Industry Conversations

I have to replace my shower head (the actual handheld device wore out).  I’m considering going with the large rain-head style and if i do, I lean against the handheld shower.  I have decent water pressure, fyi. Any thoughts or tips / brands?  My place is a tiny home - not high price luxury,  but great ratings & good occupancy. I get zero children - the avatar is couples - some seniors - not a lot. 

Hi everyone,I’m curious how other property managers here handle owner communication and reporting. We already provide owners with access to KPIs via the owner portal and monthly reports, but I’m currently thinking about adding proactive quarterly performance summaries to better explain why a property is performing well (or what actions we take if it’s not). A few questions I’d love to hear your thoughts on:• Do you actively send quarterly or strategic performance updates to owners, or do you mainly rely on dashboards and monthly reports?• How do you usually benchmark performance for owners (market comparison, ADR, occupancy, RevPAR, etc.)?• Do you use external tools for market benchmarks, or do you keep it more high-level? From a product perspective, it would also be interesting if Hospitable could support basic market benchmarking directly inside owner KPIs

My guest has asked me to send a confirmation of his reservation. I have looked everywhere and couldn't find anything. I took a screenshot of the reservation and sent that to him but surely there is something more professional.

VRBO just listed their partners and I don’t see Hospitable on the listhttps://www.vrbo.com/connectivity?status=Elite%2CPreferred?utm_source=marketo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mid_15976&utm_content=na&utm_term=advanced_email&mkt_tok=NDQzLVlZUS00MTAAAAGfwtd4NZNWX8DQPs29NrnBNx-7xk0cdm9iANe3PTNgc_k1CRUa7C6Df0KFGpF8wxmkeqTreaZl0xuwTWOzktps0fFY04PvTzXz9V0YUx2JyhuxqVY

I’m curious to hear how other hosts are offering Netflix, Hulu, etc. in their units. I am starting to hit the “scalability wall” with the way I’ve been doing it so far.The way I’ve been doing it so far has been to simply have an extra profile under each of my personal streaming accounts. The “guest profile” is named in a way that’s obvious to guests and it sits alongside the profiles for my other family members. My personal profiles are PIN-locked as needed so that people don’t rent movies, change my subscription plan, etc. Netflix is the most forgiving as far as enabling me to use a single account across 5 STRs (plus my personal home). On the other end, Hulu is the most restrictive, as far as constantly booting TVs off and having to go through the “update household” method to get them back on.Once in a while a guest says something like “Netflix/Hulu isn’t working, what do I do?” and I have to tell them to click “update household” and/or to have it send me a cod

Hey there,Would you be interested in joining a video call to chat about best practices for optimizing listings and revenue?I recently joined this community and thought it would be valuable to trade notes with others on the strategies you use to maximize revenue. I’m an owner (not a property manager, and not selling anything). My STRs are in the Outer Banks, NC, with one in Denver. I tend to outperform my competitors and use some creative approaches to boost revenue and ranking, but I always pick up new ideas from others.If you also feel like you’ve found effective strategies—and are open to learning and sharing “secrets”—I’d love to connect.Reply if you’re interested! I’m hoping to keep it to a small group (5–6 people max).All the best,Scott

Is it possible to generate a 1099 for my owners in hospitable?  If not what is the best way to gather this information for my CPA? I am a co-host for 3 different owners.  I have a separate checking accounts for each owner where the revenue is direct deposited from AIRBNB and VRBO.  I do a monthly ACH to each owner for their monthly revenue minus expenses (owner report here on hospitable.) Do i send the 1099 for the Net Deposited amount (after OTA fees and taxes withheld by VRBO and AIRBNB?)

Hello, I am reaching out to you to ask if a French speaker could explain the website to me, as I am having trouble understanding it and I know there is a lot of help available on it.Please contact me here: contact@sensitivehost.com

I had a VRBO rep reach out to me last week and tell me that because I use a property management system, I wasn’t able to access many of the features that would make me “more attractive” to their users.  Is anyone familiar with this issue? 

I just got asked if a couple could have a small (60) person wedding with 20 spending the night. I usually cap max at 17. Should I go ahead with this booking and up the cleaning fee as 60 may create a large mess? or should I say no thankyou?

When a guest enters one of my listings, the property literally springs to life. They are welcomed by name by an AI Avatar on the TV, rolling out a digital 'red carpet' immediately. Within seconds, guests can tell the smart home their ideal temperature, or even mention they're hungry—prompting the microwave to fire up and start popping popcorn.But my favorite automation solves the classic 'Group Amnesia' problem. We've all had bookings where the lead guest knows the rules, but the rest of the group is totally clueless, right? To fix this, I have a motion-triggered announcement that plays the night before departure. It ensures the whole group hears the checkout time and procedures, so no one is left guessing. Or if I need a vehicle moved or the trash to be taken out, I use my mobile smart remote to both program the message and set the motion trigger.When it's time to leave, guests simply load the dishwasher and hit a physical 'Checkout' button on their way out.

If I’m using hospitables dynamic pricing do I need price labs? Are they similar or is there a benefit I’m missing out on by not layer with pricelabs?

We currently charge guests for our Waivo damage waivers a “management fee” of $25/booking. We are moving toward the “self insuring” route but curious what people are charging each reservation to make this happen? I don’t want to deter bookings by charging too much but I’d like to charge enough to create a fund that would actually cover damage.

Hi I am having issues logging in due to being hacked at my account for hospitable.com like airbnb

 A few years ago I used Guesty as my PMS, and one feature I really liked was their built-in listing optimization tool. It would automatically go into each Airbnb listing daily, slightly rearrange a photo, then move it back a few minutes later to keep the listing “active.” I genuinely believe this helped with Airbnb’s algorithm and visibility. I’ve since switched to Hospitable and now do this manually, but with 50+ listings it’s extremely time-consuming. Does anyone know of software that can automate this (or something similar), or have tips on optimizing listings at scale without so much manual effort?

Hi everyone — I’m curious what solutions people have found for collecting guest email addresses post-booking given Airbnb’s limitations.I’ve tested StayFi Wi-Fi hardware in the past, but it proved unreliable and caused connectivity issues for guests, so I moved away from that approach. One idea I’ve heard is sending a post-stay or follow-up message with a link to a page where guests can opt in to future promotions or property updates.For those who’ve tackled this successfully:• What methods are actually working for you?• At what point in the guest journey do you request the email?• Any lessons learned or tools you’d recommend?Appreciate any real-world insights.

We’re getting 85-90% occupancy on AirBnB. But VRBO has absolutely ZERO bookings. Listings are as identical as can be, dnyamic pricing is synced. Is anyone else facing the same issue?

We are thinking about adding a hot tub to our property. What is the best kind to get and how hard is it to keep clean between guests. Are they worth investing in?

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

Switched from Evolve to managing our own listings recently.  just found out that VRBO rejected most, but not all, of the pix we uploaded.  These were the exact same professionally taken pix that Evolve used.  We bought the pic files from Evolve and I uploaded the same original files they used, which VRBO had no problem with.  Now they are rejected on our listings, and probably the reason we have almost zero traction on VRBO so far.  I have a feeling its the fact that we still have listings with Evolve until we work thru the remaining reservations we had with them.  The listings are no longer public, but they probably exist through the Evolve/VRBO integration, even though none of our remaining bookings are with VRBO.  How do we get this fixed?  Evolve and VRBO both point fingers at each other.  I don’t want to wait another 2 months until we’ve finished all Evolve bookings to delete the account.

During the off-season, my cleaners have trouble getting staff who are happy to work on Sundays. If I wanted to configure my calendar between now and March, such that if there is a booking that ends on a Sunday, then block off Sunday night (so it can be cleaned on Monday)… and if there is a booking that starts on a Sunday, block off Saturday night (so it can be cleaned on Saturday)… How would I go about that? In other words, “No same-day turnovers on Sundays”, but only for a certain range of dates. I’ve been blocking nights manually for now but I’m curious if it can be done systematically.

I am co hosting and struggling with whether or not to create the accounts (Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO) and then hand them off to the owners or have the owners create the accounts.  As a co host, I am doing the heavy listing as in creating and filling in all their information.  I guess it’s a client satisfaction question, but what have you issues have you run into doing it one way or the other?

I was curious if anyone else is experiencing this issue, I got a 5 day suspension on a listing after one guest left a 1star review for checkin (overall 5 stars) 6 months ago and another one leaving a 2 star review on cleanliness (I constantly get top grades here) and 1 star on value. (Overall 3 stars) I understand reviews are subjective (I can’t argue perceived value) but to get a suspension after two moderate-ish reviews seems excessive, no? What’s your experience? And am I wrong in being shocked?

With the substantial increase in commission for Airbnb, I’m now wondering whether to just eliminate some of my mark ups, given I have a price markup for every channel now. Previously they were all set off of Airbnb Airbnb is now I believe, the highest commission rate. Has anyone gone in and just leveled out mark ups given that price increase?

Hi everyone,I’m hoping to get some advice from hosts who have dealt with difficult disputes with Booking.com, especially around fraud and unpaid reservations.I’m currently in a situation where: a guest booked via Booking.com using a fraudulent account no payment was ever received the guest stayed one night and engaged in criminal activity (police involved) the property required professional remediation Booking.com was contacted during the stay but said they couldn’t intervene or cancel Despite everything that occurred, Booking.com issued a commission invoice for the reservation... After disputing the commission, Booking.com closed my account and is now threatening legal action over the charge.I’m curious if anyone has had any success reaching an actual human that understands the STR business at Booking.com? So far, out of all the OTA’s, Booking.com seem