Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / Guests Notice This First – And It Costs You Everything

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Guests Notice This First – And It Costs You Everything · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

• 0:00
  Welcome to Turnover Tactics, powered by House, Planet, and
• 0:03
  Turno. If the time between guest stays
• 0:06
  feels like a chaotic scramble, you are not alone.
• 0:10
  Turnover is often the biggest bottleneck in any short term
• 0:13
  rental business. It's where reviews are won or
• 0:16
  lost, and where profit either flows or leaks away.
• 0:20
  During this series, we're giving you the complete professional
• 0:23
  blueprint for mastering this critical phase of operations.
• 0:27
  We'll show you how to automate your scheduling, guarantee
• 0:30
  quality control, and build a reliable team so you can scale
• 0:34
  your business without the stress.
• 0:36
  In today's episode, Chris Rule, Turno's vice president of
• 0:39
  customer experience, will outline why clean equals
• 0:43
  competitive. Why turnovers are the new guest
• 0:46
  experience. Battleground Turnover Tactics is
• 0:49
  brought to you in collaboration with Turno, the all in one
• 0:52
  cleaning and turnover management platform built specifically for
• 0:56
  short term rental hosts. If you've ever scrambled to find
• 0:59
  a reliable cleaner or wasted hours managing schedules, Turno
• 1:03
  changes everything. With their Global Cleaner
• 1:06
  Marketplace, automated scheduling, and real time
• 1:09
  updates, you'll never stress about turnovers again.
• 1:13
  Whether you manage one property or 100, Turno helps you stay
• 1:17
  guest ready effortlessly. Simply scan the QR code if
• 1:20
  you're watching on YouTube, or click the link in the show notes
• 1:24
  to get started. It's time you let Turno take
• 1:27
  over. Chris, it's great to welcome you
• 1:34
  back to turnover Tactics. Let's get straight into it.
• 1:37
  When a guest walks into a property, what are the first
• 1:40
  things they notice and how does that shape their entire stay?
• 1:45
  Yeah. I think that's such a great,
• 1:47
  such a great question. You know, I think hopefully what
• 1:51
  guests notice is, is the things that they don't notice, right?
• 1:54
  Like I, I think the, you know, I, I, I, I've heard it described
• 1:58
  in multiple different conferences and, and podcasts
• 2:01
  and things that, you know, when, when, when a, a guest is opening
• 2:05
  the door for the first time, It's, it's, it's a, it's akin to
• 2:09
  like a child opening a, a gift on, on Christmas morning, right?
• 2:11
  Like it's, it's, it's the same feeling that they're seeking.
• 2:15
  And so you want it to, you know, you want them to notice sort of
• 2:21
  the things that you have shown them in photos, right?
• 2:24
  Like you want them to see the experience that you presented to
• 2:28
  them in the in the listing. And so I think the really what,
• 2:34
  what the challenge is, is making sure that there's nothing out of
• 2:39
  sorts, right, that the expectation is not different
• 2:42
  than what you've provided on the listing.
• 2:44
  And, and so if and, and if that is the case, if there is
• 2:48
  something that's, you know, obviously, you know, the, the
• 2:51
  worst case, if it's, if it really hasn't been turned over
• 2:54
  and nobody's been in the in, in the place and since the last
• 2:57
  guest, you know, those things are just going to completely
• 3:00
  throw off every other aspect that you can have within, within
• 3:04
  a stay, right? I think, you know, as part of a
• 3:06
  review system, you know, you have these things like
• 3:08
  cleanliness, which is always like the first one, right?
• 3:11
  Then you have like accuracy, right?
• 3:14
  And I think the accuracy is a big piece of that cleanliness,
• 3:16
  which is that when I open that doors, it look exactly the same.
• 3:19
  And then you have these other things like communication and
• 3:20
  location and, and amenities and like communication location,
• 3:25
  amenities, like all of those things go away and even accuracy
• 3:28
  if the place isn't clean, like you can have the best amenities
• 3:31
  in the world in the best location.
• 3:33
  And if they walk into a place that that is, you know, has a
• 3:36
  maintenance issue or, or, or cleanliness issue, every other
• 3:40
  aspect of a review is, is, is impacted by that first
• 3:45
  appearance, right? The first opening of that door.
• 3:47
  And so you want to make sure and you and train your staff on
• 3:49
  making sure that that's what that looks like, right?
• 3:52
  Like it, you know, show them the, the, the just, you know,
• 3:55
  the, the show them the, the descriptions and show them the
• 3:59
  listings and make sure that that's the, the, the guidelines
• 4:02
  of what it needs to look like. So yeah, I think, you know, all
• 4:05
  of those amazing amenities and all those other things get to
• 4:08
  shine through when you do the baseline of of a of a great
• 4:12
  turnover. Yeah, very much so.
• 4:14
  I mean, first of all, cleanliness is an absolute non
• 4:18
  negotiable. You mentioned it there in your
• 4:19
  answer. If somebody turns up and the
• 4:21
  place hasn't been cleaned, you're off to a disastrous start
• 4:24
  and it's very hard to come back from that.
• 4:26
  But a couple of things that I want to mention actually.
• 4:29
  I mean, first of all, I'm putting myself in a guest's
• 4:31
  shoes now. If I go and stay at a short term
• 4:34
  rental, if there's kind of an element of a pleasant surprise
• 4:38
  and when you can see that the host has gone above and beyond,
• 4:41
  that really counts for a lot and gets you off to a brilliant
• 4:44
  start. And I think as well, one thing I
• 4:46
  would say is it's really important as a host, as a
• 4:49
  property manager to experience exactly what the guest is
• 4:53
  experiencing. So after a turnover has taken
• 4:57
  place and your cleaners have been go yourself and review it
• 5:01
  because the amount of times I've been to, you know, one of my
• 5:04
  properties, I've got a couple of properties as I've mentioned a
• 5:06
  few times and I'll go in after I clean nothing.
• 5:09
  Oh, that little bit there needs sorting out.
• 5:11
  Yeah, I'm very kind of critical. I mean, how important is it, do
• 5:14
  you think, for house and property managers to inspect
• 5:17
  after the cleaners? Yeah, Yeah, I think it's, I
• 5:21
  think it's very critical and I've seen, I've seen everything,
• 5:24
  you know, from every single clean we send in an inspector,
• 5:28
  there's operations that do that. And again, you know, utilizing
• 5:31
  tools like Turno and others to, to, to create those inspection
• 5:35
  projects and and things. We even have folks who go out
• 5:38
  into the marketplace and find really great cleaners and they,
• 5:41
  you know, they may not like the, they may, may not, you know,
• 5:44
  want to pay the full like price of an entire clean because they
• 5:48
  have their, their existing cleaner, but they're willing to
• 5:50
  say, Hey, you're a super cleaner.
• 5:52
  You have this third party knowledge of other properties.
• 5:55
  I'll have you come in and do a, you know, $30 inspection for for
• 5:58
  $20.00, right? Or for 20 minutes, right.
• 6:00
  And so, you know, I think that we see, we see that, which is
• 6:04
  like every single time going down and doing the inspections
• 6:08
  all the way down to, you know, host who are, who are property
• 6:11
  managers and owners, right, who maybe don't live nearby or, or
• 6:15
  aren't there there to saying, you know, my recommendation,
• 6:19
  I've heard recommendations of others and, and, and working
• 6:22
  with these folks is just make sure you at least go, you know,
• 6:24
  once a month or once every other month and just stay in the
• 6:27
  property it go. It's great for turnovers, but
• 6:30
  it's also great for things like maintenance and great for things
• 6:33
  like, you know, what is that experience that that these
• 6:36
  customers are these guests are, are experiencing, right?
• 6:39
  Like is there, is there something else I should be
• 6:41
  adding in the description around maybe some noise or some area
• 6:45
  that, you know, we, you know, is there something that I need to
• 6:47
  work on in terms of maintenance issues?
• 6:50
  So I think that going and staying in a property, even just
• 6:53
  overnight is also just a really good, you know, inspections can
• 6:57
  catch a lot. Staying 24 hours in a place is
• 7:01
  going to catch a lot more. It's just the way that that
• 7:03
  works, right? And so, yeah, invest in, invest
• 7:06
  in staying at your property and being in your property and being
• 7:08
  present, whether that's using third parties or or better yet,
• 7:11
  yourself. Yeah, definitely.
• 7:13
  It's it's usually going to end up with you buying something for
• 7:16
  the kitchen, maybe buying some more bedding, maybe buying a few
• 7:19
  new towels or maybe getting the maintenance guy to come and you
• 7:23
  know, give, give a certain patch of lick of paint, something like
• 7:26
  that. Exactly.
• 7:27
  What are the most common cleaning mistakes that you see
• 7:32
  that end up costing those five star reviews?
• 7:36
  Yeah. You know, I, I think the, I
• 7:39
  think the biggest thing are those details, right?
• 7:41
  It's the consistency and details, you know, I, I think
• 7:45
  the, the, the areas that, that I can think of a lot of are are,
• 7:49
  you know, making sure that, you know, if there was maybe if, if
• 7:52
  you're in, if you're a lot of pets, right?
• 7:54
  Making sure that you know, that if there was a pet there
• 7:56
  previously And, and the amount of work that's going to need to,
• 8:00
  you know, happen to ensure that that place is, is turned over
• 8:03
  properly, right? Then the amount of detail, you
• 8:05
  know, making sure you're checking, you know, I think
• 8:07
  there's always the common ones, right?
• 8:09
  Check under the beds, checking the drawers, right?
• 8:12
  Obviously you're pulling sheets off and things.
• 8:14
  So hopefully that's going to be all, all, all fine and washing
• 8:17
  towels, but check in the closets, right?
• 8:19
  Like those are things that you don't really think a whole lot
• 8:22
  of cuz they're not visible. And you know, your vacuum can't
• 8:25
  always go underneath there. But making sure you're checking
• 8:27
  to see that there was nothing left behind by previous guests
• 8:30
  #1 to make sure that they get what they need their property
• 8:32
  back. But but also, you know, these
• 8:35
  are, these are properties, right?
• 8:36
  So anything can happen within them.
• 8:38
  And, you know, whether it's, you know, potentially unsafe things,
• 8:43
  you know, left behind by previous guests, more
• 8:46
  inappropriate things left behind, if you just guess that,
• 8:48
  you know, and, and you just want to make sure that you know,
• 8:50
  you're covering those details so you don't run into an issue with
• 8:53
  a, a guest in the future. And by the way, this is like I,
• 8:55
  I've worked in hotels for a very long time.
• 8:57
  These same issues occur in hotels, which are much, you
• 9:00
  know, you know, you have an entire housekeeping staff and
• 9:02
  they still need to look under every bed and look under every
• 9:05
  drawer. Like these are the exact
• 9:06
  checklist items that you need to be adding to your checklist to
• 9:09
  make sure that every single cleaner that comes into your
• 9:12
  property is doing that right. And then I think you're the
• 9:14
  other side of it is, is exactly the what you kind of alluded to
• 9:18
  in your previous response as well, which is, you know, the
• 9:20
  inventory side of things, right? Like do they have things like,
• 9:23
  you know, the, the toilet paper are, you know, did, did all of a
• 9:28
  sudden the, you know, six of the forks go missing and somehow
• 9:33
  and, and they're, they're gone, right?
• 9:35
  Or the knives are, are, are different or, you know, we, we
• 9:38
  lost a pot in a pan and now we don't have any of that.
• 9:40
  Like you have to take these, these levels of inventory,
• 9:44
  right? Where did the remote go?
• 9:46
  You know, those are those are things that are the details that
• 9:49
  that truly can cost a five star review.
• 9:50
  Because then what happens is is that they they then need to
• 9:53
  reach out to you, right? And now you have to engage with
• 9:57
  that customer or try to figure out where these things are, try
• 9:59
  to bring in additional aspects and that could have been
• 10:02
  prevented from the from the get go, right?
• 10:04
  Like I'm AI work in in customer success and customer experience
• 10:08
  on the tech side of things. And we can create the best
• 10:12
  customer support in the world, but it doesn't pair into
• 10:16
  comparison of somebody not writing in right?
• 10:19
  That's the whole goal is like, can we create product
• 10:22
  experiences that make it so that people don't actually need
• 10:26
  customer support, right. And so those are the details
• 10:29
  that I think you're talking about that that create five star
• 10:32
  reviews is like, if you don't have to talk to a host, like
• 10:36
  that's probably the best thing that can happen.
• 10:38
  So. No news is good news, I think.
• 10:43
  I think for me, it's kind of it's the difference between
• 10:46
  tidy, which is like it's been straightened up.
• 10:49
  It looks fine. It looks like somebody's been in
• 10:51
  it's between, between tidy and clean.
• 10:54
  You know, for me, like there's there is a difference.
• 10:56
  I mean, we've got a place that we stay at which which belongs
• 11:00
  to my grandmother actually. And a lot of us go up and it
• 11:03
  doesn't always get deep cleaned between visits because, you
• 11:07
  know, it's only family using the place.
• 11:09
  But we were just there a few days ago and, and it's fine and
• 11:12
  it's pleasant. But you know, you knew that all
• 11:15
  the bed sheets have not been, you know, changed over.
• 11:19
  And you know, it has, you know, the floors haven't had a deep
• 11:21
  clean. And obviously that's not going
• 11:23
  to be acceptable, acceptable for your average short term rental
• 11:26
  property. So like in, in that turnover, in
• 11:29
  during that time, what do you have to get right?
• 11:31
  What are the critical things you've got to get right to make
• 11:33
  sure that it's a great turnover? Yeah.
• 11:36
  I mean, I think that, you know, we have we at least eternal, we
• 11:40
  have tons of checklists from the best property managers in the
• 11:43
  world who have provided those to us so that you can have great
• 11:46
  baselines of those things. And they're going to have those
• 11:49
  basic areas right around the expectations in in in the
• 11:53
  kitchen. If you have those things, the
• 11:54
  expectations in the bedrooms, like what you know, did the you
• 11:57
  know, is the bedding laundered right and and fresh?
• 12:02
  Are the towels laundered and fresh?
• 12:04
  It's the place vacuumed right? Like those are the those just
• 12:06
  those core things that I think need to be happening.
• 12:09
  But I think I think the where, where you get into the
• 12:13
  interesting side is, is it when it starts getting from
• 12:18
  cleanliness and tidiness? Like you can clean a ton, but it
• 12:22
  there's also this aspect of sort of like maintenance pieces as
• 12:25
  well, right? Like is there starting to be
• 12:28
  some formation of mold in a shower, right?
• 12:31
  Or is there some staining on a carpet or, you know, does the
• 12:36
  wall need touch up like that may go beyond a typical clean.
• 12:40
  And so you need to make sure that not only is your cleaning
• 12:43
  staff doing all those baseline checklist item things like, you
• 12:47
  know, bedding and, and, and vacuuming and, and all those
• 12:50
  things. And, and honestly, most
• 12:52
  reputable cleaners are going to be very good at those aspects.
• 12:55
  I think where it takes it to the next level is making sure that
• 12:57
  they're reporting those problems, you know, of, of those
• 13:01
  other aspects that maybe you're outside of the realm of a
• 13:03
  typical cleaner, right? And, and, and that you are able
• 13:07
  to quickly resolve those, right? Where do you go to find people
• 13:11
  to go into your property to do those things really quickly on,
• 13:14
  on, on last minute notices? And because those are the things
• 13:17
  that like while they while in as a short term rental property
• 13:21
  manager, property owner, we know the difference between
• 13:25
  maintenance and cleaning, right? Like we know those differences.
• 13:29
  We have every system and technology in the world that's
• 13:32
  telling us what's clean and what's maintenance things and,
• 13:34
  and all these different items. Guests don't know, right?
• 13:37
  A a, a scratch on the wall where it needs painting is going to
• 13:42
  Ding your cleanliness the same way that you know, a, a, a dirty
• 13:47
  towel will, right. Like it's, it's just they don't
• 13:49
  understand. They're not getting into the
• 13:51
  nitty gritty of like, whose responsibility is that at the
• 13:53
  property? And they may be two different
• 13:55
  people. And it's just it's not perfect.
• 13:58
  It's not what I expected. It's not cling.
• 14:02
  Yeah, yeah, very much so. I mean, how do you think those
• 14:05
  missed details during a turnover?
• 14:08
  If your cleaners perhaps notice something but maybe don't flag
• 14:11
  it, how does that impact not just one stay really, but a
• 14:15
  property's long term performance?
• 14:17
  Yeah. I mean, a lot of these, a lot of
• 14:19
  these issues tend to be compounding, right.
• 14:22
  It's it's, you know. We'll.
• 14:24
  We'll use maybe like an appliance as an example, right?
• 14:28
  There's a finicky appliance or an appliance is sort of having
• 14:31
  some issues, whether it's ATV or it's a another appliance like,
• 14:35
  you know, making sure that your cleaners are testing those
• 14:37
  things. And if and if it starts being a
• 14:39
  little bit finicky, then the guest comes in and then that
• 14:41
  problem is like, OK, now that guest is experiencing that
• 14:44
  problem, but then they maybe figured it out, but no one's
• 14:46
  really talking about it. And then the next guest comes in
• 14:49
  and it's like these things are, you know, they're machines.
• 14:52
  They're, they're, or they're, you know, on the, on the, like
• 14:55
  in the shower side and the bathroom sides, like it's mold.
• 14:57
  Like it's, these things are like living growth things like the,
• 15:01
  the issue compounds. It gets worse over time.
• 15:04
  And so if you're not early on on it and you're not fixing those
• 15:07
  things very quickly, they tend to just result in like 1 guest
• 15:10
  coming in. And now ATV is completely out
• 15:13
  and now you're in a completely different place where you're
• 15:16
  trying to play catch up and that person, you know, maybe they're
• 15:18
  having a corporate meeting and like they needed that TV to like
• 15:21
  do business things or, you know, maybe they had, you know, they
• 15:24
  they have kids and they need that, that TV for, you know,
• 15:27
  entertainment purposes. And and that was a big piece of
• 15:29
  what they're looking for. It's suddenly degrading your
• 15:31
  five star reviews, but it could have been fixed long ago, right?
• 15:35
  If your attention to detail on just, you know, flip it on, flip
• 15:39
  it off and it's like, hey, you know what, this one, the TV
• 15:41
  seems a little funky, right? You get that report twice.
• 15:44
  All right, maybe it's time to, you know, spend the $200 or $300
• 15:48
  on a brand new TV because I don't want to deal with this in
• 15:52
  the future, right? I don't want to deal with a
• 15:53
  guest coming in and and not having the the ability to, you
• 15:58
  know, hit the accuracy of the listing the way that I explained
• 16:01
  it. And so I think those things just
• 16:03
  they get worse over time. They don't magically get better.
• 16:07
  And so if you're cleaning team is is not, or your inspection
• 16:11
  teams or yourself, like if you're not caring about those
• 16:14
  details, just know, like, you know, it may just look like a
• 16:17
  little thing to begin with. And then it just compounds.
• 16:19
  It gets worse. The next guest damages the thing
• 16:22
  worse. And then, you know, at some
• 16:25
  point it's just completely gone. And now you're playing scramble
• 16:28
  mode to try to figure out how to, you know, how to get a
• 16:30
  microwave into a, into a place, you know, within the next two
• 16:33
  hours. And it's just really difficult.
• 16:36
  Yeah. Very much so, yeah.
• 16:38
  It doesn't need to be that way. I think basically if you learn
• 16:40
  about an issue, get it fixed because it will, it will show up
• 16:45
  in a review. Trust us.
• 16:47
  We've we've all been there and just just kind of focusing a bit
• 16:51
  more on guest expectations then around cleanliness and every
• 16:56
  other really part of the stay in a short term rental.
• 16:58
  How do you think guest expectations have changed over
• 17:01
  the last few years and and what does that mean for hosts today,
• 17:04
  you know, particularly new hosts who are entering the market?
• 17:07
  Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, when you, when you think about
• 17:12
  short term rentals and things coming out, I think, you know,
• 17:15
  we the short term rental industry was like, oh, I'm
• 17:18
  staying at someone's house. There's this level of
• 17:21
  imperfection that kind of comes along with that in the early
• 17:24
  days of of Airbnb, right? I'm just and, and, you know, I,
• 17:28
  I think that was part of the charm of it.
• 17:30
  I think in the beginning, right? And this industry has has, you
• 17:35
  know, for, for incredible reasons and also potentially
• 17:38
  like, you know, adding more difficulty down the line, like
• 17:41
  has grown so exponentially and continues to grow exponentially
• 17:45
  that now it's not about whether or not I'm, you know, kind of in
• 17:49
  this charming, oh, I'm going to stay in somebody's bedroom sort
• 17:51
  of experience or somebody's vacation home.
• 17:54
  It is I am spending thousands of dollars, I am choosing to use a
• 18:00
  short term rental as an industry against a hotel as an industry,
• 18:05
  right. And so I have levels of
• 18:07
  expectations across things like hotels and I'm gauging that
• 18:10
  across my expectations of of the short term rental industry.
• 18:14
  And so that has in and of itself, you know, raised it just
• 18:17
  the the competitive nature between the two industries that
• 18:20
  are at at each other. And then I think you throw in
• 18:23
  the social media aspects and you know, you know, I think I think
• 18:28
  it's, it's, it's one of my favorite things.
• 18:30
  But also I think it's also one of the more challenging things
• 18:33
  as you go on to like LinkedIn and Facebook and you see these
• 18:35
  pictures of these incredible rebuttals of these short term
• 18:38
  rentals that are, you know, and they have pickleball courts and,
• 18:41
  and foosball tables and all these things.
• 18:42
  And then suddenly, you know, the guest is like seeing that you
• 18:46
  have a foosball table as well. And they're like, Oh my gosh,
• 18:48
  I'm expecting this incredibly brand new remodeled like resort
• 18:53
  that I saw on somebody else's Facebook that they stayed in a
• 18:57
  different place. And now I'm expecting the same
• 18:58
  thing because you have similar amenities, right?
• 19:03
  And so understanding that you're not only being gauged across,
• 19:08
  you know, some of the cleanliness and the expectations
• 19:10
  that people have and in the in the hotel industry from a
• 19:12
  service aspect, but also the bars being raised within the
• 19:17
  short term rentals as well. There's a lot of investment
• 19:19
  going into these sort of resort style short term rental
• 19:24
  properties and that's what people are expecting.
• 19:26
  They see these beautiful, gorgeous photos and even those
• 19:28
  properties at some point you realize, like those are staged
• 19:31
  photos that happened probably within, you know, 3 hours of it
• 19:35
  being in the most newest state ever.
• 19:38
  And and your property that you know, has a pool table that's
• 19:42
  been there since the 90s is be engaged the same way.
• 19:46
  And so you need to, you need to understand that that's the
• 19:48
  expectation, right? And and make sure that you're
• 19:51
  under, you know, you're setting those expectations accordingly
• 19:52
  with guests within your listings and things, but know that that's
• 19:57
  what you're up against sometimes, right?
• 19:58
  Is, is that is that experience of like.
• 20:02
  I've seen my friends, I've seen the social media aspects, I've
• 20:06
  seen that these things on Tik Toks, and that's the experience
• 20:09
  that I'm hoping for because I'm investing more in that vacation
• 20:13
  than maybe I would have at a hotel or something along those
• 20:15
  lines. Yeah, very much so.
• 20:17
  I think, you know, years ago there was this kind of like a
• 20:21
  lot of forgiveness I think for holiday Lexus we call them here
• 20:24
  in the UK because everything was a bit old, all the cutlery, all
• 20:28
  the furniture, all the bedding. It was like going back twenty,
• 20:31
  30-40 years. Whereas now like you said, you
• 20:35
  really explained it well, you are competing against hotels.
• 20:37
  You are competing against other very modern short term rentals
• 20:41
  who kind of act like hotels. So yeah, there's there's a lot
• 20:44
  more competition out there and expectations have gone up
• 20:47
  massively over the last few years.
• 20:51
  How should hosts be thinking differently about their
• 20:54
  relationship with cleaners if they want to scale successfully?
• 21:00
  This is, this is such an interesting, such an interesting
• 21:03
  question, right? I think, I think we've, we've,
• 21:09
  we've gotten to this place in the industry where the scale is
• 21:12
  so large that, you know, my housekeeper that does this and
• 21:19
  has always done this starts to become a bit of a, a risk more
• 21:23
  than a reward at times, right. And so, you know, in operations,
• 21:30
  I've, I've done operations in hotels and, and, and in tech
• 21:32
  companies from, for, for decades.
• 21:34
  And you know, one of the things with, with operations is how do
• 21:38
  you find the risks and mitigate them as, as best you can?
• 21:41
  It's never going to get to 0 and you'll never be 100%.
• 21:45
  But how do you identify the areas of risk within your
• 21:48
  operations and proactively look to ways to address them?
• 21:53
  Right. And so, you know, I, I, I, I'll
• 21:57
  never forget going to one of my first conferences in, in at
• 22:01
  Eterno when I was having conversations around with, with,
• 22:03
  with, with, with, with customers.
• 22:05
  And, you know, I said, you know, that, you know, Eternos is such
• 22:08
  a, a great platform in terms of, you know, being able to find,
• 22:12
  you know, the, the, you know, in the 2% chance that something,
• 22:15
  you know, your, your, your cleaner doesn't, you know, you
• 22:17
  know, isn't able to make it or, and you know, something bad
• 22:21
  happens where they, you know, they maybe need to move away or
• 22:24
  something, you know, drastic happens in that sense, you know,
• 22:26
  that 2% area. Like, you know, Terno's great
• 22:29
  for that. And you know, every single
• 22:31
  conversation I had was like, they just would laugh at 2%,
• 22:34
  like 2%. Like, like, it's, you know,
• 22:38
  that's not like 2 out of every hundred.
• 22:39
  It's like one out of every 5, right?
• 22:41
  It's like 20%, right, where there's something that is a
• 22:45
  little amiss, whether it's a quality or, or.
• 22:48
  And so I think what has truly changed is the openness of, of
• 22:55
  owners and property managers to bring in more of a backup,
• 23:00
  right? And say, look, we, we, we love
• 23:02
  this clean. There's a ton of trust here.
• 23:04
  And, and that's important. You need to trust these people.
• 23:07
  And there is a bunch of value in the knowledge of the property
• 23:11
  and coming into these properties and knowing, you know, the, the
• 23:13
  nuances within them, but there's also a lot of risk to having one
• 23:19
  point of failure. And so how do you make sure that
• 23:23
  you have a backup system, whether it's leveraging
• 23:26
  marketplaces like Turno or just making sure that you are going
• 23:29
  out and finding additional cleaners that you can bring in
• 23:32
  to, to, to sort of, you know, share the load a little bit.
• 23:36
  And that's a, that's a totally normal thing.
• 23:38
  It's totally acceptable. It, it's, it's a, it's a, it
• 23:41
  becomes a very emotional decision for a lot of, you know,
• 23:45
  people who have, have used, you know, their own cleaners who are
• 23:48
  very attached to them and then rightfully so.
• 23:50
  And so I, I get that. But I think when you think about
• 23:53
  scaling your operation, it's about mitigating those risks.
• 23:57
  And, you know, I think when you take a step back and you sort of
• 24:01
  remove the emotion out of the conversation when it comes to
• 24:04
  that relationship with your cleaner, and you say, you know,
• 24:07
  are they 100% of the time doing 100% of the quality to make sure
• 24:12
  that I'm getting as high of, of ratings as I need?
• 24:14
  And if the answer to that is, is like, no, you know what they're,
• 24:18
  they're doing it probably 90% or 95%, Well then great.
• 24:21
  I need to make sure that I'm bolstering that bench just in
• 24:26
  case that does happen so that I can be sure that I don't end up
• 24:30
  cleaning the property. And, and if I end up cleaning
• 24:32
  the property, I guarantee it's not going to be near to the
• 24:35
  level of my trusted cleaner, let alone another cleaner that does
• 24:39
  this for a living. We're incredibly good at it.
• 24:42
  So, yeah, I think that that's the that's the key, right?
• 24:45
  And you want to talk about the, the hosts and the properties
• 24:49
  that have these 4.9 reviews and higher.
• 24:52
  Like that's the difference, right?
• 24:54
  It's the, it's not the, it's not the 80% that they do really,
• 24:58
  really well. It's that managing by exception,
• 25:00
  it's that mitigation of risk so that the consistency is there
• 25:03
  100% of the time to get to that level, right?
• 25:06
  And I mean, there's tons of studies out there.
• 25:09
  I mean, if you, if you're at a 4.9, like you can put you're,
• 25:12
  you're potentially making, you know, you're potentially like 20
• 25:16
  or 30% fuller and 20 or 30% charging 20 or 30% more than
• 25:21
  people who have like a 4.6 or 4.7, which doesn't seem like
• 25:24
  that much difference. But from a revenue perspective
• 25:28
  for your property, it's a huge difference, right?
• 25:32
  And there's, there's studies done by Air DNA.
• 25:35
  It feels like every other week on LinkedIn, I'm seeing another
• 25:38
  study of like the, the revenue difference between 4.9 and 4.8
• 25:43
  and 4.7 and 4.5. And like a lot of it is
• 25:48
  obviously the talent that you're bringing in, the consistency to
• 25:50
  checklist the systems, but a lot of it is also just sort of
• 25:53
  understanding that operation and and managing by exception and
• 25:56
  making sure that you are proactively able to handle the
• 25:59
  things that are not planned. Absolutely, Yeah.
• 26:04
  I mean, you might have answered this question.
• 26:06
  We we might be going back to the kind of like backup side of
• 26:10
  things. But if you could change one
• 26:12
  thing about how hosts approach cleaning and turnovers today,
• 26:16
  what would it be and why? Yeah, I, I think it's, yeah, I,
• 26:21
  I, I think it is a lot of a lot about, you know, opening
• 26:25
  yourself up to, to different, different, you know, team
• 26:29
  members, right? And, and, and, and doing that.
• 26:33
  I, I, I, I'd say the other, the other aspect that I think is, is
• 26:36
  very important is our systems, right?
• 26:40
  I, I think there's just too many hosts that still to this day
• 26:44
  find, find cleaners whatever way you want to and, and manage
• 26:48
  through like text messages or WhatsApp, right?
• 26:52
  And, and there's a lot of risk that's involved there.
• 26:57
  Number one, just from like a, an, an employee employer
• 27:00
  relationship type of thing. Like there's a lot of risk that
• 27:04
  can happen if you don't have the right sort of platforms in
• 27:08
  place, like tracking these projects and things like
• 27:11
  there's, there's, there's those aspects, there's, there's risk
• 27:14
  on payment and, and quality that you can't really get because
• 27:18
  there's not sort of a system in the middle.
• 27:21
  And then lastly, there's, there's a lot of risk in if a
• 27:25
  guest were to damage something or, or, or, or claim something
• 27:29
  was damaged, right? You know, there's these, these
• 27:33
  operation systems are incredibly inexpensive, right?
• 27:36
  Like less than $10 a month for almost all of them, if not free.
• 27:40
  There's just no reason not to have a system of record to
• 27:45
  ensure that you know, you're covered as a, as a property
• 27:50
  manager and also on the cleaner side that you're covered as a
• 27:52
  cleaner to say, hey, I did this work.
• 27:54
  Here's the documentation of this, right.
• 27:57
  And then obviously to, to hold a guest accountable.
• 27:59
  Do you have time stamped photos of this is what it looked like
• 28:04
  after the last guest came. This is what it looked like
• 28:06
  after the last guest checked out.
• 28:07
  And this guest in the middle is, is complaining.
• 28:10
  I have the photos. I can go back to Airbnb.
• 28:12
  We, we had a, a, an example of a host here in Wisconsin who want
• 28:16
  a $1500 dispute just because of the time stamped photos that are
• 28:20
  provided inside of Turno, right. And again, I think that the, I'm
• 28:23
  not saying you have to use Turno, but like what I am saying
• 28:25
  is there are incredibly inexpensive purpose built
• 28:29
  software that is used for this. And I get it.
• 28:33
  Sometimes people are tech adverse, but you, you really
• 28:38
  like these are, it's so simple and the risk that you're taking
• 28:42
  on is so high when you don't have this level of systematizing
• 28:47
  between the two priorities. And and it's just like we're at
• 28:50
  the day. If, if I could change anything
• 28:52
  to anybody's approach. If you're not using some sort of
• 28:54
  system of record for your turnovers, it's it's, it's, it's
• 28:58
  kind of lunacy today. It, it, you really just, it's so
• 29:01
  simple. It's so inexpensive, people will
• 29:05
  train you on it like we'll train cleaners on it like it.
• 29:08
  We will do what you need to to make sure you're, you're covered
• 29:11
  because the risk gets very high very quickly between all of the
• 29:15
  parties involved and, you know, set submitting, submitting
• 29:19
  photos via via WhatsApp. It doesn't work real well when
• 29:23
  you're dealing with, you know, Airbnb or VRB, all these giant
• 29:26
  corporations who have very, you know, strict processes and, and
• 29:29
  are very guest centric. So.
• 29:32
  Yeah, the tech is there. Use it people.
• 29:37
  We hear a lot in the industry about direct bookings.
• 29:41
  We hear a lot about getting your pricing right, sorting your
• 29:44
  marketing out and and this seems to be where a lot of house and
• 29:48
  owners are. But when it comes to damaging a
• 29:53
  short term rental business, how does that all compare to not
• 29:57
  getting cleaning right? Yeah, I mean, we talked about
• 30:00
  it, right? You know, there's, there's,
• 30:03
  there's a ton of studies out there, but I mean, the
• 30:04
  percentages are staggering even 4.9 to 4.8, right?
• 30:09
  It's like 10% more Rev par, right?
• 30:11
  You know, revenue per, you know, available room night, right.
• 30:14
  If you're not sure exactly what that means, it's essentially
• 30:17
  what that means is people are getting booked more and they're
• 30:19
  charging more. So and then if they if you get
• 30:23
  down to like a 4.5 on your ratings, which seems insanely
• 30:26
  high to me, right? That means that like half of
• 30:28
  your reviews are fours, half of your reviews are fives.
• 30:30
  That's a 4.5. The difference between that and
• 30:34
  a 4.9 is like 50% more bookings, 50% more that you can charge.
• 30:41
  And so you know, and that, and nowadays you know it, it's you
• 30:44
  know, 50% plus of of customers that are that that we've seen in
• 30:49
  in surveys are saying that the different that the
• 30:52
  differentiation factor between where they choose to stay is a
• 30:55
  review. And so, you know, as as good as
• 30:58
  your, you know, AI can be in, in building out, you know,
• 31:03
  operation systems as good as your, your stuff could be in
• 31:06
  terms of like maximizing, you know, demand and, and all of
• 31:09
  those aspects which are very important and, and are not, I'm
• 31:12
  not trying to diminish that by any stretch.
• 31:14
  They're incredibly important, but they pale in comparison to
• 31:18
  like a 4.5 versus a 4.9 review. I mean, it's just, it's just,
• 31:22
  you know, if you just were to do that, you could, you could
• 31:26
  outstrip a lot of the value that like the these other systems are
• 31:30
  giving you, right? Because they're looking to bump
• 31:32
  you maybe 10% annually, right? Like, let's see if we can get
• 31:34
  you 10%. If you go to a 4.9 to a 4.5, all
• 31:39
  that 10%'s going to do is just maybe eat away at the, the 50%
• 31:44
  you just lost because of that. And so, you know, and again, I
• 31:47
  want to be very clear, half fives, half fours, that seems
• 31:51
  incredibly good, right? That's not a good score in terms
• 31:56
  of what we're seeing in the, in the industry in terms of
• 31:58
  research. And so, you know, I, you know,
• 32:01
  can call it damaging, but, but I think the, the, the positive
• 32:04
  spin on this is there are a lot of really great properties out
• 32:08
  there that are 4.9 and the way that they do this is exactly
• 32:11
  what we've talked about, right? Managing their operations
• 32:13
  through exceptions. There's just no corner that they
• 32:16
  don't try to see around proactively.
• 32:18
  Of course there's going to be situations, but they're
• 32:20
  proactively doing as much as they possibly can.
• 32:23
  They have multiple people on their teams.
• 32:25
  They're using systems. So for consistency to make sure
• 32:28
  they're doing inspections, they're tracking, they're
• 32:33
  tracking their guests coming in and out, they're tracking their
• 32:35
  maintenance issues, right? They're taking action on those
• 32:38
  issues. So it really does kind of come
• 32:40
  full circle into this idea of like, you know, cleanliness
• 32:45
  leads to great reviews, great reviews leads to more revenue.
• 32:48
  That's the. That's the bottom line.
• 32:50
  I think if you perfect cleanliness and maintenance, you
• 32:54
  will never drop below probably 4.98 or something like that.
• 32:59
  That is the the number one driver of bud reviews.
• 33:02
  Chris, it's been a real pleasure.
• 33:04
  Thank you for joining us on the latest Turnover Tactics.
• 33:07
  Thank you, James. That's a wrap for this episode
• 33:09
  of Turnover Tactics. Huge thanks to Chris for sharing
• 33:12
  his wisdom on today's show. Don't forget, if you're ready to
• 33:15
  stop the chaos and start treating your operations like a
• 33:18
  profit centre, get in touch with Turnover, the all in one
• 33:21
  cleaning and turnover management platform built specifically for
• 33:25
  short term rental hosts. With their global cleaner
• 33:28
  marketplace, automated scheduling and real time
• 33:31
  updates, you'll never stress about turnovers again.
• 33:34
  Whether you manage one property or 100, Turnover helps you stay
• 33:38
  guest ready effortlessly. Visit turno.com for further
• 33:42
  details. Scan the QR code if you're
• 33:44
  watching on YouTube, or click the link in the show notes to
• 33:47
  get started. It's time to let Turno take over
• 33:50
  and remember. For more vacation rental
• 33:52
  education, head to Houseplanet dot Club, where you can sign up
• 33:56
  for our newsletter, listen to our podcasts, and download a
• 33:59
  suite of ebooks for hosts and property managers.
• 34:02
  Thanks for tuning in to Turnover Tactics.
• 34:04
  Until next time, happy hosting.