Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / Most Airbnb Hosts Get Turnover Wrong (Here's the Fix)

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Most Airbnb Hosts Get Turnover Wrong (Here's the Fix) · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

• 0:00
  Welcome to turnover tactics, powered by host planet and
• 0:03
  Turno. If the time between guest stays
• 0:05
  feels like a chaotic scramble, you are not alone.
• 0:08
  Turnover is often the biggest bottleneck in any short term
• 0:12
  rental business is where reviews are won or lost and where
• 0:15
  profits either. Flows or leaks?
• 0:17
  Away During the series, we're giving you the complete
• 0:20
  professional blueprint for mastering this critical phase of
• 0:23
  operations. We'll show you how to automate
• 0:26
  your scheduling, guarantee quality control, and build a
• 0:29
  reliable team so you can scale your business without the
• 0:32
  stress. In today's episode, Taylor
• 0:34
  Smith, Turno Senior Product Manager, will be taking us
• 0:37
  beyond the clean. And sharing.
• 0:39
  How smart hosts are building full service property
• 0:42
  operations. Turnover Tactics is brought to
• 0:44
  you in collaboration with Turno, the all in one cleaning and
• 0:48
  turnover management platform built specifically for short
• 0:51
  term rental hosts. If you've ever scrambled to find
• 0:54
  a reliable cleaner or wasted hours managing schedules, Turno
• 0:57
  changes everything. With their Global Cleaner
• 1:00
  Marketplace, automated scheduling, and real time
• 1:03
  updates, you'll never stress about turnovers again.
• 1:06
  Whether you manage one property or 100, Turno helps you stay
• 1:10
  guest ready effortlessly. Simply scan the QR code if
• 1:13
  you're watching on YouTube, or click the link in the show notes
• 1:16
  to get started. It's time you let Turno take
• 1:19
  over. Taylor, thank you for joining us
• 1:26
  on Turnover Tactics. Let's get straight into it.
• 1:29
  I want to hear actually about your journey as you're a host of
• 1:32
  property. Manager.
• 1:33
  Yourself. How do you deal with?
• 1:36
  Cleaning and maintenance. And are there any issues?
• 1:39
  That keep you awake at night. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:42
  So I live in San Francisco, I have a property in Denver and
• 1:47
  you know, I've kind of had to learn on the go how to be the
• 1:51
  boots on the ground when I'm not in the physical location.
• 1:54
  So I rely on a lot of programs like Turno, my chat through
• 1:59
  Airbnb. I'm looking at pricing tools
• 2:02
  like Rev factor and price Labs. You know, I'm using a lot of
• 2:05
  tools that allow me to address the needs of my place when I'm
• 2:09
  actually not in the area. So I have a lot of tips and
• 2:13
  tricks I'm sure we'll get into, but from a cleaning perspective,
• 2:16
  Turno has always been the platform that I use.
• 2:19
  And so to be working at a company like Turno, I always
• 2:23
  joke that, you know, I'm building some of the things that
• 2:26
  helped me, but you know, we're always talking to hosts and
• 2:29
  learning about what people are dealing with from a cleaning and
• 2:32
  maintenance standpoint and in terms of those.
• 2:36
  Conversations with hosts then. What are the?
• 2:38
  Main pain points that they're they're dealing with in relation
• 2:42
  to cleaning and maintenance. Yeah.
• 2:44
  So some of the main pain points from like a cleaning standpoint,
• 2:47
  you know, you always get the before a guest arrives and you
• 2:51
  have that, that issue. And we'll go into some of the
• 2:54
  urgency versus, you know, the, the things you just have to look
• 2:57
  out for. And then also from a maintenance
• 3:00
  standpoint, how do you, how do you address these maintenance
• 3:03
  issues, whether a large, you know, HVAC goes out and the
• 3:07
  heating's lost, especially in Denver where it can get cold and
• 3:10
  they could get hot and you go through all the seasons in one
• 3:12
  day to something that a handle broke off and, you know, having
• 3:18
  that plan to go and fix it. So we've seen multiple of these
• 3:22
  issues and something that Turner's doing a really good job
• 3:25
  at is we're listening to the customers understanding what are
• 3:28
  those problems, how can you address it?
• 3:31
  But then also how do you automate these processes so it's
• 3:35
  not a burden. I've been on, you know, walks
• 3:38
  out on the town and I get a call from a guest and the the instant
• 3:43
  fear you get of OK, what do I need to do?
• 3:46
  And having that plan really helps you be successful and
• 3:49
  still capture that five star review.
• 3:52
  What are the common? Issues that hosts don't
• 3:55
  anticipate until it's already becoming a problem.
• 4:00
  Yeah. So some of the things that
• 4:02
  people don't think about is, you know, I'll take an example.
• 4:08
  I had one guest in my property and the heat went out and, you
• 4:12
  know, it was chilly in Denver. So I definitely felt for her and
• 4:16
  wanted to get it addressed. But something that I'd forgotten
• 4:19
  was, you know, you don't really think about taking the HVAC ID
• 4:24
  and the model and the type of HVAC you have.
• 4:28
  So trying to explain that to a maintenance person, you know,
• 4:31
  hey, my HVAC is broken and then they have to drive over there.
• 4:35
  You know, you don't want to take two trips.
• 4:36
  So being as prepared as possible for maintenance issues is
• 4:41
  something to keep track of, especially for property
• 4:44
  managers, making sure that you know that house inside and out.
• 4:48
  I think it's really important. There's small things where you
• 4:52
  know when you go into a hotel, you have your checklist that you
• 4:56
  don't even think about, but you want it to be at a standard.
• 5:00
  And so you rely on cleaners, maintenance people to tell you
• 5:03
  what's going on in your property.
• 5:05
  I think the inspector is another underutilized person in this
• 5:10
  space to go in and double check the things that cleaners can
• 5:14
  identify or a maintenance person might not see, but you know that
• 5:17
  your guest is going to is going to see it.
• 5:21
  Yeah, definitely. I think, yeah, having an
• 5:23
  inspector who's going to run through everything with a fine
• 5:26
  tooth comb could really pay dividends.
• 5:29
  And another thing that I've. Seen and it's something that we
• 5:31
  started using ourselves and a couple of properties that we run
• 5:34
  is using QR codes for things especially now you know you can
• 5:38
  find like the details for so many different appliances,
• 5:41
  whether it's the dishwasher, the washing machine or anything HVAC
• 5:45
  system over in the States, we don't have many HVAC systems in
• 5:48
  here in the UK it's not. Not warm enough, but but yeah,
• 5:51
  you know, using those QR codes for your guests, but also for
• 5:54
  your cleaning team as well, so they know, you know.
• 5:57
  Instantly what model it is and how to deal with it that.
• 5:59
  That can really. Be worth it's worth it's weight
• 6:02
  in gold. I think that there's probably a
• 6:04
  moment where I'll just handle it myself.
• 6:08
  Stops. Working for a lot of hosts and
• 6:10
  property managers. In your experience, what does
• 6:13
  that moment? Look like in practice.
• 6:15
  Yeah, it's a great question. And I think when you're when
• 6:20
  you're starting out and you got your first home and you're kind
• 6:23
  of OK, I'm going to YouTube everything and do it myself.
• 6:27
  At some point, I think you really need to start thinking
• 6:30
  about your team. And I think every successful
• 6:34
  property manager has their maintenance person, they're
• 6:38
  thinking about their cleaning team, they're thinking about,
• 6:41
  you know, even trash like that's something that is a main focus
• 6:46
  and having a team to go and address those things.
• 6:48
  So I think all of these items are something you want to have
• 6:53
  in your back pocket because sometimes there is that issue
• 6:55
  that you really need to rely on somebody else to address the
• 6:58
  issue. And I think you need to think
• 7:00
  about it in two ways, is you have the the issues before the
• 7:04
  guests arrive and then you have the issues when the guest is in
• 7:07
  the house. And when the guest is in the
• 7:10
  house, those problems are the ones that you want to be
• 7:14
  successful and tactically do it right so that when the guest is
• 7:18
  in the house, they're still happy.
• 7:20
  You're able to get in there, fix the problem quickly, and address
• 7:23
  it so that you know they're not burdened by somebody in the
• 7:27
  house constantly fixing something that could be fixed or
• 7:31
  prevented. Very much so, yeah.
• 7:35
  Why do you think the short? Term rental industry.
• 7:38
  Has been pretty good at. Solving cleaning but.
• 7:41
  Pretty fragmented. When it comes to everything
• 7:44
  else. Yeah, You know, another great
• 7:46
  question. From a cleaning standpoint, I
• 7:50
  think, you know, we've really built the basics from, you know,
• 7:55
  there's courses now of how to clean a short term rental.
• 7:57
  And we've realized that cleaning is one of the most important
• 8:01
  things when you enter a home. I was talking about it the other
• 8:04
  day where as soon as you step into that home and you get that
• 8:07
  scent of a new property that you're entering that sets the
• 8:12
  standard for OK, how, what is the quality of this house?
• 8:16
  And I think we've, we've come to this awesome marketplace for
• 8:21
  cleaners to come in. They have, you know, really
• 8:25
  quick turnovers. It's opportunities for cleaners
• 8:27
  to come in from like a mate. From a other company's
• 8:33
  standpoint, I think it is still fragmented because it's
• 8:37
  complicated. It's maintenance people.
• 8:40
  We've had we're testing out a maintenance subscription right
• 8:43
  now. So it's something that we're in
• 8:45
  the works with. But you basically we've learned
• 8:49
  that people are going and addressing a problem, trying to
• 8:54
  diagnose it, speaking to multiple different maintenance
• 8:58
  people and then having to get the materials and then go to the
• 9:02
  property and then address it. And it's a multi step task and
• 9:07
  it's not as clear as a cleaner. So when a cleaner has the job,
• 9:12
  they go in, they have their checklist, they have their
• 9:15
  inventory, they know exactly what Turno has kind of set up in
• 9:19
  this platform to do. And so you have a standard and
• 9:23
  they know that they're going to go from point A and point B,
• 9:25
  they're going to be completed cap, you guessed.
• 9:27
  But from a maintenance standpoint, I think, you know,
• 9:32
  something that's really what we're trying to solve is how do
• 9:36
  you go from finding the maintenance person addressing
• 9:38
  the issue and then going straight to the solution?
• 9:42
  So, you know, as soon as we can continue to figure that out,
• 9:46
  test it and implement an easy solution, I think that it'll
• 9:50
  become less fragmented. Probably a good point here just
• 9:54
  to explain Turno to the audience in terms of the cleaner
• 9:59
  marketplace and obviously like the the maintenance side of
• 10:02
  things and what you're trying to develop.
• 10:05
  Yeah, just. Just just give us the lowdown.
• 10:07
  On on turno for for short term rental house and how you help
• 10:09
  people. Yeah, absolutely.
• 10:11
  So Turno is a marketplace for finding cleaners.
• 10:14
  So connecting hosts with cleaners in your marketplace and
• 10:19
  having a platform where you can almost set and forget all the
• 10:24
  the needs of your property. So what's great about mine is I
• 10:29
  actually, I bought my house in Denver and I moved down to South
• 10:31
  America in Buenos Aires. And so I needed to make sure
• 10:34
  that the cleaning hours are a little bit different.
• 10:38
  So I need to make sure that I had a checklist of everything
• 10:40
  that I wanted a cleaner to do. I needed all my inventory so
• 10:43
  that I knew went to DoorDash and order.
• 10:45
  I needed all my items so that I could address those with
• 10:49
  maintenance people. And what's great about Turno is
• 10:52
  that it's an all in one platform.
• 10:54
  It connects to your, it connects to wherever you're hosting your
• 10:58
  property. It will detect when somebody
• 11:01
  checks out or when somebody's checking in and then automates a
• 11:05
  cleaner to come in and address the property and build your
• 11:08
  team. So it's, it's that marketplace,
• 11:10
  but it's also the full, you know, process of getting your
• 11:15
  house cleaned. And it puts you at ease that you
• 11:19
  know your next guest has a clean house and you're not trying to
• 11:22
  scramble trying to find someone. And I think with Turno as well.
• 11:26
  You really show the. Importance of setting up your
• 11:29
  systems and processes. Because if you set those
• 11:32
  foundations really clearly. As a host of property manager,
• 11:35
  even if you're in South America like you and your property's in
• 11:38
  Denver few 1000 miles away. Your your property can.
• 11:42
  Run on autopilot. Really, it can run without.
• 11:45
  You and I guess I guess that's the whole point exactly.
• 11:49
  I think the autopilot and the automation in this system and
• 11:52
  with these AI automations that all companies are kind of
• 11:56
  addressing, there's a lot of opportunity in this space.
• 11:59
  And I think being able to at ease on your phone, be able to
• 12:04
  check, OK, property's been cleaned, I'm all set to go.
• 12:07
  There's nothing I have to worry about.
• 12:09
  We have a chat system where you can talk right to your cleaner
• 12:12
  who's in the home and, you know, say a maintenance problem comes
• 12:16
  up and they identify it, you're ahead of the problem and you're
• 12:19
  able to address it. And another thing I was, I
• 12:21
  always like to point out is we don't always just rely on one
• 12:26
  cleaner. You know, I had a cleaner the
• 12:28
  other day, canceled the day before, luckily, but they were
• 12:32
  busy and I could go on my team and say, OK, that's fine.
• 12:37
  Cleaner B can are you able to clean my property?
• 12:40
  And it automates that. So if somebody cancels it, it
• 12:43
  sends it to the next person. And so you always have an A
• 12:46
  plan, AB and C, which I think is really crucial so that it's even
• 12:50
  more at ease of, OK, I'm not going to have to scramble one
• 12:53
  day when something doesn't work out.
• 12:55
  Yeah, that was going to be my next question really.
• 12:57
  I'm sure there were. Times in.
• 12:59
  When you were traveling around South America where there would
• 13:02
  have been cleaning and maintenance issues.
• 13:04
  So how did? Your systems and automation and
• 13:07
  Turno help you to overcome those challenges.
• 13:10
  Yeah. So it really was building a good
• 13:13
  team. So making sure that when you're
• 13:15
  selecting the cleaner, what we do is we're you're allowed to
• 13:18
  chat with them, you're allowed to vet them, we're vetting them
• 13:21
  upfront, but really making sure that they're a fit for your
• 13:24
  home. So that way, Mike, all my
• 13:26
  cleaning people I'm talking with every time I don't need to, but
• 13:30
  I think it kind of gives me like a sense of where the house is
• 13:33
  at, especially being thousands of miles away.
• 13:36
  And then I also got my first maintenance issue while I was
• 13:39
  there too. So you can imagine my parents
• 13:42
  are property managers. I'm calling them trying to
• 13:44
  figure out like, OK, what do I do?
• 13:46
  And I didn't have a plan. And so now I have my team of
• 13:50
  maintenance people, but now at turn out what we're building is
• 13:53
  a maintenance subscription so that, you know, something that's
• 13:56
  coming soon is being able to tell us what your problem is and
• 14:02
  we want to go address it, which I think takes all the pain
• 14:05
  points out. And I kind of like what I was
• 14:07
  talking about with this AI automation is being able to
• 14:10
  detect when a problem is happening is so much more
• 14:14
  important than facing it when it happens.
• 14:16
  So if we can get ahead of the problem, that's always crucial.
• 14:21
  Definitely. Prevention is often cheaper than
• 14:24
  the cure and this this. Leads perfectly, really.
• 14:27
  Into the next question. And you know, maintenance does
• 14:29
  sound pretty simple, especially when we put it like that.
• 14:32
  But if things are left to kind of rot and get out of control,
• 14:37
  it can cause huge problems. So I mean, what's the real cost?
• 14:40
  When something small isn't flagged or fixed.
• 14:44
  Straight away, yeah. I mean, I, I always like using
• 14:48
  real life examples and I'm happy to put myself out there as, as
• 14:52
  my mistakes because I've definitely learned from them.
• 14:54
  But I had a guest who the, the heating broke and I didn't have
• 14:59
  that Plan B. What happens is somebody you get
• 15:04
  pinged and sometimes it's on a Saturday when maybe you're,
• 15:07
  you're busy and what happens is they come to you and they're
• 15:14
  complaining about the, the air or the heat not working.
• 15:18
  You are at risk of losing that guest.
• 15:22
  So we actually came to the point where it was, OK, I can send a
• 15:27
  maintenance person in there. It's going to be very intrusive.
• 15:30
  It's going to take a few hours. And you can imagine from a, a
• 15:33
  guest perspective, like, you know, I paid top dollar for this
• 15:36
  home. I want to be able to relax and
• 15:39
  hang out and not have a maintenance person walking
• 15:42
  around the house. So, you know, you lose you,
• 15:45
  you're at risk of losing somebody to another property.
• 15:48
  So you're sending them. Airbnb is very good about
• 15:52
  setting up a new property. So there's that.
• 15:56
  And then you're also out at risk of losing a booking, which some
• 16:00
  people really depend on that to cover the mortgage.
• 16:03
  So you can imagine a five day stay, one problem causes them to
• 16:07
  refund the entire five day stay. That's a pretty massive revenue
• 16:11
  loss. And then the the review.
• 16:14
  So how do you tackle all three of those?
• 16:16
  Make sure that you know, you're really on top of addressing it
• 16:20
  quickly. How do you know your property so
• 16:23
  that you can address it without interfering with the guests?
• 16:26
  And then also, you know, coming out clean with a 5 star review I
• 16:30
  think is the impressive part. Yeah, don't let things fester if
• 16:35
  if you know there's a problem, get it fixed straight away.
• 16:39
  Yeah, exactly. Cleaners are often.
• 16:40
  Then the first people to to spot issues.
• 16:43
  What typically happens to that? Information today, especially if
• 16:48
  you're using Turno and where can it break down?
• 16:51
  Yeah, absolutely so. And this was actually our
• 16:53
  inspiration for maintenance subscription.
• 16:56
  So we, you know, through our database we're finding what
• 17:00
  problems people are picking up. So we can track everything that
• 17:02
  a cleaner has told us about a property and say you have a
• 17:07
  stain. 1 great thing about turn out that I didn't mention was
• 17:11
  they can take pictures and tell you, hey, there's a stain on
• 17:14
  your rug. This is not something I can
• 17:15
  address today, but you might need somebody to come in with a
• 17:18
  deep cleaner machine to like get this out.
• 17:22
  And so, you know, we're detecting those types of issues.
• 17:26
  And I think that that is really important to, you know, being
• 17:31
  able to detect those and then going and finding the right
• 17:34
  person to address them. And so from the inspiration of a
• 17:38
  maintenance subscription is how do we take that image from the
• 17:40
  cleaner and create a problem and then go find somebody to
• 17:44
  actually solve that problem before they were kind of sitting
• 17:47
  there and it's kind of on the host to to go and fix it.
• 17:50
  We want to solve that and have that automated process and have
• 17:54
  that easier way to sit back. We'll go find you someone and
• 18:01
  send somebody out so that before your guest arrives that is taken
• 18:04
  care of. Yes, it's a really good point,
• 18:07
  isn't it? Because.
• 18:07
  Like the onus is on the House, the property manager, they might
• 18:10
  have other rentals, they've probably got other things going
• 18:12
  on in their. Life.
• 18:12
  It's probably. Not their full.
• 18:14
  Time job. In many cases.
• 18:15
  So yeah, if you can take the weight off them and automate
• 18:18
  things, it's it's going to make life quite a bit easier.
• 18:22
  We. We talked about.
• 18:23
  Maintenance there's. Also the trash there's
• 18:25
  restocking and these sound. Like quite small things, but
• 18:29
  they can create big problems. The last thing you want is is
• 18:33
  complaints from your guests. So I mean what?
• 18:35
  What does that say about the state of property?
• 18:38
  Operations today. Yeah, I, I think it's changing.
• 18:42
  And we in property management, we've come from such a manual
• 18:48
  checklist to keep track of. And I don't know if you've met
• 18:52
  property managers or anyone on here, but their job is tough and
• 18:57
  they're talking with guests, they're making sure the house is
• 18:59
  ready, they're making sure that, you know, they're, they have
• 19:02
  their systems and they're very organized people.
• 19:04
  And now I think with some of the tools that are coming out like
• 19:07
  Terno and some of the others, it's making it more automated.
• 19:11
  And how do we keep track of these things?
• 19:13
  And so like at Terno, we have our checklist, we have our
• 19:18
  inventory so that you can track everything that's in your
• 19:22
  owner's closet and making sure that the guest has everything
• 19:25
  that they need per stay from a scheduling tool, being able to
• 19:30
  see all the check insurance checkouts, I think those are
• 19:33
  super important. And so these these new tools
• 19:37
  that are coming out are allowing us to create automation and you
• 19:41
  know, it's an all in one type property management system and
• 19:45
  that's that's the goal. Absolutely a checklist your
• 19:49
  systems, your processors, if you can get those set up right, it's
• 19:52
  it's going to be a much simpler business.
• 19:55
  Let's finish them with with. A final tip, so if a host wants
• 19:58
  to move from reactive firefighting to running a.
• 20:01
  Truly professional operation. What do they need to start doing
• 20:05
  differently? Yeah.
• 20:07
  So from my learnings and from being at Fervo Air DNA Turno
• 20:14
  really be be organized and know your property, I think is #1.
• 20:19
  Very good advice Taylor. It's been a real pleasure.
• 20:23
  Thank. You for joining us on Turnover
• 20:24
  Tactics. That's a wrap for this episode
• 20:26
  of Turnover Tactics. Huge thanks to Taylor.
• 20:29
  For sharing his wisdom on today's show.
• 20:31
  Don't forget, if you're ready to stop the chaos and start
• 20:33
  treating your operations like a profit centre, get in touch with
• 20:37
  Turno, the all in one cleaning and turnover management platform
• 20:40
  built specifically for short term rental hosts.
• 20:43
  With their global cleaner marketplace, automated
• 20:46
  scheduling and real time updates, you'll never stress
• 20:48
  about turnovers again. Whether you manage one property
• 20:51
  or 100, Turno helps you stay guest ready effortlessly.
• 20:55
  Visit turno.com for further details.
• 20:57
  Scan the QR code if you're watching on YouTube or click the
• 21:01
  link in the show notes to get started.
• 21:03
  It's time to let Turno take over and remember.
• 21:06
  For more vacation rental education, head to Houseplanner
• 21:09
  dot Club, where you can sign up for our newsletter.
• 21:12
  Listen to our podcasts. And download.
• 21:14
  A suite of ebooks for hosts and property managers.
• 21:16
  Thanks for tuning in to Turnover Tactics.
• 21:18
  Until next time. Happy hosting.