Hosting tips

I manage $1.3 million in bookings  and 2200 reservations a year and I’m on many platforms. Booking.com is by far the absolute worst. I do everything you’re supposed to do, we require a deposit, we require ID verification all that kind of stuff through charge automation but somehow we still just get absolute nightmare guests. Anytime I have to interact with Booking.com‘s customer support. It is a joke. Case in point, a guest recently Booked for six people at my house, paid the damage deposit, gave the names and ages of the guests, and then 30 people showed up at my house. When I contacted Booking.com about this, they said that they cannot cancel this guests reservation without their consent, which is just incredible. Does anyone have any contact with people that actually work in Booking.com like some kind of higher level rep or someone in the PR team or something? I just don’t understand how their service offerings can be so bad.

Hi, i'm looking to invest in an ev charger,What is everybody using what brand? and had the best of luck with

Can anyone recommend a FREE or one time only fee, easy to setup simple digital guidebook, that can highlight things to do in the area? 

Hello,I just launched a studio unit in Atlanta. Could hosts and team explain some tips on improving my booking conversion during orphan nights midweek?https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1765344594586775050?guests=1&adults=1&s=67&unique_share_id=a43e58f1-996f-4dca-805f-aa8f60b4ff4b Check out our listing above. Bibiana Aguero     

I’m wondering how other hosts take care of pass thru taxes?

Is anyone using Happy Guest? My STRs are smaller, single family properties (both 2 bedrooms). I am considering using Happy Guest so I can list on VRBO and have accidental insurance coverage as well as a rental agreement. My concern is Happy Guest requires me to purchase a policy on all guest, including my Airbnb guests. I worry about getting pushback from Airbnb guests on the two options to either 1) purchase the coverage for $37 OR 2) put a $1000 hold on their cc. $37 is a lot to add on considering what my price point is and some may not have $1000 room on a credit card.  I have reviewed two properties that use Happy guest and looked through their guest reviews and BOTH properties had an unfavorable review due to having this pop up after making their reservation. Both properties clearly state this requirement prior to booking but as we all know most guests do not read all the info prior to booking.  For those using Happy Guest, what has been your experience? 

We have a hot tub and I would LOVE to see anyone’s hot tub agreements and signage around hot tub. Looking for the proper terminology for the rental agreement and creative ways to have Hot tub rules hung.

How far in advance is it proper to open up the calendar for booking?

We currently have a doozie of a guest in one of our BNBs and they booked a non-refundable stay with us on March 13th and then tried to cancel on the 20th.  I declined since we are NOT the trip insurance but rather a host who is being asked to refund a . . . non-refundable booking. Fast forward 10 days and the guest chose to travel anyways (as would I since they sunk the cost and it’s a beautiful place) and guess who shows up?  A grumpy goose. They are demanding that the hot tub be serviced becuase it was unusable when they arrived (professionally serviced each week, so what do they mean?)  Reading the tea leaves here . . . this person is bitter due to not getting a refund on a non-refundable booking.  So they show up and have an unsurprisingly frustrating stay.  What will their review say? However, all of this is likely retaliation from them not getting to cancel the booking, so is there a way to prevent a review from being left? 

I built a couple of revenue-recovery automations for Hospitable — looking for hosts to try themI manage several STRs through Hospitable and kept noticing two pretty simple places where revenue was slipping through the cracks: Orphan nights — those annoying 1–2 night gaps between reservations that are difficult to sell normally. Expired Airbnb inquiries/offers — guests who showed real booking intent but never completed the reservation. So I built a plugin/workflow that uses the Hospitable connection to automate both.For gap nights, it finds the vacancy and determines whether it makes more sense to offer the departing guest an extra night or the arriving guest an early arrival. It only works one guest at a time and keeps track of who has already been contacted.For expired inquiries, it looks for genuine booking prospects whose offer expired and can send a targeted follow-up rather than just treating every old inquiry as a lead.I intentionally made it fairly conservative. It won't inven

Keeping an Airbnb guest-ready between stays can be challenging, especially with tight turnovers, deep cleaning, laundry, and last-minute bookings. I’m curious what other hosts are doing.Have you ever hired a professional cleaner through a booking app or home-service platform? If so, which app did you use, how was the experience, and would you use it again? What matters most to you—price, availability, reliability, reviews, or consistent cleaning quality?

Does anyone have a pre-check-in checklist that you’d be willing to share?  This is used to do a thorough “last look” after the cleaners have left and just before a guest checks in?  This could also include a check of batteries, smoke detectors, etc. to be sure everything in the house is ready and is working properly.  

Hi there, @Wander_Tanya Trying to integrate with Wander and not having any luck. Can’t find info about pricing and support is not answering me. If Wander imports Hospitable pricing, how am supposed to do the mark up to account for the Wander 11% fees?

Hey Dave here, from Casa Co-Host in Toronto, Canada.  I was invited to the Airbnb Pro Host event with around 300 other hosts at Airbnb HQ in SF, Sept 21-23. I am just wondering a couple things: 1/ Is anyone else in the Hospitable Community attending or invited this year? May be interested to meet up or catch a snack or cocktail with you2/ Has anyone attended in a previous year (perhaps this is only year 2 of this) - appreciate any thoughts on the event.3/ Does anyone have interesting questions for Airbnb that I can pose on your behalf? I do understand that CEO Chesky and other senior leaders do attend or host sessions, so I expect that we will have Q&A time. Happy to ask if there are some juicy questions and I can bring back whatever responses are shared.  That’s it. Thanks! 

Hospitable has been nominated for several awards at VRMA this year includingBest Supplier Marketing Campaign Award Supplier Company of the Year (More than $5M in annual revenue)Visit this survey link to place your vote! If you’re looking for help on some of the other questions, I’d love to promote our Executive Director Rebecca Gallagher (Poconos VRO) for the tireless work she’s logged this year for the Poconos Region and the industry as a whole!  Thank you! 

We are located in cayce South Carolina. Not your typical vacation destination, but we do stay pretty booked. We are looking to try and get away from Airbnb. the fees are too high and trying to go with a more direct booking approach. But we wanted to see if anyone else has had experience in a similar situation, whether it is possible or even worth it, to get the volume we would need.

I Host five properties in Long Beach, California, The Home of several events for the upcoming LA Olympics in July 2028. I currently have my calendar blocked until I can get an understanding of how the rates should be set for that period. Will dynamic pricing be taking this event into account and when?

Does any operate in these states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Texas, Vermont, Washington or Puerto Rico? And if you do, are you part of your state’s association for vacation rental hosts and professionals? Hospitable has made it easy to connect & support STR advocacy work happening in your backyard!  When you enroll in the Right to Rent integration, you’ll be supporting your state association by contributing $2 per booking toward the organizations that are working every day to protect your property rights and preserve your right to rent.  And don’t forget to opt in to the Half Stays Local program, and select your state, during enrollment!  Don’t see your state listed? Connect with me, Julie, and let’s work together to change that!  julie@r2rcollaborative.org   

 My partner and I manage STRs ourselves and are exploring how AI can reduce the coordination work around cleaners, maintenance, vendors, turnovers, and guest-related issues.We’d like to speak with a few hands-on hosts, even if you manage just one property, to understand your current workflow and get candid feedback on what we’re building.We’ll provide a $50 gift card as a thank-you for your time after the 30-minute call.If you’re interested, please reply here and I’ll share a scheduling link.

We used Happy Guest and want to share our experience so other hosts can make an informed decision. During a financial audit of our account, we found charges that didn't match reservations or usage of the platform, or what we'd been agreed to: policy coverage that was added without our knowledge or approval, duplicate charges on the same reservation, and charges applied to guests who never even used the Happy Guest portal, despite being told directly that non-use of the portal meant no charge would apply (and instructions on how to avoid the charges). When we raised this, it took multiple escalations over about three weeks to get any real engagement. One rep's responses felt scripted and didn't address our questions to the point we thought we were being answered by AI. We were eventually told by phone that there is no signed written agreement, that pricing and policies are based on what was discussed in the original sales call rather than anything in writing. We were told they were goin

I had an owner we manage for see a targeted add from Wander that makes them think we should list there.  What do you think?

I’m struggling using Buildium for Long Term Rentals and Hospitable for Short Term Rentals. And have to manually enter receivables for short term stays into Buildium for owner payouts. As many of the short term owners both own STRs and LTRs, and some properties will move in and out of both STRs and LTRs.  Curious what other managers are doing to successfully operate a business that has both STR and LTR! Thank you!

Does anyone have some sort of "direct booking" site that is not hosted by Hospitable and still handles tax remittance? I'm trying to find a direct booking option for my co-host clients that is similar to Direct Premium, but all my own properties are on Direct Basic. I don't want to give up the cash flow on my own properties but I don't want to start handling taxes for anyone but myself either! 

Hi everyone,I’m looking for some advice on how you handle theft prevention in your properties. From time to time, I notice that smaller items — especially towels and similar things — go missing. I know that having a proper security deposit is usually a game changer, but unfortunately deposits aren’t available yet for the Euro zone in Hospitable. Until deposits are supported, I’d like to put a temporary workaround in place.How do you deal with this in the meantime? ➤ Do you use item or inventory checklists for each stay?➤ Do you enforce any specific policy or send reminders to guests?➤ Any proven methods to minimize loss or prevent items from “disappearing”? I’d really appreciate hearing how you manage this and what has worked best for you. Thanks!

For multiple weeks now my Hospitable calendar has been BLOCKED starting in June 2026 although my Hospitable calendar setting has the booking window set to 24 months.  After reporting via the “smarty” AI bot, I finally got a response from a human and they told me they pushed a sync, to wait a bit and check.  I waited 48 hours - still had the issue and let the support rep know.  They escalated to engineering and closed my ticket!!  So not way to follow-up via “smarty”.   After escalating to a human again, I got a message the next day that they are “working on it” and said it had something to do with the new VRBO connection and the old VRBO connection.  I asked for the ticket to remain open until the issue was closed.  (seriously, what software support department just closes tickets when the issue is still open and impacting a subscriber’s business?).   So it’s been a week - got an update yesterday that they are “still working on it”.  I asked for an ETA and what level this defect was cla