Hosting tips

I’m not too confident of Smarty’s answer to this. But it’s not worth a support ticket, so I thought I’d pose the question here.I’m not able to find any documentation about the “AI Summary” that gets generated when a guest inquires or books. I haven’t found it to be very helpful, and it often raises more questions than answers, because it seems to “make stuff up” in the absence of facts and evidence.Example, here’s an Airbnb guest with 3 glowing reviews, and I use the AirReview extension to be able to see what reviews the GUEST has left for other hosts, and he’s left only glowing reviews for other hosts, and there is no indication whatsoever that this guy has any aversion to “Mold, unclean bathrooms, pests, and lack of cleanliness.”This AI Summary actually raises red flags when it shouldn’t. Is this a guest that complains? Are they going to be a problem? As far as I can tell, no. So where is the AI getting these assumptions from? Smarty says it aggregates info about the guest from other

Has anyone tried integrating OpenClaw to Hospitable via API for managing their STRs? It seems like there’s potential good synergy in responding to guest inquiries and provide assistance when necessary. Open for discussion and would like your input.

After all that big announcement and chaos, Airbnb has not made it so that you can switch back to the old host fee model of 3%!  Very interesting as they made such a big announcement for this change, yet there has been no conversation about this option to switch back.  

I just saw on a FB post  that the split fee option is back for all listings. Anyone else see this and made the change back? What does this mean for the Hospitable AIRBNB Markup? 

Had our best December ever this year, with all 31 nights booked for $17.5k in total revenue. This is in the Disney market, the most saturated market in the country, and #1 on almost every guru list of "worst markets to invest in".Airbnb friends, the problem here, like most markets, is supply (in both quantity and quality), not demand. If you can operate at the top, there is still money to be made. And you don't have to have a tippy top property necessarily to operate at the top. It has to be marketable, but there are much better properties than mine in this neighborhood.It comes down to 3 basic pillars, and I'll give one example of each here, and will go into more depth on each when I have a bit more time.1) Listing Optimization - Bullet points, color. Ditch the superfluous wording (yes I'm aware of the irony) and skip to the important parts in bullet points. If you don't have color in your house, add it in your images (example in comments). Did you know you can use colorful emoticons

Hi everyone, I’m curious — what is currently your biggest challenge when it comes to managing turnovers? Is it:• Finding reliable cleaners• Timing issues• Quality consistency• Communication I’ve seen all of these come up in different properties. Would love to hear your experience.

Hi.  Does anyone know how to get pet fees to be findable on VRBO?  We have two pet friendly rentals, but there is no clear way when guests are booking to select the pet reservation, and then I am stuck pestering guests for a pet fee.   It is noted in the property description, and is set as a fee on the listing, it just never seems to pop up as an option when people book.   

Has anyone ever gone to the trouble of asking Vrbo to turn OFF the syndication of your Vrbo listings to Google Vacation Rentals (GVR)? Any luck in doing that?The reasoning is that when multiple booking sites syndicate to GVR, it can cause duplicates if GVR isn’t able to match and merge the listing from its various sources. Another reason would be to give guests fewer choices when looking at your listing on GVR, to steer them toward your Direct site rather than Vrbo. I’ve wasted a couple hours so far trying to get support from Vrbo on this. They keep telling me random things such as I need to turn off Instant Book (bogus), or that GVR is picking up my Vrbo listings organically (also bogus). 

Our apps are out!! Hospitable hosts can list for only $5 per property for the first year on Inndirectly.com! Use coupon HOSPINN45 at check out.Inndirectly was created to make direct booking sites searchable alongside all other booking options. It's free to join and for guests to use and only $50 per property per year (just over $4 per month) for hosts to list. Here's our explainer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhivu88Zrjo and read through our FAQ's.Our Apple App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/inndirectly-vacation-rentals/id6759907294Our Android App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inndirectly.app(Don't forget the double NN's in Inndirectly when Googling us! Inn+Directly = ❤️)

What are the Pros and Cons of working with these 3 platforms? Should I play with the 3 of them? 2 of them or only Airbnb? 

📣 Co-Hosts: Let’s Share Best Practices (Billing, Cleanings, Fees, & Cash Flow)Hi everyone — I’d love to start a collaborative thread so we can learn what’s working (and what isn’t) as our co-hosting businesses grow and evolve — especially with recent platform changes like Airbnb’s host-only service fee updates.I’ll start by sharing how we currently run our operation, and I’m hoping other co-hosts can chime in with their own systems.💼 How we currently operateBilling & Bookkeeping Our bookkeeper invoices owners once per month via QuickBooks. We charge our management commission on: Gross booking amount Pet fees Extra guest fees We do not subtract host platform service fees in our commission calculations. Cleaning Fees Cleaning fees are based directly on what we pay our cleaners. We’re currently increasing cleaning fees by 18.34% so owners are no longer paying cleaners out of pocket. However should it actually be 15.5%? AIRBNB What are your current markups f

Hosts and property managers, we'd love to have you list your properties on Inndirectly.com! Even before officially going live last fall, Hospitable believed in what we were building and supported us early on, so we wanted to give something back to the Hospitable community.If you’re a Hospitable host, we’re offering 90% off your first year’s listings which are normally only $50 per property per year ($4.17/month.) Join for free then use coupon HOSPINN45 at check out to list for just $5 per property for the whole first year.Our purpose is to help small businesses hosts regain ownership of their bookings by making direct booking sites searchable, encouraging direct guest/host connections, and helping hosts break free from total reliance on OTAs without the review games and algorithm stress. Since Inndirectly is a listing site (not a booking platform), there are no commissions, algorithms, or micromanagement.Here’s our quick explainer video:Common questions:Integrations? Yes, via iCal (tho

Anyone has suggestions on advertising on social media thats pretty much hands free ?I can’t remember to post and would love to automate that task

Hello!   I am looking for platforms to market my hospitable account.   I would like to do this on TT, IG, FB and other sites.   Is there anyone who can help me with this? Lisa

Hey all,we signed up for Crew yesterday to get a handle on trash collection at one of our properties. The setup is very quick and easy, you provide address, when trash day is and where the bins are located.If you sign up through Hospitable you get one month free, BUT Crew gets access to your full calendar INCLUDING financials and guest data. Why? A guest stay doesn’t change the trash pickup day and an expensive stay doesn’t make it a higher priority pickup. I also don’t think a crowd sourced tasker will knock on the door and greet our guest by name. To me this seems like a data grab for Crew to resell your booking and property information.Am I missing something vital? Some benefit I am not seeing? I signed up without the integration as I cannot see anything I’d get from it but am curious what your take is on this? Cheers!

We have a conversation TODAY with our local cleaner and I would love to summarize comments from the year. I seem to remember something presented on one of the Town Halls but I can’t find anything when looking through help or the community on how.

My abnb and VRBO calendar not synced as of yesterday and i was double booked by abnb. i have resolved the issue now but i need to know hoe to prevent this from happening again?

Fun fact, but not funny...I just got a guest's change request for a date. Confirmed at Booking.com. I assumed that booking was clever enough, not to forgive my holiday home twice as Airbnb and Hospitable does when changing requests.But that was not the case. Booking.com does not check whether the period is busy or free, when a change request comes.What a nonsense-bug 😥 a world leading booking system cannot check if something has already been booked and offers me to move the guest purely to this booked period.So with every change request from a guest at Booking.com, you would have to see if the requested period is available.Greetings from GermanyStefan

I would love to make the jump to Hospitable but one of the major concerns I currently have is the owner portal… primarily how the financial data is displayed. We use GetClearing for booking <> bank deposit reconciliation, owner statements and utilize trust accounting with a bookkeeping team.When my owners login to their portal and view their dashboard my understanding is that the portal would only reflect gross booking revenue and maybe a reservation breakdown for each booking?Are there any customizations available that I am missing or improvements coming to how financial data is displayed to owners? I would really love the ability to create custom owner dashboards that reflect more data like what we see in the Metrics Tab. I would potentially be interested in the ability to run owner statements & payouts in Hospitable as well but again, lack of customization with how the statements are built & commission structures makes this a dealbreaker for me.Thanks!

Curious-  i accept payments directly today but considering making the switchWhen do guests get charged for their holiday when booking charges them?We take payment in full at the time of booking but would like to get out of the fraudulent charge back rish (we have had  few problems) and the hassle of processing refunds Any pros/cons on making the switch?of course i like the postive cash flow part with the current model

I’m extremely frustrated with Google vacation listings. My Cabin is being advertised incorrectly by multiple listing companies that I have no agreements with and the information that they have is incorrect and trying to get in touch with somebody to get the information fixed is impossible. Expedia and others has anybody these issues and how did you fix the problem

Hey Fellow Hosts and Property Managers If you are in a World Cup city, it appears that Airbnb will pay you a referral bonus (and/or a corresponding host account bonus in some cases if you are a property manager) for all new properties brought on board in specific Zips (and postal codes here in Canada) between now and the end of February.  You might be wondering “how is this different than the normal referral program from Airbnb?”. In this case, API-connected hosts (a la you on Hospitable) are ALSO eligible. Under the regular referral program, API hosts are specifically EXCLUDED (BTW - you can ask me how we generally get around that requirement and get rewarded EVERY time we bring on a new account - but that’s a separate tale). Anyway, if you are in Toronto, Vancouver, Boston, Atlanta, LA, Mexico City, etc (World Cup host cities) check out this referral program from Airbnb.https://www.airbnb.ca/e/fifa-host-referrals

In my market of Ocean City, MD, where condominiums are the norm, most smaller condo units have heat and A/C that’s controlled on a room-by room basis.The typical 1 BR condo has two through-the-wall air conditioners (functionally identical to window ACs, except that there’s a dedicated sleeve for them on the outer walls). And for heat, there’s typically 4 electric baseboard radiators, each with its own thermostat.Mysa is the main player in this space for “smart thermostats” that can control electric radiators.Mysa also makes thermostats for controlling “dumb” A/C units (it’s a glorified IR emitter that simulates the handheld remote). Those don’t work tremendously well for A/C units, so whenever I need to replace an A/C unit, I make sure to get an EQK or TCL brand, because those have apps that let you control the A/C remotely. There’s also a third-party app called SmartLife that can generically control wi-fi enabled air conditioners. I bring this up because there are two feature requests

Has anyone else noticed pricing differences between the 3? What i have set on pricelabs isn't what is showing on hospitable & then not correct on abb. Some days are correct then others are off $5-$10. ???

If you put in an amendment does the software automatically factor in the weekly discount on airbnb? I think we set it at 10% but I forget. The guest wants to know the extra cost for the extra few nights including the weekly discount.