Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / How Airbnb Hosts Can Earn More Revenue

Transcript

How Airbnb Hosts Can Earn More Revenue · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to Host Planet Bite Size, the podcast brought
• 0:03
  to you by Host Planet and Host Philly.
• 0:05
  My name's James Farley, the founder of Host Planet, and our
• 0:08
  goal is to share everything you need to know about buying and
• 0:11
  managing short term rentals. Today's guest is Shivan Vinod
• 0:15
  Kira from Linkbase. He's got 5 tips on how to boost
• 0:18
  profits without buying more properties.
• 0:21
  I really love tip #1 and if you're not doing this, you
• 0:25
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• 0:28
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• 1:01
  today. Shiven, welcome to host Planet
• 1:09
  Bite Size. Thanks so much for joining us.
• 1:12
  You've got 5 tips to share on how to boost profits without
• 1:15
  buying more properties, so take it away with tip #1.
• 1:19
  Awesome. Thank you so much, James for
• 1:21
  having me. And I just want to give a little
• 1:23
  disclaimer here as well. The five tips, the five juicy
• 1:26
  tips, if I may say, are coming from the perspective of that
• 1:30
  you've already gotten pricing software like Price Labs, and
• 1:35
  you're already doing everything you can on that side to make
• 1:37
  sure that your pricing is nice and aligned with the market
• 1:40
  pricing. And you already have very good
• 1:43
  photos for your Airbnb, because that's very, very important.
• 1:48
  If you've already done those two things, here's tip #1 how you
• 1:53
  can actually increase profitability without going out
• 1:56
  of your way to acquire a new unit.
• 1:58
  Well, the first step is to actually capture guest data.
• 2:02
  This is extremely important because every time a guest comes
• 2:07
  and books through books through a booking platform on any of
• 2:12
  your properties, you're actually paying a big channel fee.
• 2:15
  And so if you're able to build that relationship with with your
• 2:20
  guest and you're actually able to collect their information so
• 2:23
  that you can market to them later on and make them book
• 2:26
  directly with you, that's going to save you a lot of money.
• 2:29
  Not just that you're not competing with that demand
• 2:31
  supply on those booking platforms, you're going to get
• 2:33
  your guests anywhere from those booking platforms.
• 2:35
  And this is an additional booking.
• 2:38
  That's the number one driver for increasing profitability.
• 2:42
  And there are two ways you can collect information in the 1st
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  place. First is you can collect that
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  through a custom form. Ask a few questions from your
• 2:49
  guests. Guests are happy to fill that
• 2:51
  out. Ask for the e-mail address, ask
• 2:52
  for the name, ask for the reason for travel, important things
• 2:55
  like that. And then if you are able to have
• 2:58
  a splash page Wi-Fi so that you're collecting e-mail
• 3:02
  information from not just the Booker, but everybody else has
• 3:06
  booked your property as well. Yeah, fantastic tip.
• 3:09
  And once you've got all these e-mail addresses, what do you do
• 3:12
  with them? Well, the best thing you can do
• 3:15
  is you can pop them up in a little marketing campaign, you
• 3:18
  know, have emails between 4:00 to 7:00.
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  Do it in a way where you're sending those emails out to that
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  guest over a period of eight months to 12 months, over a
• 3:29
  period of that year, they occasionally get those emails
• 3:32
  from you. You're building trust, you're
• 3:34
  building loyalty. You're letting them know you
• 3:36
  have other properties to offer and you keep bringing them back.
• 3:39
  So if you keep them engaged, there's a highly, there's a
• 3:42
  highly likelihood that they will, you know, use your use you
• 3:47
  to book with you rather than go all the way up and find another
• 3:51
  property on another booking channel if they're coming to the
• 3:53
  same place. Yeah, it's a great tip.
• 3:55
  Yeah. And another cool way that I saw
• 3:58
  of gathering e-mail addresses at one property was they had AQR
• 4:02
  code on the fridge and just said, you know, fill in the form
• 4:06
  and you know, we'll pick a competition winner each month or
• 4:08
  something like that. So if you're trying to gather
• 4:10
  those e-mail addresses, that's, that's quite a cool way to do
• 4:12
  it. And then you can use it all like
• 4:14
  you were saying, there may be MailChimp or Mailer Lite sign
• 4:17
  up. They've got a lot of like great
• 4:18
  free tools that you can use. And you can create those regular
• 4:21
  newsletters and, and keep marketing to your, to your
• 4:24
  guests because your past guests is probably the easiest
• 4:26
  potential direct bookers. Great tip #1 Then Shivan, what's
• 4:31
  tip #2? Tip #2 is everybody who's coming
• 4:35
  into your properties already, well, they have already given
• 4:39
  you their budget for what they're going to spend for their
• 4:42
  trip in terms of accommodation, but there are a lot of other
• 4:45
  things that they're going to be doing at the trip.
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  And So what you could do is you can enhance that accommodation
• 4:50
  slightly and start making extra revenue if you offer upsells.
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  So tip #2 is if you're not doing upsells and you think, well,
• 4:58
  it's going to add a lot of work. Hear me out when I say this, You
• 5:01
  absolutely can offer upsells like early check in and late
• 5:05
  check out. And if you offer just these two
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  upsells and maybe throw in another one like a mid stay
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  clean for longer bookings, you can actually generate close to
• 5:15
  $100 per property per month. Which means that if you have a
• 5:19
  portfolio of about 5 properties, as little as five, you can
• 5:23
  actually generate over $6000 completely, which goes to your
• 5:28
  bottom line and boosts profitability all the way 100%.
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  So if you're not offering upsells as simple as early check
• 5:35
  in, late check out, I can. I'm here to tell you that guests
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  are happy to pay for that extra bit of convenience and they will
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  pay for an early check in for an hour, a couple of hours, and you
• 5:46
  can actually make money from that.
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  And all you need to do really simply is to tell your guests
• 5:51
  that they can do this. Absolutely.
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  Simple as that. So tip #2 then the direct
• 5:58
  upsells. What's tip #3 Shivan?
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  Well, tip #3 is again related to upsells and this is something
• 6:04
  that you can easily do. And I would, I would recommend
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  everybody around the world to do this.
• 6:10
  So as you know, TripAdvisor is a pretty big platform across the
• 6:13
  world. And TripAdvisor actually has a
• 6:15
  platform called Wyatta. So if you're not aware, check
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  out Wyatta. And what it does is that you
• 6:21
  literally put your property location in there and it tells
• 6:25
  you all the local experiences that are available that are
• 6:27
  bookable. All you got to do is you're
• 6:29
  going to throw in a link into the chat, tell your guests, hey,
• 6:33
  they can book these experiences. And guess what?
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  If they book it, everything is handled by Tripadvisors, void of
• 6:39
  platform. But you make a Commission from
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  Tripadvisors. So if you're not doing it,
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  perhaps look at it because as tip #3 this is something you can
• 6:48
  do in three steps. That's why it was tip #3 it's a
• 6:52
  simple, easy process. You sign up, you throw in the
• 6:55
  link, and then you wait for your guests to book from you.
• 6:58
  Yeah, and all you have to do is just provide that link to your
• 7:00
  guests. Again, it's similar to tip #2.
• 7:04
  OK, then we've had three tips. What's the 4th tip, Shivan?
• 7:08
  OK, the 4th 1 is slightly juicier actually.
• 7:11
  It gets better. So there are certain things that
• 7:14
  you may be doing already which you might be incurring some
• 7:18
  costs on, but there are ways you can actually save money by
• 7:24
  automating some of your operations.
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  So the 4th tip is simply on automation.
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  And I'm not talking about some crazy automation here.
• 7:32
  I'm just talking about simple things like this that if you
• 7:34
  have specific types of bookings, like for example, I know a lot
• 7:38
  of hosts that do not ask guests who've booked on Airbnb to
• 7:43
  verify their ID's, but they want guests who've booked on other
• 7:46
  platforms perhaps to go through an ID verification.
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  Just so that they can make sure that, you know, there's, there's
• 7:53
  not going to be any chargebacks later on or there's not going to
• 7:56
  be any issues later on. Given Airbnb has really good
• 7:58
  policy with Echo. Now, a lot of times, because
• 8:03
  it's hard to set this up and sometimes it's a manual process,
• 8:07
  guests aren't able to always just go ahead and verify their
• 8:11
  ID because they get this link, but they may not click on it.
• 8:14
  You know, you may not check it and then disasters do happen.
• 8:18
  So if you just automate your processes and use something
• 8:21
  called a guest experience platform and just make sure that
• 8:23
  it's a completely rules based guest journey where the check in
• 8:27
  instructions only go out if they've done the steps that
• 8:29
  you've set out for specific conditions.
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  In that scenario, you just avoid all the headache, you avoid all
• 8:36
  the extra work, and you also avoid all those chargebacks that
• 8:39
  may still happen if you're trying to do it manually.
• 8:42
  There are other things that you can automate.
• 8:44
  Sometimes you send a whole long paragraph with check in
• 8:48
  instructions on how to check in into a property.
• 8:50
  I know a lot of properties that are that are actually quite
• 8:53
  complex to check in into. And you write all these, you
• 8:57
  write a very beautiful message. But again, when the guest is at
• 9:01
  the door, they're saying, hey, how do I check in?
• 9:02
  And then if you're away, you still gotta take time out of
• 9:07
  your day to respond. Not just that, if you if you're
• 9:09
  actually away and you're not able to respond in time, you may
• 9:12
  lose a star or two and that drops your rating, gets you less
• 9:15
  of booking. So you can avoid all of those
• 9:17
  things by just automating your operations, having step by step,
• 9:20
  picture by picture check and instructions.
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  Again, use a use a simple tool like a guest experience platform
• 9:25
  that connects with your property management software and automate
• 9:28
  all those things. Yeah, automation is fantastic.
• 9:31
  You, you probably won't avoid all those questions though,
• 9:33
  because even with automation, I found that some guests just
• 9:37
  don't really pay attention to links or digital guidebooks and
• 9:40
  they still want to call you and say, hey, I haven't had the
• 9:42
  checking instructions. Well, you have actually.
• 9:44
  You just, you just haven't read your messages.
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  But yeah, automate as much as you can.
• 9:48
  You will save time and ultimately save money.
• 9:51
  All right then, Shivan, final tip, tip #5.
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  Well, tip #5 is very related to tip #4 which is don't try to do
• 9:59
  all of these things manually. You know, save yourself time,
• 10:03
  save your, save yourself money. Do it through something called a
• 10:06
  guest experience platform. So you can search that up
• 10:09
  online. What does that term mean?
• 10:11
  Which companies are providing that?
• 10:12
  Obviously, you know, my background is developing a guest
• 10:15
  experience platform being called link based.
• 10:17
  But use a platform, use a tool that's actually going to save
• 10:20
  you money, that's going to actually, in fact, make you
• 10:22
  money. Automate your operations, make
• 10:24
  sure that you're collecting data.
• 10:26
  Make sure that you know you have everything compiled in one
• 10:29
  single spot so that you can focus on increasing revenue from
• 10:32
  every single property and saving time.
• 10:34
  Because eventually what that does is that not only all your
• 10:38
  properties become more profitable and you're making
• 10:40
  more money off of them, but then you have more time to scale your
• 10:43
  portfolio. And that's exactly when you
• 10:45
  should go out and scale. Makes a lot of sense.
• 10:48
  All right then, so 5 tips we've got.
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  Capture the guest data, focus on those direct upsells, the simple
• 10:56
  one being early check in and late check out.
• 10:58
  Use Viator, automate as much as you can and use a guest
• 11:03
  experience platform. 5 brilliant tips.
• 11:05
  Thank you, Shivan. Tell us more about Link Base and
• 11:08
  where people can find out more information.
• 11:11
  Well, I'll tell you this simply. If you're a host or a property
• 11:15
  manager listening to this and you want to do all of those
• 11:18
  things, then you've got to you've got to use Link Base
• 11:21
  because Link Base is a platform that ties all these things
• 11:23
  together. Whether it is automating your
• 11:25
  locks, having step by step checking instructions, creating
• 11:29
  the rules based guest Sony where you can verify your guests at
• 11:32
  certain times, you can get them to sign a damage deposit and all
• 11:38
  those different things. You can get them signed, get
• 11:40
  them to sign different waivers. You can do all of those things
• 11:42
  and create that digital guest Sony, which is fully branded for
• 11:45
  yourself. That's what Linkbase does.
• 11:47
  That's what a guest experience platform does.
• 11:49
  And in order for you, if you're wanting to, you know, look what
• 11:54
  Linkbase does, you can find us at www.linkbase.ca, that's
• 11:59
  LINKBAS e.ca. And then right on the top, you
• 12:04
  can book a meeting and we'd be happy to look at your portfolio
• 12:08
  and see if there's a way we can help you out.
• 12:10
  Fantastic. We'll put a link to link base
• 12:13
  and also your LinkedIn as well in the show notes.
• 12:15
  Shivan, thank you so much for joining us on Host Planet Bite
• 12:19
  Size and for sharing those 5 tips.
• 12:22
  Thank you so much for having me, James.
• 12:23
  I'm a big fan of Host Planet and I really appreciate you having
• 12:27
  me here today. Great to chat to Shiven there
• 12:29
  from Linkbase and hear those five profit boosting tips.
• 12:33
  Capturing your guest data and offering those simple upsells
• 12:36
  will undoubtedly make you more revenue.
• 12:39
  All right, that's it for today's episode.
• 12:41
  Remember, this series is sponsored by Housefully and if
• 12:44
  you'd like to try their PMS or digital guidebook, head to
• 12:47
  housefullie.com. For more free education tips and
• 12:51
  trends from the STR industry, visit Houseplanet dot Club,
• 12:55
  where you can sign up for our newsletter, listen to our
• 12:57
  podcasts and download a suite of ebooks for hosts and property
• 13:01
  managers. That's it for today's episode.
• 13:03
  Until next time, happy hosting.