nicely. Actually, if any of you have our hosting handbook. If you don’t know what the hosting handbook is, we’ll put a link in the show notes, but it’s great for new hosts. We take you through an actual operating, beautiful short term rental.

One of our members inside of our membership gave us full access to her property and in it, she’s got a really good example of, so if you have the hosting handbook, we actually have video of this, but she’s got this really beautifully designed magnet that goes on her fridge. There’s nothing else in the fridge.

It is [00:10:00] just this beautifully designed small magnet, and it explains the guest. What each star means, so what one mean, what two, what three, what four, what five means in our world, in the short term rental world. And then a small sentence or two of how important it is they actually take the time to leave that.

So whether it’s a magnet on the fridge or a framed message next to your welcome book, or maybe it’s next to TV or the remote, somewhere where they’re definitely going to see it. Also, I encourage everyone who shares that they don’t get reviews. Annette just gave me this idea. When you’re out and about the next couple of days, notice where other businesses are asking for reviews, on receipts, on your way out of the store.

And then think about why you haven’t taken the time to leave that store or review. What could they have done? to get you to do it and then actually do it. Leave some reviews, look on your receipts, when you leave a store, actually scan the QR code, go through that experience yourself and ask yourself, how could I make this easier for my guests?

What was good about that experience? What was not so good? Because if we want guests leave us a review, we [00:11:00] also have to be good practitioners of leaving reviews so that we know how to make it easy, how they can understand the value that it means for us. So I think that’s a good practice too. 

And if you’re doing a direct booking site, Shannon, you could entice them with a discount on their next stay or it doesn’t even have to be a discount.

Maybe it’s a welcome gift, something encouraging them. Like if you leave a review on your next day, XYZ, we’ll provide you with, whatever you’ve chosen will be the best to offer, but making them another offer for leaving that review. 

Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Sarah Karakaian: Finally, I will share with you that we did a whole YouTube video about this.

I will also link to that YouTube video. If you want to be a visual learner. We’re on there. It’s totally different content about leaving reviews or asking guests to leave reviews. I’ll link to in the show notes. 

Annette Grant: And it just wouldn’t be right if we ended this episode without asking you, our listeners, if you have not left us a review.

On the podcast, wherever you listen, it would mean the world to our small family owned [00:12:00] podcast . If you would leave a review, it really does matter because other hosts, like they look at those reviews and see if the show is worth listening to. So we want to ask that if you haven’t left us a review.

We would really appreciate. And if you leave us a review, DM us, let us know. We appreciate each and every one of you out there. So thank you so much. With that, I am Sarah Karakaian. I’m Annette Grant. And together we are, Thanks for visiting. Talk to you next time. [00:13:00]