[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, short term rental management. Welcome to the party. Great to be here. I love you. Wearing my met shirt today. Baseball, springtime, summertime. Coming here, ready to party vacation season.
Today we are going to talk about calling the platforms. Calling the platforms. If you don't know what you're doing, you can't do it. Well, you've got to learn how the platforms work. Today we're going to dive deep on exactly how to do that on short term rental management.
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There we go. That's what I'm talking about.
Better reviews, more cash flow, freedom through real estate, providing fantastic vacations to the american people. Well, you don't have to be american people in America, but that's what it's all about, man. Short term rental management. Luke the long hair extraordinaire, the reverend of real estate, preaching the good word of rent, rental income. You can buy a boat and lose money on it. You can buy a car and lose money on it. You can buy a house and not lose money on it. Could lose money on it, too. That's something you're going to have to decide. Can you make it work? Can you do it, baby? Do you have what it takes? Do you have the guts to make it in rental real?
I do. I do. I enjoy it. And I enjoy giving these folks a great place to live. Now here's what I want to get into today. Calling the platform. I see questions all the time. People ask me, Luke, I did this, that the other, and I don't know what to do. I don't know how this happened. What happened. I don't have a specific example, but I'm going to tell you right now, the answer to your question is at an 800 phone number with somebody on the other line that knows the policies and procedures at said online travel agency, which I don't like that term, but that's what they are called. I'm talking about Airbnb, Burbo booking.com, et cetera. When I first started, I called them all the time. I'm talking all the time. Too often, every tiny little thing I would call Airbnb and ask a billion questions. It's just what I do. I'm a question asker. I learn by asking questions. Avery hates it. It drives her nuts. She would rather, I don't know what, do anything she doesn't want to do than ask somebody a question. Me, I'm asking questions to strangers. It's just how I roll. Okay? So I call Airbnb. I ask a billion questions. They give me some answers. I call back, I ask the same billion questions. I get different answers. That's something you got to understand. The folks on the other end of the phone are generally new. Don't really know what they're talking about. Even if they do know what they're talking about, a lot of times they're bored and sick of your stupid ass and calling and with complaints about, oh, you own a house and you've got a problem with this guest. And they don't want to hear it because chances are they can't afford a house like this. And it's a weird dynamic. It's a weird vibe. They're in charge but could never put them. They're not in the same situation in life that you are.
It's just a weird deal. And again, a lot of times they started, like last week, and they just don't really know what's going on. And you're going to have to learn how to see through that. You got to learn what's right, what's wrong, what's true, what's not. And the only way to do that is to call as often as possible and ask as many questions as you possibly can. Learn all of their ins and outs, all their processes and procedures. This is our policy when this happens. This is our policy when that happens. Learning all of those little things is going to make you a better landlord, a better property manager. You have to do this stuff. Vacation rentals are not passive. Real estate is not passive. You want passive? Go do a syndication. We've said it a hundred times. I like to work hard. So for me, I'm totally cool with dealing with what it takes to make one of these things know. And oftentimes I'll get somebody who says, luke, what should I do about this? And I'm like, why are you asking me? Call the platform. Ask questions. You're going to learn a lot more from them than you are from me. Now, here's what I would do in this situation, but this is how it's going to work. But you need to call and find out from them firsthand why it works like that. And how it works.
And a lot of this stuff you're going to have to learn the hard way. I did this and this is what they told me to do. And then everything went to shit and I got a two star review. Well, that's reality. That's the real world. And to quote, one of the better bands that's come out in the past 15 years are called Airborne out of Australia. There ain't no way but the hard way. So get used to it. You're just going to have to learn some of this stuff. Now, I'm painting a picture here where you're supposed to call Airbnb 14 times a night and spend 3 hours a night learning all this stuff. And I don't want it to sound like a drag, like it's a homework assignment, but it kind of is. It can be spread out over long periods of time. It doesn't need to be right now. It doesn't need to be right here, right now. I got to learn everything right now. Because the truth is, some of these policies will change over time and you're going to need to call and do some refreshers and things like that.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: This episode of the short term show is brought to you by the short term shop. If you're interested in buying a short term rental in one of the top vacation markets in America, just go to theshorettershop.com and click get connected with an agent. If you purchase a home with the shop, you'll have access to all of our client only benefits, such as training on how to manage your short term rental. So we'll teach you everything you need to know, from how to set up your Airbnb and Verbo listings to how to use the property management software that you'll need to streamline your business, all the way down to helping you source your local boots on the ground like cleaners, handy people, et cetera. We've taught thousands of people just like you how to buy and manage their vacation homes from anywhere in the world. So head on over to theshorettershop.com and click get connected with an agent to get started. I do have to mention that we're brokered by exp or else I get in trouble. We'll see you guys over there.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: The more you call, the better you're going to be at your job. If you don't know how things work at Verbo, how are you going to communicate with a guest? Oh, I'm sorry, I don't know. Hold on.
And that's okay. Be honest with them or just don't even say, hold on, just call. Ask a bunch of questions. If you feel like that's where you got to get really in the weeds there, go with your gut. If you feel like that person is giving you bad info, hang up, call back, get somebody else. Sometimes you might need to call 3410 times to get the right answer. So keep that in mind. And I will also say, I have noticed a difference in my bookings when I call the platforms. I can't prove it. I don't have a way to prove it. I've told this story a million times over the years. And some people say, Luke, that totally worked. And some people say, luke, that was a waste of my time. But I have noticed a difference. When I call the platform in bookings, I feel like they are registering the fact that we called in because they're asking you who you are, they're verifying who you are, and they're going to tie that to their algorithm. I'm thinking it's probably tied in somehow. This person's calling, they're paying attention, they care. I mean, hell, call the platform and say, hey, I'm not getting as many bookings as I would like. Do you have any advice for me? Here's what they're going to do. They're going to say, well, you could try this, this and this. And if you're paying attention to the point where you're listening to podcast, it's probably going to be stuff you already knew or were already doing.
So are they going to give you good advice when you ask that question? Maybe not. But just asking that question is helping yourself. It's helping you're at least, if for no other reason, you're putting it into the universe that you want more bookings. Calling Airbnb, I want more bookings. I'm calling Verbo. I want more bookings. Mr. Universe, Mrs. Universe, I want more bookings. Put yourself out there and it'll happen. Good things will happen. I have no way to prove that calling the platform will get you more bookings, but I have seen it firsthand, especially when I was new. I would call and call and call and those bookings would start coming. It would just be two or three here and there, and they're going to give you a line of crap, oh, you need to change your minimum night stay from three to two or two to three. And then all of a sudden you're going to be rich. It's not going to be literally like that, but a little bit. So you just got to be confident in the fact that you did your time, you put in the effort, you made the phone call. That's all you can do. That's all you can do, man. At a certain point, there's only so much you can do. I got all these people running around out there driving themselves nuts with this thing. At a certain point, you got to say, I did my time, I did my work, and I'm good. The bookings are going to come. It's time to focus on the next property.
That's the hard part. That's where you spend your time. Spend your time focused on the next property. I will also say that if there is a situation with a guest, whether, let's give the example of a dead bug on the ground. Oh, my goodness. And the guest sends you a message, there's a dead cockroach on the ground in this property. How could this be possible? This is preposterous. I can't believe we chose such a slummy house to rent for our beautiful vacation with our lovely family, with my son, George Jr. And my husband, whatever. And so when they send that message, you need to call Airbnb. Call the platform. He who calls the police first assumes innocence. And if you call and say, hey, this guest said they saw a dead bug, we just want you to understand that we are running a legit property here. This is a beautiful home. We do have pest control on a regular basis, and we would love to send you a copy of our most recent pest control invoice, which is dated less than 30 days from today. So then you're saying, hey, we're running a clean operation here. This is not a dump. We care about this getting ahead of it, because if you don't call and the guest calls and says, you got dead bugs in the house, Airbnb is going to rip you a new one, probably give them all their money back, and maybe even send you to the securities department, which we'll get into that in just a know. It's my recommendation again. Call the platform. Call the platform. Call the platform. Call the platform. Call the platform. Now, it's a fine line because sometimes calling the platform can get you in trouble. You might even get yourself in trouble by calling to try and keep yourself from getting in trouble with. I just say in trouble because I spent most of my childhood in trouble. College. Oh, please. Oh, man. I was always in trouble. If I played by the rules, I'd be in gym class right now, to quote the great Ferris Bueller. Anyway, there is a fine line there sometimes, and especially if you read on the Internet, some folks on the Internet will tell you, don't ever call. You're going to get yourself in trouble by calling. And I'm okay with that. At this point in my career where I kind of feel like I know most of the stuff. Now, do you want, I got to keep your chops up. You do want to keep your chops up. Got to stay in fighting shape. So call every now and then. But I do feel for the most part, if you're educated and smart enough to be, to cause some trouble that you could dangerous. Smart enough to be dangerous is what I was looking for there. You could get yourself in trouble by calling in and you're putting yourself on their radar. It's like, oh, wait a minute. Who are you? Wait, what happened here? Oh, this isn't cool. We're going to have to fix this. Now. You're in trouble. So you definitely want to try to avoid that. But you can avoid that. The only way to avoid that, in my opinion, is by calling enough times to know exactly how everything works. So again, it is a fine line. And let's talk about securities. Securities is an Airbnb thing. And if you do something you're not supposed to or guest calls and says you did something you weren't supposed to or your property did this, or you walked into the property during their booking without their permission, or who knows, then you could be under investigation. And I'm not really interested in talking about that on my show here, short term rental management, because I run a clean to. It makes me uncomfortable even talking about the securities department at Airbnb. I will say I've never really had to deal with it at Verbo. I've dealt with it several times at Airbnb. Take that for what it's worth. Love me some verbo.
But if you end up with the securities department, you damn well better know what that means and what you're about to be in for because you're basically going to judge and jury and they could decide whether you're even going to be able to use their platform anymore, that kind of thing. Again, keep your nose clean, run a good operation, call as often as possible, learn how everything works at the platform, and you're good, you're golden. You can't be good at anything if you're not.
It's not some crazy revelation.
If you want to be good at yoga, you've got to practice. If you want to run the New York City marathon, you've got to get in. First of all, and then you've got to train your ass off. So if you want good reviews and more bookings and higher price per night, you need to learn how the damn platform works.
Learn their policies and procedures so that you can implement your standard operating procedures around the way they work at the platform. Again, if you want to take off platform bookings, great. Then you don't have to deal with any of this crap. It's not what we're talking about today. Not that podcast for that. What I am talking about today is to urge you. Give them a call. Learn your trade man. If you want to be a short term vacation rental landlord, then you're going to need to use Airbnb and verbo and booking.com and you need to learn how they work. Simple as that. Call them, learn. Ask questions. You will end up with more bookings. Long hair luke short term rental management I love.
