Hosting on AirBnB will give you the opportunity to increase your monthly income, but it will only be a profitable side hustle as long as you have the appropriate management skills, and more than that, the time to manage it efficiently.
Let’s assume you are done with the decoration, wi-fi, and the basics for hosting. It looks like you are ready to receive guests at your lovely home. A new inquiry comes your way and it’s a potential first guest, he starts asking questions about your area, the size of your home, how close you are to certain locations, if you can offer discounts, if you can offer a late check out, if you can offer an early check in, if they can smoke, if they can bring their trained cat, how to check in, and tell me when to stop because the questions can be endless. Yes, you need to reply to every question because that’s what good hosts do. Such prospect guest seems decided to proceed with the booking, but did you actually take the time to screen him? That’s right, you also need to ask some questions in order to minimize risks. It’s a back and forth process, just like the times you rented your home for long term leases, except now, this process repeats itself many times every week. Sometimes even everyday if you are in high season, but after a few interactions you get booked.
Congratulations! You have your first guest. You need to get everything ready before he arrives. Cleaning will take you at least a couple hours if you haven’t done the laundry of bed sheets and towels, so you turn on the washer, but you realize there is no detergent, so you have to get some cleaning supplies as soon as possible. This can easily be done if you don’t have anything else to do, but if you have a tight schedule, the best you can do is to get some help to get your home cleaned. Assuming your place is now shining you now have to coordinate for check in. Your guest might be arriving quite late since his flight had a delay, and yes, you have to plan ahead for the key exchange. Assuming you have the key exchange figured out, don’t underestimate the possibility of receiving a phone call in the middle of the night. You guessed it, your guest may reach out to you at any time for any reason. Perhaps the internet is not working, or he doesn’t know how to use the TV (believe it or not, it’s a common question). So again, as a good host, you have to be there, at any time to answer any questions.
Next day, he messages you to find out a good place to have breakfast and you nicely respond while you are busy at work, but he messages you again while you are having lunch to notify about a clogged toilet. Can’t blame your guest, it can happen to anyone, but you have to get it fixed. Better get someone who can help quick. Coordinating the time with the vendor and your guest can be challenging at times, so be prepared for it too.
Check out time is approaching, and you are ready to clean but your guest is not leaving. You are wasting your precious time at the door waiting for him to leave. You desperately call him to put some pressure and after a few attempts you finally get the green light to start cleaning but you wasted time already. No time to complain, you need to leave it spotless for your next guest who is actually calling you already because he has some questions about the check in process already. While you are about to finish with the cleaning, your phone rings and your previous guest asks if you didn’t find a pair of glasses. You in fact found it, but you now have to be the nice host again to mail it back to him since he is on his way to the airport by now.
The hosting journey described above is obviously not the same every time, not all guests will give you that much work. There are in fact many types of guests. There are guests that are really easy to handle and they don’t need a lot of attention but there is a huge contrast as well. If the example above looks exaggerated, I’m sorry to tell you that it can get more complicated than this. If you can do it yourself? Absolutely. If you can do it on a frequent basis? That sounds more challenging. If you are a busy entrepreneur with more than just an investment property on your to-do list, we highly recommend you work along a Property Manager to run your business more efficiently and more than anything, to save you precious time that you can spend with your family instead.