A bit of advice would be much appreciated

A bit of advice would be much appreciated

Hi everyone and happy new year. I became a co host at the beginning of December. Since then we have become a super host (woohoo!). In the majority everyone has been pleasant if not lovely. Apart from 2 guests that ignored our no smoking rule. Apart from the smell of smoke one guest had burnt a hole in the sofa and another separate guest had burnt a hole in the net curtains leading to the balcony. I messaged them personally and kindly asked them to pay for the damages and I was subsequently ignored both times 😞 is there anything I can do about this? 

The next thing is that we were fully booked for all of November and also December but so far we have 3 bookings in January? Is this normal or is there any advice to help ?

 

Many kind regards in advance 

 

Benjamin

6 Replies 6
Marsh2
Level 2
Washington, DC

Hi @Benjamin717 ,

Happy new year! 
Unfortunately, you will encounter guests who will break the house rules from time to time, now matter how many times you remind them that smoking is not allowed. How ever there are a few things you can do to prevent it and a few things you can do after the fact. 
- On your welcome letter and on your house rules write in all caps what’s no allowed and what can happen if the house rules are broken. ie:  “NO PARTIES, NO EVENTS, NO SMOKING OF ANY KIND ARE ALLOWED IN THE PROPERTY. IF ANY OF THE HOUSE RULES ARE BROKEN A $200 ADDITIONAL CLEANING FEE/ EXTRA SERVICES FEE COULD BE CHARGED TO YOUR ACCOUNT.”
-Whenever we get an inquiry from a guest with no reviews and who is a local we ask them to first agree to the house rules and give us a bit more info about them.  That being said we still had guest break the house rules. 😕
- When a guest breaks the house rules- We immediately contact Aribnb, take good pictures and video (co-ordinate with your cleaning crew to do the same if you are not in the property). We open a ticket with Aribnb, we tell them what happened so they know we will open a claim. We then leave an honest review of the guest. If they don’t leave you a review,  we wait until the 14 days are up and then make a claim for what ever you spent in extra cleaning service, replacing broken items, etc. if they don’t respond in 72 hours then contact Airbnb. They will get involved and tell you how to proceed. They will ask you for invoices and receipts of your extra expenses. 

January tends to be one of the slowest months. Plan ahead- start looking at other Airbnbs in the area. Don’t wait until the last minute to drop prices. Make sure you know your expenses to the penny per night. So if you need to make at least $50 per night to cover expenses, then you know you can’t drop below that. I would start dropping little by little at least 3 weeks before. Again, look at Airbnbs around you, hotels, or other dynamic pricing tools. Some times dynamic tools tend to be on the lower end so keep in mind your competition as well.

 

I hope this helps you a bit. If you have any  more questions feel free to reach out. I can give you more tips on pricing, managing multiple properties, how to handle claims, etc. 🙂 

Cheers! 

@Marsh2   Perhaps I am misunderstanding your process about making a claim when you wait to do so.  I thought the claim process required contacting the guest and making a claim prior to the check in of the next guest.  Sounds like you use a different timeline.  Just need clarification.

Hi @Linda108

Yes, that's true. You have to open the claim before the next check-in time. But you can still request money for a claim 14 days after the fact. The reason we wait is that there have been times that we opened up a claim right away and the guests left a bad review in retribution. They said that their stay was perfect after they checked out. We found they broke the house rules so we asked for extra cleaning payments or to reimburse us for a broken item and they left us negative reviews.

This is what we do now:

-Guest checks out at 11:00 am

-At 3:00 pm we send an automated message thanking them for their stay and asking if there's anything we can do to improve and that we hope we earned five stars. 

-The cleaning crew gives us a report: If everything was great we leave a 5-star review. 

-If a house rule was broken and we need to open a claim we document the complaint (take pictures of broken items, tobacco residue, etc.) We then contact Airbnb and let them know what happened, we intend to open a claim after we get a review and submit proof. 

-We leave an honest review with the guest. They will be notified by Airbnb that we left a review and ask them to do the same. 

-We wait until they leave a review. They have 14 days to do so. If they leave a review before the 14 days are up we open the claim right away. Otherwise, we wait until the 14 days are up. To open the claim go to the reservation details page, scroll down and click on "Send or request money" Then select a reason "Damaged or missing items",  "Extra services", "Other trip related issues" Then it will ask to upload photos.  Once you upload the pictures it will ask you to add a note to the guest. Then submit. If you have a video to submit ask Airbnb when you open the claim to send you an email to which you can reply with the video. 

-The guest has 72 hours to accept or reject the claim. After 72 hours you can involve Airbnbif the guests doesn't respond or rejects the claim.  Airbnb will contact the guest. If they also have no luck then you can try to access Airbnb's coverage. Luckily we never had to go that far.

I hope the info helped. Let me know if you have any questions or tips. Everyone has different strategies and I would love to hear yours. We are always learning. 🙂 

Debbie568
Level 2
Scarborough, Australia

Thanks for the instructions!  Hopefully I will never need to lodge a claim, but you never know.

Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to write a reply and a Very good reply at that! I’m going to take your advice on board and act on it immediately! Thank you again! Do you know is there a way to change prices for set days eg only January as I seem to only be able to change the price for every day ???? Thank you again! X

You can go to the calendar, highlight the time period you which to change and make the change for the whole period.  That would make it a bit less trouble.