2026 Tips and Tricks

[00:00:02] Speaker A: This is Short Term Rental Management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl. So it is almost springtime. It's 2026 and it is tips and tricks. We're so excited that you're here. It's. I'm very grateful to have you join us. Grateful for the opportunity to speak today. This will be recorded and put on Short Term Shop Plus. This has been brought to you by the Short Term Shop and short term shop plus, which is stsplus.com and we'd love to have you join us over there. Stsplus.com it's, it's fantastic. You can't, can't, can't miss out on it. My co host. Please keep an eye on mute buttons. There are a lot of people coming in. We're triple digits already. So if you hear some noises and things like that, please keep close eye on the mute buttons, et cetera. And we've got a lot to talk about. There's been a lot of exciting things going on in the world of vacation rentals, in the OTAs, in pricing, in AI and how do we stay competitive? How do we keep up with our neighbors? And the best way to do that is, is to hang out with us, right? And we're doing the best we can all the time. And I will say that bookings are looking pretty good already. I'm at 67 bookings for the year and it's only the third week of the year and my January numbers are up from last year. We're expecting Travel to increase 4.6%, 2026 over 2025. And the future looks bright. And also, hell, we might even be able to find a deal this year, which is what we're gonna turn it over to, boss. And we're gonna start with that topic right now. Avery, what does it look like out there? How do we get a deal? What are we dealing with in 26? [00:02:05] Speaker B: All right, so thank you guys so much for coming. Really happy that, that you came. And Luke, hit mute your the main video right now. Anyway, so thank you guys for coming. And what I'm going to talk about just pretty briefly is what the real estate market, the sales market is looking right, like right now in terms of y' all being able to get deals. So as of today, we're in January. End of January, rates are at 6.19%, which this time last year the mortgage rates were at, they were hovering around down 7%. So you got 0.75% lower than last Year. And people are getting off the sidelines. People are starting to buy houses again. We're starting to see the market pick up just a little bit, which is not a lot because the market has been completely dead and in the toilet for about three years. So you're not missing the boat by any means. But we are starting to see people kind of wake up from their hibernation of, of thinking that the world is coming to an end right now in terms of getting deals. Depending on where you're buying, this strategy might work better than others if you're buying in a true vacation market. The. The real estate market is always worse in true vacation markets than markets, metro markets that have a lot of primary homes. The reason for that is, you know, somewhere. Somewhere like the Smokies are down here in Destin 38, Panama City Beach. 90% of the real estate in these markets is purely discretionary. Like funny money. I'm either buying a beach house or I'm buying a boat. And people buy a beach house or a mountain house or they're buying it as an investment. It's not something that they need. These are not need to buyers. These are want to buyers. So when the market turns like it has for the past few years, the market is always slower that down in these types of markets than in like your Nashville's, your Austin's, where people actually live. Maybe they're having another baby, maybe they got another job and they need to move. So those types of markets keep rolling a little bit more than these types of markets because you have the primary homeowners kind of keeping it going because you've got those need to buyers and the need to sellers. So these types of markets always, I don't want to say easier because it's still, it's never easy to get a deal. But if you're offering in true vacation markets, the market's lower, you have more inventory to choose from, which means you can negotiate further with sellers. You can try. You know, no amount of negotiation or logic is going to make a seller who doesn't want to come down just magically decide to come down. But where you do have leverage is that you have a lot of choice. So if you run into these sellers, like Luke and I ran into this this past month, we've been trying to offer on the same house for a month and this seller will not like, they won't even respond to us. So now we just kind of waited better one came up this week that we're working on very similar. So patience and persistence Making a bunch of low offers. There's no reason in this market to run off and make asking price offers on everything. Now is the time to work on getting deals because you have so much breathing room, you have so much inventory sitting on these types of markets. You can make the low offers. You have time, if that seller won't negotiate with you, to go work on some other ones. Maybe you come back in a month and this property is still there and the seller's ready to work with you then. So patience and persistence is the name of the game. In 2026, rates are looking a little bit better than they have been. I don't. We're not going to see any major drops. I don't think. I think we're going to hover between 6.25 and 6 even this year. Maybe if something crazy happens, we might get down to 5.75. But I'm. I'm thinking like an average of 6% is what we're looking at this year. Not expecting any major drops. So again, patience, persistence, getting out there and making offers. What I don't want to hear from you guys this year is when you call me up and you say, hey, I want to look in this market. Because I looked in this other market and it didn't work. And I'm like, what do you mean? What do you mean it didn't work? Well, none of the numbers work well. How many offers did you make? None. [00:06:30] Speaker C: You. [00:06:31] Speaker B: That's not deciding that the market doesn't work. That's. You didn't make any effort. You didn't make any low offers. There is a number at which every single property will work for you. Offer that number. Offer the number that works for you. I don't want to hear that market didn't work and you didn't make any offers. You don't know until you make the offer. So get out there, make the offers, and eventually you will find a seller who's ready to deal with you. Anything else? Luke, you're on mute. Sorry. Told you to mute, and now it's. [00:07:05] Speaker A: Can you unmute? Mute her. You muted unmuter. Anyway. Yeah, sellers are tough right now. You just have no idea what they're. And again, I'm not an agent, but I've been making offers, and it's wacky. You know, I don't. [00:07:20] Speaker B: It's wacky. [00:07:21] Speaker A: You get close to asking on one, and then they tell you no, and then you got other deals where they're willing to take much less than asking. So I think it's A numbers game right now. Make as many offers as you can and we're all looking for a deal, right? I mean, that's it, period. Every single person on this call is looking for a deal. Make no mistake about it. And they're out there. You just gotta uncover them. You know, I would say they're a whole lot easier to find right now than they were three or four years ago. Well, thank you, Avery. [00:07:55] Speaker B: Happy to help. [00:07:56] Speaker A: Wonderful, Wonderful. Let's go back to the party and we're going to talk about AI. It's been a big, hot, hot topic lately. A lot of management softwares are starting to work it in which we'll talk about that in a, in a minute. I actually just had a podcast yester with the CEO of hello Host. She was wonderful. She's been on Avery's program as well. So they're worth looking at. And, and, and then there's Host Buddy. And I think it's important to understand what we're talking about when we say AI. This is not going to replace auto messages, at least as of right now. I think in most cases we do still want to keep our auto messages, but the AI can answer kind of in between questions and, you know, how do I do this and that and where's the address? And so I'm going to turn it over to Patrick right now because he's been using Host Buddy quite a bit with Owner Res and he's enjoying it, which we will talk about Rezi after the fact. But Patrick, if you don't mind, can you talk to us about. Obviously you're an owner as user and how are you incorporating Host Buddy? [00:09:18] Speaker D: Sure, Luke, be happy to. So it's really Easy to connect HostBuddy to Owner as or any property management software. It does to Hospitable and many others too. But you just. There's a. [00:09:33] Speaker A: You. [00:09:34] Speaker D: You sign into Host Buddy, you set up an account, you click to integrate it will download your properties, pull everything and it'll scrape all the data depending on what you sign up for. Two months of message prior messages, three months, six months. I'll scrape all of your information from your property list that you've got in the property management software and then you can test it through here to make sure it's working. It does not like Luke said, it does not your system messages still need to be there, but it basically takes away you having to respond to guests when they have a question. Like this morning when the guest is asking me where the beach chairs are. Well, Host Buddy's taking care of that because it's in the property description. I've answered the question. This is what the dashboard looks like and how you do it. You connect the pms, you import the properties, which ones you want to do, they charge you per property and you test it and you go live. And then what I really like about Host Buddy is not only does it have messaging for you, but it also takes care of maintenance issues. So I haven't clicked these as solved yet, but it will text me when there's a. When the guest reports a maintenance issue. So this morning the guest reported the dishwasher, dishwasher screw had come out that was not mounted to one of my dishwashers. Well, I'm taking care of that right now. I was actually just texting with my handyman and he's over there right now taking care of it. And it will also do upsells for you. So it will, you can, you can update the upsells if you have a, a post day gap night it will message the guest and you can click on if you've got it enabled, you can set if you want it two days before, three days before the guest checks out the minimum time and offer them a discount. And Host Buddy will take care of that without you having to go in there and click. It will do pre night stays. [00:11:37] Speaker E: And. [00:11:39] Speaker D: We'Ll do inquiry follow ups. So you don't actually have to follow up with a guest if they've inquired about your property. You can actually teach Host Buddy. So if we go into, if we go into messages into the inbox and I can see that this guest right here, Host Buddy has said you're very welcome. This is Host Buddy and I can tell it if I like it and why I like it. I click the like button here and I can say and enter a note to say why this was a good message. So it takes about maybe a week to train Host Buddy to sound like you. And it's very, very easy to use and it's actually much nicer than me. I'm very direct. So me, this is me. I immediately messaged the guest last night when they messaged about wanting to change their dates for a book and they just put in. I said not a problem. And then Host Buddy comes in and they make me sound like I'm the nicest person on earth. So overall it's very easy to use. It's very user friendly. It will text your maintenance people when there's an issue. So if there's a bug issue, it'll text my pest guy that there's an issue and tell him the property. It will text my cleaner if there's a cleaner issue and it will do everything you're asking for. And it's very easy to use. So I can't say enough nice things about it. I did attempt to use the Resi AI in Owner as and I was not a fan. I went straight back to Host Buddy. [00:13:14] Speaker A: And why is that? It's just limited. It is on the newer side. Correct. [00:13:19] Speaker D: It was still in its beta face and it was not actually sending the messages. I had to come in and click the messages. Host Buddy will automatically send messages for you. It makes it a lot easier on you. And if you move to that open voice phone, it will actually send the text messages and communicate with the guest via text messages as well. So it's got a lot of nice options there. [00:13:45] Speaker A: When you say open voice, you mean Open Phone, the software. [00:13:47] Speaker D: Open Phone? [00:13:48] Speaker A: Yes. You can integrate openphone with Host Buddy? [00:13:51] Speaker D: Yes. [00:13:52] Speaker A: Oh, very cool. Like that. Can you say Host Buddy? You're too nice. Yes, you can. Okay, I should clarify, friends, because there's a lot of you here and we are extremely grateful that you are here. We are not giving to give you any kind of affiliate code or any of that with any of the stuff we talk about today. We're just here to give you the most up to date information in the space. So every, every single thing we talk about today is just an honest opinion. So very important as far as we're concerned to let you know that. So thank you, Patrick. So that was actually going to be my question. Is Resy any good? It is an upgrade, right? I had to pay extra for Resi. [00:14:29] Speaker D: You're paying similar prop price for Resi as you would for Host Buddy. The only differences that I could tell was Resi is actually in owner S and they were still in the beta phase and they're still working out kinks. And Host Buddy easy up and running and is making it very easy on me. I probably spend 80% less time talking with guests than I was before I integrated the AI. [00:14:53] Speaker A: Have you ever had a situation where it responded in such a way that you were not happy? [00:14:58] Speaker D: Yes. So the initial phase, like talking about the pool heater and what it can do and I went in, I put a down button on that, that response, I corrected it and let the guests know that there was an issue that my assistant had given the wrong information and it has not had an issue since with that message. So you can go in and correct it. [00:15:21] Speaker A: It corrected that particular information. As well, so it won't happen like that again. Is that what it's. [00:15:25] Speaker D: Yes. So now it knows exactly what to send. [00:15:29] Speaker A: Yeah, now it knows how you want to respond to that question. [00:15:32] Speaker D: And it will get you upstream, too, because if you have frequently asked questions, you can actually put those frequently asked questions in Host Buddy when you're doing it and write the answer you want Host Buddy to give. And it will give that answer. So you can get upstream of those frequently asked questions that you're normally having to answer or you have a template for, and go ahead and tell Host Buddy what those are. [00:15:54] Speaker A: And for those of you that are not familiar with that term, that is from a book called Upstream by Dan Heath, which is gospel around here. We all love that book very much. And thank you for mentioning that, Patrick. Okay, great. And again, hello, Host is another one that's an option. They seem to be very similar, but, you know, obviously different companies. And I interviewed the lady from hello, Host literally yesterday for my podcast. Have not personally tried it just yet, but you can find my podcast, Short Term Rental Management every Tuesday and Avery's podcast every Wednesday, which is the short term show most appropriately titled podcast of all time. All right, back to the presentation. Thank you, Patrick. [00:16:42] Speaker D: You're very welcome. [00:16:43] Speaker A: Luke Management Software's couple of updates that we would like to discuss. Before we get too deep into this, I should mention that for the most part, we hear about Owner as and Hospitable most often around here. So those are the two we have the most experience with. Again, no affiliate codes of any kind. Hospitable also has. Well, we're going to skip. We'll go to that next. Security deposits. Security deposits are now in your dashboard on Hospitable. Do we want to use these? That's up to you. No wrong answer here. We will cover this a little bit more in depth when we talk about VRBO updates here in just a few minutes. But this is something fairly new from Hospitable, not new for Owner. Right? You guys have had this for a very long time. [00:17:34] Speaker D: Yeah, we've had it a long time. And I love my security deposits. It helps prevent parties, in my opinion. [00:17:39] Speaker A: How much would you say? And I see Chuck shaking his head as well. How much are we putting a security deposit on a particular property? [00:17:46] Speaker D: I do. 500 bucks. I've thought about going up to maybe a thousand. [00:17:50] Speaker A: Okay, I should give some context here. Patrick's houses are beachfront and extremely high dollars. So that's, you know, keep that in mind. [00:17:58] Speaker D: But you can actually Enemy method The security deposits in your area, like that Margaritaville Beach Resort that's right near. Near us in PCB is charging 2000 for a beach front house, so. [00:18:10] Speaker A: Got it. Chuck, what are you doing for security deposits? [00:18:13] Speaker F: My bigger places I'm doing 500. For me it's more a question of what damage might not be covered by something else. And in my smaller places are 300. Most people don't even blink at 300. [00:18:25] Speaker A: Really? And you do this across the board, all OTAs? [00:18:29] Speaker F: Yep. [00:18:30] Speaker A: Interesting. We will revisit this topic when we get to the verbo section of today's program. Again, this is Hospitables AI. Similar to what Patrick was talking about a minute ago. We are finding that Hospitables AI is extremely simple. You basically just go to your. It's just called inbox AI on your guest messaging section and you can basically turn it on or turn it off and then you can have it escalate an escalation policy. In other words, if they keep messaging and then what do you do as far as particular operating procedure which this one is set to. If the guest is locked out, it will escalate to use the last four digits of your phone number. Because that's what most of us are doing anyway. Right. With the Schlage and the Yale integrations. One thing I will say is that on my AI messages you do need to consider are you going to tell the guest that is an AI message or not? And again, I think there's a no wrong answer here. If you're going to start implementing AI, whether it's coming from a third party software or if it's coming from your management software, you do need to consider like what Patrick said with the water, the pool heater. Should we say, hey, this message was sent by AI? We are currently doing that. This message was sent by AI. If you need a human, we're available, you know, seven days a week during these hours. But I could see where if you're using a more sophisticated AI software like Host Buddy or hello Host, where you would probably maybe want to lean towards letting folks think that that's you, you know. So again, no wrong answer there. We are currently telling them it's AI. A couple of onorez updates. Again, Patrick and Chuck, feel free to speak on this. This is resi. We already covered that. It is very simple and not sophisticated in any way. And how much is this? Is this expensive? This is inexpensive. It is an upgrade, yes? Yeah, go ahead, Chuck. [00:20:46] Speaker F: It's going to be $9 a property. As an Add on. You know, in most cases these AI companies are using a large language model like Chat, GPT or Claude or, or Gemini and they have to pay them. So it's, it's not exactly a profit grab. They're just trying to integrate services. Not that they're not making money on it, but. Yeah. So it's about $9 per property. [00:21:13] Speaker A: It. [00:21:14] Speaker F: It supposed to ownerize is releasing it full at the, oh so they say at the end of this month. So we're coming off the beta period and we'll see how well that goes. So I've been using it, but you know, I gotta be honest, I've been at this a long time like you have and I've got so many automated messages that I found AI was only doing about 8 or 10amonth for me and that wasn't worth my time to keep it up. So I'm, I'm, I have not integrated an AI tool into my messaging stream yet. [00:21:50] Speaker A: You bring up an excellent point because we, we have dozens and dozens and dozens of auto messages and some of them are turned on and some of them are turned off. But it has been fairly rare that I'm using hospitable AI right now with very good possibility that I'm going to upgrade to one of these third parties. It's very rare that hospitable even responds. And also again with the hospitable AI messaging being extremely simple, oftentimes it'll say we're not going to respond to this, basically where we don't know what to say. And then when it does respond, it's pretty rare. And sometimes it, you know, I'm pretty okay with what it said. Sometimes I'm very impressed with what it said and then other times I'm a little bit like, I'm not sure. So it's getting there. It is helpful. But for instance, what Chuck's talking about, guest says, what's the WI FI password? If you're new, which I'm sure many of you are, it would be easier I would assume. Again you got to understand most of us on this that are speaking on today's call have been around a long time. We're old school. So I already have an automated message set up that is not technically AI, but it is completely auto triggered to respond to the word WI Fi and it responds exactly how I want it to. So in essence that is sort of AI in the form of an auto message that I don't have to pay extra for and I don't have to worry about Whether it said the right thing or not, because it was coming directly from us. So what we do is we just use the word WI FI as a trigger and then we will send an automated message that includes the WI fi section from that property's guestbook. Guidebook, I should say, because I, as a host, I'm always trying to push people to the guidebook because it gets me out of trouble. And as we all know, nobody reads the guidebook, but it does get you out of trouble and it's very helpful in most situations. So if somebody says WI fi, it takes them to the WI fi section of my guidebook. At that point they can then be like, oh, this guidebook tells me literally everything I need to know about this house so I don't need to bother these people, you know. So again, that can all be done without AI if your auto messages are set up. But again, if you're brand new, it's a lot of work to set up all those, especially with multiple properties, all those wifi auto messages, a lot to deal with. And if AI can do it for you, all the better. [00:24:20] Speaker D: And I'd say another area it shines in, Luke, is like, I have a lot of guests because all my properties are dog friendly. Say, oh, I forgot to add dogs to my booking. Can we get dogs added? And AI will come in and say, I will let Patrick know that we need to get the two dogs added. And the fee is this for the pet fee. And we are so happy to host your two fur babies. I mean, just puts it on there, makes it seem like a five star experience. And so it does a great job of that. Or if they're coming to celebrate a birthday for grandmother, it will put it on there for you without you on a booking inquiry, without you having to respond and really set the tone right for the guest right off the bat. [00:25:02] Speaker A: Short Term Shop plus has live and recorded sessions on the following topics. Creating compelling listings, marketing your STR property, setting up a new listing, managing from a distance, finding and acquiring your first or next STR Live revenue management audits with the pros analyzing an STR for gross revenue. All of this and much, much more. More is now available at your fingertips with Short Term Shop plus everything you need to know to have success in the world of vacation homes and STR. Please join us at stsconsultation.com that's stsplus.com or stsconsultation.com to learn more. [00:26:01] Speaker F: That's an excellent use. [00:26:03] Speaker A: Love it. We did actually experiment with Host Buddy and now you Got me. Make me want to try it again because that was really cool. I didn't know you could click that thing and say, hey, do it this way next time. That's pretty cool. [00:26:13] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:26:16] Speaker A: All right, let's go back to the. And Patrick, can you explain this to me again? This only applies to co hosts and managers. Is that true? [00:26:26] Speaker D: Yes. So they just came out with PMV2 on owner res, which what was happening before I listened to their little podcast on it and basically like your incidental damage protection wasn't showing up and some other expenses if you were a co host or a property manager weren't being put to the owner statements. And so if you're a co host or a property manager, they've now changed that. And Those like the $37 fee for if you have damage protection with owner as or some other fees that aren't weren't being shown before are now being incorporated in this statement for you. And they're trying to make it easier for owner as to be used by co hosts. It's basically the change. [00:27:10] Speaker A: Love it. Again, I was on a specific there, folks. All right, let's see about the OTAs. A lot of goings on in the world of the platforms, if you will. Lost your beautiful faces. There you are. Airbnb has quietly, very quietly updated their minimum age age minimums for homes in the United States. So, guys, we're not here to get into super in depth on this because again, we're talking legal territory to a certain extent, but make sure you understand this new policy. It's actually kind of hard to find. If you Google Airbnb age policy, what's actually going to come up? We actually did this just before the call, and what comes up is the one for the experiences, not for the stays. So do a little digging to find this and just understand it. And it's possible this might not last very long because they didn't make any announcements of any kind, but as of right now, they have changed their policy to make it so that you can put an age minimum up to the age of 25 on your Airbnb profiles for a particular property. It's important to mention that VRBO has always had this. You can put an age. There's actually an age section on VRBO with a dropdown menu. You can put a minimum age on all VRBO properties. It's always been like that on VRBO. Airbnb traditionally has been 18 and older and they were fairly quiet about it until. And Chuck, correct me if I'm wrong, I Think that was last summer. They got a little more vocal about 18 and over only. [00:28:49] Speaker F: Yep. Last spring, actually, before spring break of last year. [00:28:54] Speaker A: Yeah, they. They were really pushing it hard. You got to be 18 and over only period. So that's where it got a little weird because you could be 25 on Verbo and 18 on Airbnb. And it's like, how do I keep track of all this? As of right now, Airbnb has changed the policy to be 25 and up to 25 and older. And that on Airbnb, the most important thing I think about this particular policy is that that is the booking party. The person, the person that actually books the home. Party was the wrong word there in this. In this room. But that person has to be your minimum age. Okay. They can bring according to this policy, and I'm no lawyer, I'm not interpreting this policy here, but take a look, close look, and I think you'll agree that they can bring 18 year olds if they want to. Okay. So keep that in mind. This is a bit of a change here from Airbnb. All right, let's talk vrbo and how do I get more verbo? This is Avery. Do you agree this is probably the number one management question we get? [00:29:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I would agree. Because so many people get mad at Airbnb and then they're like, I'm not getting any verbo. I'm not getting any verbo. And they just kind of quit trying on verbo is what I see anyway. [00:30:12] Speaker A: Yes. And this is something we discuss every single week on Management Monday, which we would love to have you there if you join Short Term Shop plus or you buy a house with the Short Term Shop. We do discuss in particular how to get more VRBO literally every single week. And it's real. The struggle is real. I will give you that. If you're the type of person that's been doing this for two or three years and has zero verbo, you're not alone. That is fairly common. So we're going to talk about things that have come to light recently and maybe some tricks to help you with that. First, being that you do need to understand this is extremely important. And nobody realizes this, especially my folks that are not getting any VRBO that you just don't realize they have different payment term capabilities on vrbo, which is actually a major win for me on vrbo. On Airbnb, we do not get to determine how the guest pays. They have their set way, which by the way, is 14 days prior to check in. They get charged. We don't need to deal with it on Airbnb. We never hear about it on Airbnb, but we don't, we also don't have options. Okay, vrbo, you get options. The downside is there's no way to make the options on vrbo nuts to nuts with Airbnb. So also on vrbo, and this is where my anti verbo people are going to be like, well, yeah, this is why I don't like vrbo. If you do more than one payment, this is a, this is a double edged sword here. It's a tough one. If you do more than one payment, meaning two or three payments, you are in charge of making sure they pay the second or third payment. Vrbo's not going to keep up with that. So there is the possibility, and this has been like this since back in the homeaway days. I would, I have all the confidence in the world they will change this. But it is this way right now. If you don't, if they don't make payment number two and you don't pay attention, they can come to your house having only paid half of the trip. Now you can set up auto messages again. I'm a hospitable, so I know on Hospitable there's, there's a trigger for payment updates, et cetera, where you basically just click that box and if VRBO sends a message that says because they will send an email doesn't mean anybody's going to pay any attention to it. But hospitable can catch that and say, hey, if you don't make your second payment, we're not going to send you the door code. So you can for the most part automate it. That doesn't mean they're not going to show up at the front door having no door code and having not paid. So keep that in mind. The way to fix that on VRBO is to have one payment. The only option for one payment, which I can't click this because it's a screenshot. If you click the one payment, the only option is 100% upfront. So that solves our problem to where the guest is not going to show up having not paid in full. But at this point it does make VRBO incredibly less attractive than Airbnb where they don't have to pay until a couple of weeks before check in. So they start clicking around, they might book it on VRBO and then they realize they gotta pay everything up front and they're like, oh, screw this, I can go over to Airbnb and you know, wait a little while. If you do the two payments, the first payment is a minimum of 25%. Again, this will be a drop down menu on Your, on your. VRBO can't go to zero on two payments. In other words, the first payment is zero. Second payment is 100. That's how Airbnb does it. Sort of can't do that. So it's a minimum of 25% on the first payment, which is actually good because if they decide to cancel, like let's say you have a 14 day cancellation policy, whatever they want to call it this week, strict firm, blah blah, blah, they change them all the time. You could do a 13 day second payment, meaning cancellation policy has expired. If they now cancel, you get to keep that first payment. So this is actually a better option than what happens on Airbnb. It's just that we don't have choices on Airbnb. So keep in mind you want to do your best to keep your payment terms as attractive as possible on vrbo knowing that to be honest with you, the payment terms on Airbnb are probably always going to be more attractive. Chuck, anything to add there? You good? [00:34:26] Speaker F: No good. I mean of course if you're an owner as you're taking your own payments, it's entirely up to you and you know, OneRose does a little bit different. But there is one more thing. If you do only pick one payment, you know, for it all up front, then the guest is also presented with an option of using. It's not Klarna, but it's one of the other paid later services through Verbo. [00:34:51] Speaker A: And that's only one payment. That's one payment only is what you're saying? [00:34:54] Speaker F: Yeah, that's only if you pick one payment. [00:34:56] Speaker A: Yeah, excellent point. Patrick, anything to add? Please don't give me any pro. I, I love owner stuff but because I know you like Verbo. Anything to add there? [00:35:07] Speaker D: I think Chuck covered it. Owner is awesome. [00:35:14] Speaker A: A little short term rental humor for you there, guys. Okay, cool. Kelly, anybody else on Verbo? Actually I have more Verbo. Anyway, so let's go to the next slide and if anybody, if any of the coaches or anybody want to chime in. [00:35:25] Speaker D: Oh, Luke, I would, I would say one thing. One thing. Owner as did just update is they now are allowing you to do the discounts in owner as for vrbo to help push the vrbo, like you can give an early booking discount and all that kind of stuff. Like if they put more 90 days out, that's. That's been another way to drive VRBO bookings for you. [00:35:44] Speaker A: I'm so glad you brought that up. VRBO this year did, or I should say last year did, release the promotions which you can find on your calendar. There's several promotions you can choose from that make your listing look more attractive. Certain dates look more attractive. It'll give you like strikethroughs and such, much like on Airbnb. I have multiple thoughts about this. I am using them. I'm mostly using them for last minute. The problem there becomes it gets very convoluted. And we're going to talk more about this when we get to booking.com here in a second. But you know, it's almost like how do I remember how many discounts I have stacked on VRBO versus what my price is on price labs? And if you've got a lot of properties, it's hard to keep track of all that stuff. But VRBO is going to reward you much like Airbnb in a lot of cases, or at least make you more visible if you are doing promotions. What Patrick is saying is that owner has the capability to do that right on their dashboard. Hospitable does not. They do for Airbnb, but not for vrbo. Although my hospitable folks, I've heard through the grapevine that that will come out. I believe the date I heard was the last day of March. So it should be coming soon, which will be very helpful. Still hard to keep track, like what discounts am I using and which ones am I not? But it'll be a lot easier than having to go from, you know, two or three, four OTAs back to your price labs, et cetera. [00:37:07] Speaker F: Can I add something here, Luke? [00:37:09] Speaker A: Yes, sir. [00:37:10] Speaker F: Recent meetings with vrbo, one thing they made very clear, if you want better visibility on vrbo, then you need to set up a promotion for their one key members. That's their loyalty program. You can do that through their promotion suite. Or if you're using owner res, you can do it in owner resources. There's three levels in it. There's 10, there's a blue, a silver and a gold. Minimum discounts 10%. If you do that, you get some merchandising, you know, a little badge mark on your on your property. But they said that's the, that the way to get the biggest boost in your search appearance is that, that right now. And I guess because they're pushing it, it's giving a big boost. I've done some simple testing and I got to say that it's true. [00:37:59] Speaker A: Coach Jim, you've been doing this as well. And again, I agree. 10. I'm doing a 10, 11, 12 for the blue, whatever the hell the colors are. Blue, gold, silver. Jim, you've actually been having success with this. Yes. [00:38:16] Speaker G: I'm doing the same. 10, 11, 12. [00:38:18] Speaker A: 10, 11, 12. And last time you sent me a screenshot, you had several bookings from doing that. [00:38:23] Speaker G: Yeah, because when you go and look at it, it actually tracks how many. [00:38:26] Speaker A: People are using it. [00:38:26] Speaker G: So it's helpful. It tells you if it's working. [00:38:29] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. Each. Each promotion you set up on VRBO will tell you how many people actually used it, which is kind of cool. So then moving forward, if you got one that nobody's using, get rid of it and focus on the ones that are working. But again, it's like I always say, how hard do you want to work? You know? And this is actually a good opportunity for me to. I should have mentioned this up front. The whole mission here, friends, is, as always, to provide amazing places for people to create memories while they're on vacation. And that is the goal. That is the mission, period. The people that are going on vacation to these homes are always number one for us, and we want to provide them with a fantastic experience at all times. Even if they're mean. I didn't say that. They're never mean. I love them. Love them. Another thing on Verbo, for my folks, they're not getting any Verbo. I. Verbo sucks. Again, I want to mention $10 billion. $10 billion on VRBO last year. There's money being exchanged on VRBO. It's. It's not a publicly traded company. It's privately owned, so we don't have exact numbers, but our research shows somewhere around 10 to 11 billion dollars. Basically neck and neck, by the way, with Airbnb. And so when you tell me that you're not getting any Verbo, I hate to tell you, but it's, you know, you gotta hold yourself accountable here. All right, so one thing to note is the damage protection. This is starting to change just a little bit. But I will say that up until recently, Airbnb did not have any sort of damage protection on their platform. And VRBO always has, which is, again, to me, it's a win for vrbo. But it does make vrbo bookings. It can make VRBO bookings less attractive because, for instance, like Patrick, he's. He's got these very large, beautiful beachfront homes in Panama City beach, and if he starts a 500 damage deposit old school way to do that would have been verbo only. And then you would have to do some sort of third party to get it on Airbnb. And it becomes more complicated, of course, than with the, with the onset of owner res. And that's what Patrick's using. So it's a bad example because I don't want any more owner is, you know. Anyway, I'm just joking. Love you owner as folks, but for the average user that's, you know, kind of an anti verbo person or I'm not getting any success on verbo person. If you have a damage deposit, and this might be some of you right now, if you've got a $300 damage deposit on a verbo property and you don't have one on your Airbnb because you're doing it on platform and Airbnb doesn't have that option, you are again making Airbnb look way more attractive. If I, if I book this house on VRBO and It cost me 400 in escrow until I check out, or if I book it on Airbnb where there is no escrow damage deposit, which one's more appealing, you know now, Whoops, I thought I had a screenshot. Oh, yeah, I think we already covered that. Most of the OTAs or the plat management softwares, including Hospitable, now have damage deposits built in. Hospitable, it will be in your properties. Under properties, click on the property and then in pricing there's a tab for damage protection. They are charging 2% for this, which. It seems like every time we turn around. Host, I know you're feeling the pain. It seems like every damn time we turn around, somebody's hitting us with $5 a month, $20 a month, 2% a month, you know, but to me, I think that damage deposit for my hospitable users is probably worth it because it keeps it uniform for all platforms. Patrick says does ownerized charge for damage deposits. [00:42:23] Speaker D: You'Re taking those directly through your credit card processor and it ends up being a hold on the credit card. So I take a $500 hold on the credit card two days prior to check in and I have it set up to automatically release seven days after checkout. That way my cleaners can get in, see if there's any maintenance issues. [00:42:41] Speaker A: But owner res is not taking 2% like hospital is. [00:42:44] Speaker D: No. [00:42:45] Speaker A: Okay, interesting. Again, if you're. What should my damage deposit be? For me, good rule of thumb was maybe one one night, you know, something like that. I would imagine Patrick's probably $500 a night average. So that's probably pretty close to what he's looking at if you got a less expensive property, you know, maybe only $150 damage deposit, something like that. Again, legal territory here. You guys got to do what's right for you and your family and your home, you know. [00:43:12] Speaker D: And I know you are hospitable, Luke. But the other thing I love about owner res is my guests also have the damage protection built in. I have silver enhanced protection, so when there's an issue, I try not to take a security deposit unless it's a bad guest. What I do is I go straight to damage protection, file an insurance claim for the damage and tell the guests, don't worry about it, I got you covered. Try to use that to get the five star review. And it's only if I've got the bad guess that I start hitting the damage protection. You got a security deposit? [00:43:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Makes sense. [00:43:45] Speaker F: Yeah, I'm on board with that too. The damage, the deposit is more to cover the things that may not be covered by damage insurance, like extra cleaning as an example, or the damage insurance. Most damage insurance products won't cover linens any longer. So that's, that's what deposits for. We have our set to seven. I'm sorry, we have our set to seven days, but we typically as soon as we hear back from the cleaners, everything is okay. Next time I'm on owner res, I'll just click the button to have it go back. [00:44:18] Speaker A: And keep in mind, all management softwares are starting to go this direction. So your, your management software may have is very similar situation to what they're talking about. [00:44:25] Speaker B: About. [00:44:28] Speaker A: Everything's getting more and more sophisticated, guys. We got to keep up with the times because otherwise your neighbors are going to take you down, you know. All right. Booking.com. oh, man. Booking.com. Okay, so if you're brand new, I should cover this. If you're brand new, we. It is our opinion that you need to be on Airbnb vrbo and preferably at the same time, don't get on Airbnb first because it's easier and then worry about Verbo later. It's a great way for Verbo to get left behind. Booking.com traditionally has been more difficult to deal with with, you know, possibly less upside. It is getting better. It is getting better. And I will also mention that booking.com does spend three times as much to market themselves as Airbnb or VRBO. So they are putting themselves on television, et cetera. Internet ads three times as much as the others, but man, is it a pain in the rear. I will say that my, the last property I went live with on bdc, they didn't ask me to do a video which is, was the first time I've ever had that happen. I think Chuck mentioned he, he had the same recently. Because if you guys are not familiar, booking.com has always made you do like a FaceTime of the property and they make you literally walk down the street to the street sign to prove that it's on that street. They seem to be maybe shying away from that a little bit. My most recent one, they didn't make us do that. But let's talk about BDC and some ways we can maybe gain some, some traction here. Some of this stuff's gonna be pretty similar to vrbo. For instance. They, they have a ton of promotions, a ton of promotions. And the one that's been working, and I know Kelly's have some success with this recently is the, the winter. I don't remember what it's called. As a matter of fact you can't see it here because I already used it. So it went away. Some sort of winter, you know, within the next 30 days. Special type of a deal and you get to choose what the percentage is and then they make your, they highlight your property, make you look more important, that kind of thing. The downside with BDC is they make it difficult to set these up, although they have recently released a new feature to where you can do it at the same time. So you can do a bulk edit. There's going to be a bulk edit section on the, I think it's second from the right where you can, this one here, you can see we already clicked promotions and then you can choose which promotion you want to use. Mobile rates. They always push this. Mobile rates on bdc. This means that if they book it on their phone they get a discount for some reason. BDC is very proud of that one and like thinks it's important. So keep that in mind. But you can take action and then you can select all your properties at one time. So keep that in mind because when you're first playing around in bdc, it's very clunky how they've set this up. But just look for the bulk editing that definitely helps out a little bit. Anybody else have anything there on bdc? Anybody that's having success on there or should we move on? Go ahead, Kelly. [00:47:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I, I think I started with a couple of my properties about six Months ago. [00:47:47] Speaker A: And I did, I did use that, like, early winter deal for one of my cabins. And it's almost. [00:47:54] Speaker B: That almost accounts for all of my. [00:47:55] Speaker A: Bookings for January and February for one of my cabins. So I'm really pleased with that. I think they definitely like the promotions for sure. Yes. And the problem with BDC and their promotions is that there's tons of them. And there's actually a website called My Data Value. I'm going to plug them real quick. Again, no affiliate codes. My Data Value is not going to apply to most average hosts. They do require a minimum of 30 properties. So it's be more for like, you know, property managers, et cetera. But what they do is they stack all the promotions at one time and then they raise your nightly rate to make it so that whatever you have on Price Labs is still the end price, having applied every single promotion they charge. Again, here we go. Nickel and diamond. $5 a month per property. My Data Value, but seems to be a very unsophisticated company. But it's a good concept and I have talked to some friends that are having some success with it. But again, you do need to have 30 properties or more. So otherwise you're going to need to do the bulk edits on your own. And you'll, you'll start to realize, man, they need to figure out a way to do this for me, which is what that software we just mentioned has figured out. But it's not for everybody, that kind of thing. All right, let's go Back to the PowerPoint. Are we having fun? Don't anybody fall asleep on me. Lunch break Friday. All right, Price Labs. First thing I want to mention here, and if Tamara's in the house, I'd like to hear from her. Listing optimizer on Price Labs. Very cool. Not gospel. Okay, friends, I'm using it. I like it. It's inexpensive. Again, it's a nickel and dime. It is. We're keep hitting, we keep getting, you know, everybody's biting at our heels. But I believe I paid $100 a month for all my properties. And basically what this is is built in enemy method on your own property. Right. It similar to a rank breeze kind of a thing where it'll say, hey, here's where you need some work. As a matter of fact, you can see here on this screen that there's a C right there. I will mention that I have been playing with this since it first came out. And our very first month we went in and corrected literally everything that it asked us to Correct. Which most of the suggestions I will say were pretty good. In other words, your listing says that you have a 50 inch TV, but your photos say that you have a 70 inch TV. Please fix this discrepancy. You know, stuff like that that you may not catch, especially if you're running around with a bunch of properties. I will say that I did basically all the suggestions the first month that this came out and it did change some of my B's to C's after I made the changes that it wanted me to make. So keep that in mind. It's definitely. I don't want you to look at the Listing Optimizer like, oh, this is exactly how I'm going to fix my property up and this is how I'm going to do exactly what Price Labs says. But I do find it very handy and we've had some success with it. But it's not gospel. Is Tamra here or anybody else that's using Listing Optimizer in an. I've used it. [00:51:13] Speaker H: I used it. [00:51:13] Speaker A: Go ahead, Erica. In an effort to make myself not be talking so much. Go ahead, Erica. [00:51:18] Speaker H: Yeah, I've used it a lot. And, and I like it. And I like that it used to be when you ran it the first time in a month, then you would only. And you would go make your changes and rerun it. You could only run it twice within a month. But now they're letting you do it, I believe, up to four times. So if you, you know, do it the first time and you've got a bunch of Cs, and you go through and you change it and now you've moved up to Bs, you can still rerun it another time. Like I said, I believe up to four times until you, you know, are in the green, preferably your A's. But I've, I found it really useful. I mean, yeah, it does find all those details, but I'm a really bad speller and, and it finds typos too. So, like one of my listings has a trundle and I spelled it wrong and it caught that and fixed it. So it really does not just look at, you know, are your, you know, details matching? But it checks the smaller things too, which I found helpful. [00:52:15] Speaker A: Fantastic. I didn't know that because the first month that it came out, I did exactly what you said and I refreshed and it told me I couldn't refresh anymore. So I just assumed I could only refresh once or twice. I didn't know they updated that. So we can Go back in there and do that. So a couple things. Number one, it is a great way to kind of refresh your listing. If you. If it's been a long time since you've looked at your description and your photos and things like that, it's not a bad idea to run the listing optimizer for 100 bucks or whatever it charges you to give you some ideas. Number. Number two, I do not want you to be the person that says, well, I did everything that Listing Optimizer told me to do, and I still didn't get any bookings. All right, no sad sack ers around here, guys. Positive. Only don't take the Listing Optimizer for Gospel is just a helpful tool, just like any rank breeze or anything else. But I'd be honest with you. I am liking it. I do like it. I kind of like getting my grades and going in there and being like, oh, I wasn't good enough. And it reminds me of college, you know, oh, you're not good enough. Okay, we're gonna try harder. That was not. [00:53:24] Speaker G: It's only looking at Airbnb. [00:53:26] Speaker A: It's only. [00:53:26] Speaker G: Look at your Airbnb listings. [00:53:28] Speaker A: Excellent point, Jim. Airbnb only. Which is a downside. Although, theoretically, we could just, you know, translate the info over to Verbo and BDC and GVR, etc. But, yeah, it's Airbnb only. Speaking of GVR, make sure you're on there, guys. Google Vacation Rentals is gonna push your website. You do need a website to use it, which you can do through your management software. Push it to gvr. Go. Go play around on gvr. It's cool. I'm actually very surprised this is not taken off more than it has because it's cool. It actually compares prices from direct to platforms, et cetera. And it's Google at the end of the day, right? So you would assume that we got some big dollars here and things like that, that it might take off. I know Patrick' of jvr. Matter of fact, I asked him yesterday, I said, how are you getting all this jvr? He said, I don't know. I just pushed the GVR button. Next thing I know, I had some bookings. I'm like, well, that's what I want to hear. That's. That's the easy button right there, man. That's exactly what I'm looking for. Also, make sure your house is Pink. Go on GVR. Google Vacation Rentals. Search, you know, your map, etc. If your house isn't pink, it's not working. Okay, pricing tips for 26. Let's just go over and I want everybody's help on this. My coaches and everybody involved with the shop, et cetera. Please help me here. First and foremost, if it's between now and the end of February, it's freaking garbage, right? That's a technical term mostly. Yep. It's garbage. You cannot, in my opinion. Okay, this is an opinion, not a fact. You can't go too low on whatever's left between now and March 1st and even the first week or two, because again, as you guys know, if you've been hanging around here a while, we consider March 15 to be go day. That's where the season is in full swing. We are back to work, paying attention, kissing everybody's rear end, making sure they all have what they need. Right? That's March 15th, go day. But. But between now and then. Get rid of it. Get rid of it. And then, you know, we do need to make sure that we're. We're looking at next fall. It's not too early to be looking at next fall. Where's your August? Where's your September? Your September should be lower than your August. And of course, we all need to remember that May is difficult if you're new. Keep that in mind. A lot of new folks don't realize that May is generally hard. That being said, last year, May wasn't as hard, which was really weird. And it's hard for us to prove that May is hard when it wasn't that bad last year. But April made up for it. April was not, in a lot of cases, as heavy as it. As it normally is. In May was slightly easier than it normally. So again, every year is going to be a little bit different. But it's time to be looking at your prices here, guys. Fashion forward. If you still have Christmas photos, you're way in the dust. You've been left behind. Okay, so go through your listings. Make sure the Christmas stuff is out. Let's start putting in the spring leaf pictures. Let's make sure that our prices are where they need to be to have some success in 26. Also, keep in mind we are still recommending the custom seasonal profiles. In other words, have multiple base rates as opposed to one base rate. This is for my price labs, folks. Before I get deeper into that, I should mention again, Hospitable has their own pricing. Now a lot of the management softwares are starting to come out with their own pricing, you know, situation. I will say that Hospitables is extremely simple and that's kind of the name of the game for Hospitable. I don't expect it to get a whole lot more sophisticated, maybe a couple more bells and whistles. But it is very simple. Basically you can set close end prices. Far out prices and a medium median price is basically all you can do on Price Labs. I'm sorry on Hospitable for my folks that are brand new. We understand Price Labs is complicated. It is when you first look, when you look at Price Labs for the first time it's a little overwhelming with all those bells and whistles. And we can help you with that. You can come to short term. SDS.com we have coaching sessions available. Very inexpensive. Short term shop plus is not here to make money. It's a value add to you. We want to make sure that to grow the community and make sure you have what you need is the whole point. So. And also Price Labs has lectures as well. They about once, once a month they have their own presentations where they will go over things for a month. I'm sorry, once a month for about an hour or two. And you know, you just gotta sharpen your sword. It's all you can do. But again we are recommending seasonal profiles. Basically a base rate for every month is extremely helpful, especially for my beach folks because guys, on a beach property you might be looking at $150 in January and $1300 a night in June or July. Right. I mean we're talking massive swings on price per night throughout the year, particularly on on beach properties. So you can't expect in many cases one base rate to do the heavy lifting. So you know, while back we came out we came up with this multiple season, basically multiple base rate way of doing things. And I love it. And it does take some time to set up. Here's you know like first part of the year, this is just a random property. I chose second part of the year, third part of the year, that kind of thing. And basically and this is a little too much in a lot of cases we would generally recommend, especially if you're just going to try this out, maybe 12, one for each month. And again with all things pricing you need to know what these numbers need to be. You know, I mean yeah, you can do that, help me choose a base rate. But you know, after a certain amount of time and experience you, you need to know what your property should be priced at. That's the biggest mistake we see with Price Labs folks is people just assuming that Price Labs is going to do is going to Be their revenue manager, basically going to do all their pricing for them and then the next thing you know, they don't have any bookings and they're angry and they're like, oh man, why did I buy this thing? It's stupid. I need, now I need to sell it and the market's not as good as it used to be and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So most importantly, whatever software you're using to price your property is not your revenue manager. Okay, so. And multiple base rates, they take a lot of effort to set up, but very effective. Anybody have anything to add? Yeah. [00:59:55] Speaker F: One of the other big mistakes that we see when people do set up the seasonal calendar and profiles is not turning off the seasonality. Because when we're setting, when you set up those seasonal profiles, especially covering the whole year, you're doing the seasonality. And if you don't turn that option off in price labs, then you're, you're double counting the seasonal effect 100%. [01:00:21] Speaker A: It's worth mentioning that a lot of those customizations on price labs look like they're off. When you're brand new, a lot of them look like they're off, but they're defaulted to basically the average, which is, you know, like right underneath aggressive and right above conservative. So it's, it's turned on, but it looks like it's off because the green toggle is not on. That to me that's a flaw. They should do that differently. It's very confusing for a new person. In order to actually turn them off, you got to go in there and put no seasonal, whatever that top, the very top one is on the seasonal and the same thing for, I mean there's several of those settings right there in a row on the left hand side. So keep that in mind. If you are going to do multiple season profiles, like one for each month, turn the seasonality completely off because you created your own. Thank you, Chuck. Anybody else have anything to add for pricing or anything and before we open it up for questions. [01:01:16] Speaker D: Yeah, I was going to say for the off season in the beach markets don't have a minimum price on there. It's your. If you want to get booked in the off season, it's low rates. I understand why people want to put a minimum price on there, but I always tell people something, something in the door is better than nothing. [01:01:32] Speaker A: I will also hold on a second now. For my beach properties, I will sometimes put a minimum in there to make it even lower. In other words, a lot of times price labs will take My base rate and not really go any lower than that in January. Sometimes if you put a base rate in that's lower than what where Price Labs is putting you, then it realizes, oh, crap, we can go a little lower. So, you know, it's again, all about paying attention. Put your prices in, save and refresh. Go back to the calendar, see what it looks like. And if you're new and this is like overwhelming, like, I don't know what the hell to put all these numbers. Numbers that will come with time. That will come with time. Patrick, what he mentioned there, we call that naked. When you leave the, the min base or max empty. We run. We're running it naked because it's fun to say. Anybody else? [01:02:19] Speaker F: Hey, another little tip. You know, we talked earlier about doing promotions on the platforms, or maybe you're doing them in your pms, but then you're sitting there looking at Price Labs and you can't remember what promotions you had in place. Just as a way to do reminders, you can go ahead and do what we call blacklining. It's normally where you override dates, but you don't have to override the prices. You can just fill in the memo field and that way you get a line across the dates that you set up a promotion for. This is particularly valuable when you're doing like an Airbnb custom promotion. You know, you pick 15th through 20th February, and meanwhile, you're sitting there working in Price labs messing with those prices and they're not going to change on your custom promotion. You can just highlight those dates. Put a little note there in the memo field saying, Airbnb custom promotion 20%. There you go. You got it. You're starting to put all your pricing in one place that way, just to. [01:03:15] Speaker A: Get way in the weeds. You could also do that on your management software calendar. Do the same thing, put a little note, but it's going to be much the way Chuck mentioned is better because that's where you're doing your pricing. You know, in most cases is going to be on Price Labs. Also worth noting if you don't. Guys, here's another good tip for you. Go through right now and do your no check in checkouts for the next two years on your calendars so that you don't have to worry about your cleaner having to do a turn on Labor Day. All right, let's get that going right now. I'm a hospitable. I find it's best to do that on hospitable. You can also do it on Price Labs. You can also do it on the OTAs. Multiple ways to do that. Now, I've created rule sets on Hospitable, Basically one for every day of the week. So I'll do a. I've got one this Monday, and then that rule set says no check in, no checkout. And so if I need to highlight my entire portfolio on Monday from top to bottom, I can click the Monday button. That means no check in, checkout on Monday. Bad example, because in most cases, if it's a Monday holiday, I'm cool with checkout. I'm just not cool with check in, like Labor Day. I'm cool if you check out on Labor Day, but it's very good chance nobody's going to check in anyway. So I'm okay with, you know, just making sure my cleaner doesn't have to work, basically. Good point. [01:04:37] Speaker C: Luke. Something else in Price Labs, especially that I feel like we see a lot of new hosts is, you know, we talk a lot about the enemy method around here. And in Price Labs, they give you the ability to create a comp calendar, which is kind of like the enemy method on steroids. Instead of having to have 12 tabs open on your computer at once, you can create a comp calendar and put 10 of your enemies right there so you can see them all at once and see their prices at once. And it's also helpful when you're choosing those base prices for your seasonal profiles and just to be able to look at everybody at a glance. [01:05:15] Speaker A: I believe what you're talking about is going to be neighborhood data. Is that right? [01:05:22] Speaker C: Yeah. And then down towards the bottom, in. [01:05:26] Speaker A: True Price Labs fashion, it makes everybody wait all the time. But you're talking about here. [01:05:31] Speaker C: Yep. [01:05:31] Speaker A: So you can, you can build in your enemies on your Price Labs dashboard. One thing to note, some of these enemies that you thought were going to be good may end up not being great. In other words, like they're. Since a lot of times we'll see property managers that aren't even actually booking people on Airbnb, they're just using it for whatever, advertising, that kind of thing. So do a refresh of your, your competitor calendar, you know, every. Every few months, every six months, that kind of thing. But it makes it pretty easy to see. Okay, this house is two bed. It's got 4.25 out of five reviews, which is not great. Right. You know, so this one's got 4.96 out of 122. It's nice to kind of see like the really kick ass enemies versus the not so good ones. And this one's proving my point because it's very booked, right? So that kind of thing. Thank you, Brooklyn. Anybody else? I'm a little nervous to take Richard's question because Richard is extremely intelligent and sophisticated and he hangs out here a lot, and I'm a little worried. But this would be a good time to. For anybody to ask any kind of questions, and we'd be happy to. To continue the conversation. Go ahead, Richard, please. Blow all of our brains up. [01:06:53] Speaker E: I appreciate the kind words, but I do have. You know, I'm still trying to work through this, pricing things in my. In my mind. I do like using the seasonal profile. The. The seasonal profiles, but I'm, you know, only may will be a year since we've been in it full time. So I'm still trying to get a sense of the market. So when I go into setting my base rates for each month, I'm kind of trying to use it off of the neighborhood data that Price Labs has compiled over the last two years and provides us, but it only shows, like, the adr. So I'm not sure if I should use that as the base price or if I should use something else as the base price, because I know the average daily rate is just that. It's the average daily rate versus the base price. So I'm just trying to figure out, setting up the custom seasonal profiles month to month, what I should be using for those numbers. [01:08:10] Speaker A: Chuck, can you take that one? [01:08:15] Speaker F: I have to admit, I missed it. [01:08:17] Speaker A: Okay, so one of the coaches. Please take that. Nobody see this. Richard, you make us all nervous, dude. Yeah. [01:08:31] Speaker B: Oh, here's Brooklyn came to say something. [01:08:33] Speaker A: Go ahead, Brooklyn. [01:08:34] Speaker C: I was just gonna say. So the general question is you're just having a hard time figuring out what to choose for your base rates for each month. Is that correct? [01:08:42] Speaker E: Yeah, that's correct. I mean, I have been, you know, I have. I have may set pretty low, like, base rate of like 140. And then because I'm in the Orlando market for Kissimmee, so I. And then I have September set, you know, pretty low. And then January was set pretty low as. As well. But as far as some of the other months and, you know, also kind of an issue that I'm running into, and because since we've went live, I'm been heavy on booking.com and I actually have, like, probably 30% of my bookings come through booking.com, so they're international travelers, so they don't follow the Same school schedule as the US Market. [01:09:27] Speaker F: Yeah, Orlando's, you know, it's almost year round, especially as we get more and more international travel. But one of the things that you'll learn to do is to also follow the strength of the dollar. You know, as. As the dollar weakens on an international basis, that number, that number can increase to 20 or 25% of the visitors. But to answer your immediate question, a lot of it's trial and error if you need to do a little bit of your enemy search, you know, and have your, your competitors set up and see roughly what they're charging, what their rates are and then play around with your base price for that. Let's call it month just for the. To make it easy for that month to see what price labs calculates out your rates to be. It takes a little while. I'm not going to kid you, you know, in the beginning to get those things just right. But once you do, then the worst thing that happens is you may go in and change them. 5 or $10. [01:10:22] Speaker A: It. [01:10:22] Speaker F: But it takes a little work to get them right. If you know you want to go the. And you should go the custom seasonal profile route. [01:10:31] Speaker A: Yeah. And I will also say that I make big changes, especially on beach. I keep going back to the beach thing, price changes on my seasons based on the time of year. So in the fall, my custom seasonal profiles will be much different than what they are in the spring, etc. Not necessarily as different for like a Smokies property, which is, you know, a little more fluid, that kind of thing. But I just, I make a habit of like we get to really sit down and look at every seasonal profile at least twice a year. You know, fall and early spring, late fall, early spring, and probably summertime also, especially if it's a beach property. Just again, huge seasonality, swings on the beach. [01:11:19] Speaker F: Yeah, yeah. Orlando should be a little more even. [01:11:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:11:23] Speaker F: A little bit easier. [01:11:24] Speaker A: So Chuck used to live there. Yeah, I would like to live at the castle if possible. [01:11:30] Speaker B: But Disney adult. [01:11:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I read you can get married in front of the castle, but it's like 100 grand or something. [01:11:39] Speaker H: Anyway, I do get that question a lot in coaching about how to figure out what that seasonal base rate should be. And what I do is I'll go after. Now you have to have your competition set up in price labs in your neighborhood data to be able to do this. So you have to have seven to 10 enemies in that list already. And what I'll do is I'll look for at my Slow season, my January, February. And I will just eye across what it looks like the average price is during the week between all of my enemies and what the average price looks like on the weekend. And that gives me a general idea of where I should be falling. And then the other thing that I'll do is if you go into Price Labs and you, I'm sorry, if you go into the calendar where you're actually looking at the, the calendar of January, February, February, and you hover over the monetary value on a date, you can see the seasonal demand factor. And that lets you know if that date is in high demand or in low demand. And if it's a low demand date, then whatever number I'm putting into my custom season profile will be closer, closer to that actual number that shows up in my pricing and explain that a little bit further. Then if you were to go into July and you're trying to set your base rate for the month of July, well, that seasonal demand factor, even if you have it turned off, Price Labs is still thinking about it. People are going to obviously be coming a lot more. So if I put 200 into there, it's probably going to put my number for that night around 300, because it's going to factor in that more people are coming. The occupancy is higher during that month. So those are things to consider when you're trying to figure out what your base rate should be for each season or each month, however you're setting it up in your profile, if that makes sense. [01:13:45] Speaker A: Yeah, it does. [01:13:46] Speaker E: And then another quick question. How, how much stock do you put in the graph on the neighborhood. [01:13:56] Speaker A: On. [01:13:56] Speaker E: The top there where it talks about the 17, you know, the. [01:14:00] Speaker H: Yeah, yeah. Like with, like any other piece of information, I don't take it individually. So I'll look at that information and then I'll also compare it to what I'm seeing with my multiple enemies. And if it's, you know, looking to be pretty much the same, then I'm going to trust it a bit. But there are times when I know what you're talking about. On average, I try to have like that black line running in the higher mauve if I'm an established property, if I'm a newer property, I try to have that black line running closer to the high gray so that I can build up as many reviews as I possibly can. But anytime that I, I'm not set on just what that line is saying. So I will also go then and I will make sure you know that that information is congruent with what I'm seeing across my enemies. So I look at both. [01:15:01] Speaker B: Yep. [01:15:01] Speaker C: I was just going to add to Erica that. That top neighborhood data graph, you have to keep in mind, that's taking into account everyone in your market that fits underneath of that, you know, bedroom count that you have put in there. So if you're a four bed in the Smokies, you could be a basic four bed in the Smokies, or you could be a four bed in the Smokies with a really awesome view and a game room and your own private pool. Right. And so I tell people to take that graph with a grain of salt and to compare it with your comp calendar at the bottom as to, like, what your enemies are charging. And Holly had asked in the chat how to set up the comp calendar. You just go to that neighborhood data tab in Price Labs and you scroll towards the bottom, and underneath of that map, there's a red button that just says, manage your comp calendar. And you can add, to my knowledge, as many as you want. It can get overwhelming, and that's why we kind of recommend people to stick to that 7 to 10 listing, you know, listings that you've got there. But, you know, like Erica said, you shouldn't just live and die by the neighborhood data graph. Make sure that you're using that with your. Your competitors. And then also going in and seeing, you know, how Price Labs has you. Price with seasonality and demand and whatnot. [01:16:14] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead. [01:16:18] Speaker H: That made me think of something else. Brooklyn. When you are putting that information in and. Oh, my gosh, now I just lost. When Luke jumped on, I lost my train of thought. [01:16:29] Speaker A: I'm sorry. [01:16:29] Speaker H: When it comes. No, it's okay. When it comes back, I will totally let you know. Like, that's how quick things come in and out of my brain these days. [01:16:36] Speaker A: But I was just gonna add that. Be. Be patient with yourself. Not just you, Richard, but just everybody. You know, the folks on this call have been doing this a long time, and honestly, our perspective is different than. Than somebody coming in today. So keep that in mind. But if you don't know exactly what to put in on all those, you know, base rates, et cetera, on Price Labs, it's totally fine. You just, you know, honestly, just. Just give yourself some. A grace period and some leeway, and if you make mistakes, who cares? You'll learn from them. And then over time, you'll start to know exactly how the property should be priced. And then I'll be honest with you, at some Point, it's just old hat, you know, like, again, guys, it's just a damn house, right? It's not that big a deal. And I know Price Labs is complicated and can be frustrating if you're new, but we do personally, I mean, as a whole, the short term shop does feel that it's the, it's the right way to go. It's a universal language for pricing properties. Again, sometimes it can come across as a little too complicated. Go ahead, Andrew. We'll take a couple questions here. Andrew? Yeah. [01:17:40] Speaker I: To kind of build off the AI conversation, Hospitable did a masterclass or whatever they're calling it nowadays on listing optimization. And what they did, they implemented a conversation in ChatGPT that, that asks questions and you put in your Airbnb listing and stuff like that, and then it spits out, hey, this is 10 listing titles that you should probably consider. It looks at your, your description and says, here's a better description and kind of does optimization on your listing. And I don't think you have to be a hospitable client to use it. So if you're interested, you may go look at, at their hospitable YouTube channel on their master classes, whatever they call them. Was very helpful. [01:18:25] Speaker A: Yes, thank you. We actually use Chat GP GPT for lots of stuff with our listings and I know coach Erica does as well. I mean, all kinds of stuff. It's extremely handy and useful, obviously. And you could, you could definitely run your Airbnb link through Chat GPT and say, how do I make this look better? But again, you know, you gotta just hopefully get one or two things out of it and don't, don't treat it like gospel. I know. Erica, go ahead. If you have any comments there, you use it a lot. [01:18:55] Speaker H: Yeah, so I, I use it a ton. And I was actually asked this in coaching the other week. They're like, well, you know, aren't you gonna, you know, isn't Airbnb flagging you for using, you know, Chat GBT image? And my answer is I'm not going in there and asking it to make up my pictures and, and make them beautiful. But what I do use it for is I help it. So I can ask it, you know, to put some snow on the ground and it can do that. I can ask it to put the Christmas tree in the corner and it can do that. Those kinds of things are perfectly fine. I'm not asking it to change the whole structure of my property, but it's very helpful when, you know, you might be Bringing in some new types of linens or some new decor and you want those things to be in your pictures prior to them being delivered and without having to pay professional photographer to come back and do it again. So ChatGPT can be really, really helpful that way. And the other thing too is when you're creating a new listing and you're looking at some of, you know, enemies that you really like their listing description, you can grab that and you can put that into Chat GPT, the actual listing id, and you can ask it to create you like a sister property or a property with a similar types of amenities and then you can add in your own pieces afterwards. It just saves a lot of steps. [01:20:19] Speaker A: This is exactly how we did it 15 years ago. But I mean, like back when Airbnb was a baby, I would go find the, the coolest, you know, like best looking listing in the area and man, that description is killer. And I would rip it off. Unfortunately, back then I didn't have Chat GPT to make it better for me. I had to do it myself. But yeah. [01:20:40] Speaker H: Oh, I remembered. [01:20:42] Speaker A: Huh. [01:20:43] Speaker H: So what I was going to say was when you are doing finding your enemies like we're talking about here, so you can gather ones from around you in price labs, that's really important. But I also always go in incognito mode on and, and I'll look, I'll put in all my filters, all the things that make my property pop up and I'll see who Airbnb connect considers my enemies. So who's on the same page as me as on a regular basis or maybe the, the page before mine where I want to be sometimes. And I'll make sure that they're good enemies and I might pull them too. So don't just rely on the map and what's close to you because Airbnb doesn't just pull your neighbors. [01:21:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:26] Speaker F: Another point about that is you have to think about the way the guest shops for a place too. You know, especially new guests to an area. Smokies is a great example. You might be in Gatlinburg, but if you put in Gatlinburg in Airbnb, you're going to get homes in Pigeon for origin. Sevierville, Where's Valley. So it's not just the people within a mile of you that you're a competition. [01:21:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And add what Erica and Chuck just said, a lot of times a guest doesn't even know the difference, you know, so keep that in mind. You know, the guests, a lot of times they don't realize they're going to be in Chalet Village, like right next to the park in Gatlinburg versus, you know, Little Valley Resort way up by or Shag Bark, you know. So keep that in mind. [01:22:11] Speaker G: And back to what Chuck said in the Smokies. So when you go into Price Labs and it says, help me choose my price, and you look over there, you can take that polygram and change that because Price Labs has got you hyper focused, right? And so it takes your pricing and compares you to so such a small. I go out and make that area much bigger because I know that if you type in Dollywood, you're going to be from Gatlinburg to Pigeon Forge. That space should be so much bigger. So I change that on my Price Labs. So when I go in and ask it to help me pick a price, it's giving me a better price in the overall market opposed to the really, really small spots. [01:22:52] Speaker A: This is why I'm here. I love it. Tips and tricks. All right, world famous Papa Giorgio, what you got, man? [01:23:00] Speaker J: I'm not that famous, but. [01:23:01] Speaker F: Hello. [01:23:02] Speaker J: I have two questions, if it's okay. The first one is based off the AI conversation. Has anyone had any luck reading the initial reservation message someone sends? So, for example, we're traveling to wherever for a birthday party or for, you know, to visit for a family reunion, wherever the case may be. In incorporating that message into the subsequent automated messages we have set up, whether it's day after check in for us to see how they're doing or the checkout message that says, we hope you enjoyed your property. For those of you who use AI, have you had an opportunity to incorporate to use AI to incorporate that original message into your automated messages for tailoring? Hopefully that makes sense. [01:23:43] Speaker D: It's not something that Host Buddy will do right now for your automated messaging, but when it does respond to the guest, it will say, we're hoping it will pull off those messages the guest has previously sent, but it won't be in your automated message that automatically goes out. [01:23:58] Speaker A: Yeah, Jon, I figured. [01:23:59] Speaker J: Thank you. And then the second one's probably a lot more specific. But for those of you who are using booking.com and have multiple properties under multiple entities, how have you been able to set it up to have one high level booking account? Chuck, I think you're not going to be happy, but one high level booking account with multiple payouts and multiple entities. And Chuck, if you want to just type out this one on one, we could do that. [01:24:22] Speaker F: Yeah. You know that that's been Difficult, however, and I'm sorry. I'm going to plug Owner Res again. Owner Res has. Is. Let me think. Can I say this? Yeah, I can say this there. They've got a beta program going on with booking.com now where you can basically have different entities all together under a single master account. Everything still goes to the right places. It's. It's been a little rough and it's been a little slow. It's. You know, BDC is. They're a big company and they. And, you know, they don't turn fast, so. [01:24:57] Speaker J: But I've. [01:24:58] Speaker F: I've seen substantial improvement in the last four months, so. [01:25:03] Speaker J: And it's all the way down to the payout level. [01:25:05] Speaker F: Yep. [01:25:06] Speaker A: Oh, well, okay. I'll stay out of that because it is borderline legal situation there, but, Lucas, it should be able to be done. I'll leave it at that. Yeah, yeah. [01:25:16] Speaker J: Got it. Thank you, guys. Have a nice weekend. [01:25:19] Speaker A: Thank you. All right, we're at an hour and a half, so we'll let you guys go. And we really enjoyed it. Again, you can find us every Wednesday, Avery and I, asking, answering questions, etcetera, which is SDSConsultation.com or StrQuestions.com you can find all of [email protected] and if you want to buy a house, that's why we're here. We'd love to help you with that. Theshortermshop.com I'm [email protected] and we appreciate you. We love you. Hopefully have a wonderful hosting season and make sure the guest stays number one at all times. So thank you, guys. Don't overthink it. [01:26:01] Speaker B: Sa.