[00:00:02] This is Short Term Rental Management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Karl.
[00:00:16] Short Term Rental Management.
[00:00:18] I love you.
[00:00:20] Today we're going to talk about full service versus not full service. And what does that even mean?
[00:00:30] All right. Because here's the deal. Well, first of all, we're. We're in the thick of it right now. The high season is here, so we are dealing with guests right now. And. And it's funny because if you've been doing this a long time, it's funny how in the winter time we get kind of, like, comfortable and we kind of forget how busy we're going to be and that life is going to be hard and people are going to be jerks, and then it comes back around and then it's like, whoa, wait a minute, I do have things to do.
[00:01:05] People being mean to me.
[00:01:07] And that's just part of it, you know, where we need to be very grateful.
[00:01:15] To have these people, regardless of whether they're awesome or not. I'm grateful for them because they do have a lot of options.
[00:01:24] They could stay at a hotel that will bring them food.
[00:01:29] Now, again, you got to have a pretty nice hotel to have a kitchen that's going to deliver the food to the room, and that's going to get expensive.
[00:01:38] But we do need to talk about the culture here a little bit. You've rented a house for whatever reason. A lot of times it's because in that area, that's what's for rent. Houses, not hotels. That's where I live.
[00:01:50] 38 Florida.
[00:01:52] There's not hotels here. Everybody stays in a house because that's what's available.
[00:01:59] And what, what, which one was it, chicken or the egg? Are people renting houses because that's what they want to sleep in while they're here at the beach in northwest Florida? Or are they.
[00:02:10] Or are the. Were the houses here and that's what people wanted to rent because that's what was available.
[00:02:16] Chicken or egg? I don't know. It's just kind of always been like that in this area. Same thing with Pigeon Forge, Branson, Myrtle beach, all the best vacation towns.
[00:02:27] Well, depending on what kind of vacation you're trying to go on, things are probably a little different in Miami and Paris.
[00:02:34] But I want to talk about full service, because a lot of times it seems as though guests are expecting somebody to show up and use a plunger on the toilet for them, which we can't really do that in a house. It's a house. It's not scalable. We are not able to hire a plumber that works on the property all day, every day that's just hanging around because it's a hotel with 200 units that need constant attention.
[00:03:11] It's a house.
[00:03:13] One house. It's one house.
[00:03:16] Now, we could have 50 of them in the same area and hire a plumber, but usually you're still going to be third party on a plumber.
[00:03:26] So I do think that there is a misconception there for guests that have never really, you know, stayed in a quote unquote Airbnb, that they think that somebody's going to come solve their problems for them. But unfortunately we can't really do that in a lot of cases, cases on a single family home.
[00:03:46] So I'm doing this podcast, to be honest with you, mostly just to put some energy out into the universe that there are some things that you should not expect.
[00:03:56] If you are renting a house, it is not in most cases going to be full service with a shelf, a chef and a plumber if the, if you break the Keurig.
[00:04:14] I'm just going to use this example because I'm happy. I'm actually going through this right now, like literally right now. There's always something going on, right? And this is not why I'm doing this podcast. But it just happened that right before this, we were dealing with a guest who lost the little holder for the K cups in the KE ke Keurig duo.
[00:04:29] It comes out so that you can wash it. I really should just glue the damn things in. There's no reason to pull them out of there, to be honest. But you could wash it while it's in there, you know. But this is a Keurig that is two weeks old, my cleaner said. And again, I, I feel ridiculous even having to ask the cleaner about this, but she said she actually did remember it being there because she cut her rubber glove on the little poker thing at the bottom of it.
[00:04:54] So this guest has lost and I hate to blame things on them. And it honestly, at the end of the day, doesn't matter who lost it or who didn't, but this guest has lost this little K cup holder. And you know, to a certain extent, I do think that they are expecting us to bring them a new one.
[00:05:13] It's not a full service property now. Maybe there needs to be a full service option on the OTAs. I think that's where I'm headed with this. The OTAs need to say, is this full service? Yes or no? Are you Going to bring me a new coffee machine or am I stuck with the one that's broken?
[00:05:28] I mean, is this not brilliant? It is. It needs to be. Is this full service or is it not?
[00:05:32] And most that's gonna come down to management and how expensive it is. Because I don't care how many properties you have, it costs money to send somebody over there with a new Keurig.
[00:05:43] I don't care if you've got a storage room with 40 new Keurigs like your own little mini Walmart that they, that your employees like. You have so many units that your employees don't even have to go to Walmart. They can just go to the storage area, get a new Keurig, take it to the house. That's expensive.
[00:05:58] You're out the Keurig money, you're out the travel money, you know, so that property would need to be more expensive.
[00:06:09] So I would like for there to be a way to differentiate that on the platform. Hello, Vrbo, are you listening? Airbnb booking.com, are you listening? Can we have a full service button?
[00:06:22] Yes, this property is full service. No, it is not. Yes, this property's full service. For an extra fee.
[00:06:29] For an extra fee. You do not need to worry about the coffee machine. We will bring it to you, bring you a new one that could get, that could get. Slippery slope, right?
[00:06:37] So now I understand why they don't do it, right? You understand why they don't do it. Because it's like, where do you draw the line?
[00:06:43] It's a very fine line between making the guest happy and getting walked all over and losing money.
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[email protected] so again, most folks are pretty cool about this type of stuff. The well traveled are really. No, no problem at all. It's the folks that have only traveled one time. They are expecting everything to be absolutely perfect. They want their child to be conceived on this trip and the other child's gonna go get, get into Harvard on the trip and at this home. And everything has to be absolutely perfect or their life is over.
[00:07:47] We do need a slight culture shift there, I think. And I'm not, I'm not saying that people are expecting too much out of us. As host, they should be getting everything that they need for sure.
[00:08:00] Matter of fact, I traveled recently and it was such a crappy situation, I didn't even check into the house. It was a dump.
[00:08:09] So there are places out there that are not that great. That's why it drives me nuts when I'm like, dude, do you realize how bad some of my competition is? And you're complaining you lost the K Cup holder and you're complaining you literally lost it. You lost it, dude.
[00:08:26] Just admit that. You just admit that you lost it.
[00:08:31] But anyway, again, ridiculous example has nothing to do with even why I wanted to do this podcast today. But I think that, you know, we are to the point here where we may consider kind of differentiating.
[00:08:45] Yes, we're going to take care of everything right here and now. And this how this house is a little more hands off.
[00:08:52] Once you open that door and check in, you're kind of, you know, we're gonna help you out, but you're on your own.
[00:08:58] If you break something, we will probably have to wait until you leave to fix it, and we may or may not charge you, but again, there you. There you go. I'm going back and forth here.
[00:09:10] It's probably a little better to be unspoken, right?
[00:09:15] But is it worth it to put in our listings, put in our guidebook? This is not a full service property.
[00:09:22] We're not going to turn your sheets down.
[00:09:26] We're not going to come blow your hair out, you know?
[00:09:33] And it just drives me crazy as a guy that's super into systems and processes and procedures, when the variable gets involved, the variable is human emotion and human nature makes me nuts because I'm like, man, I built this system so that I don't have to deal with you, but I'm still dealing with you because you're a human.
[00:09:59] Maybe I could just rent my houses only to the AI and then I'd be happy.
[00:10:08] So to go full service or to not. Does it even exist? I would imagine it does. That's not a world I'm really living in. I've stayed in some very nice airbnbs in my day, but none of them had, you know, somebody that was going to bring me things.
[00:10:25] Nobody had a toothbrush at the front desk.
[00:10:28] It is not a. It's not even in most cases. Right, let's something we can agree on here. In most cases, it's. It's not even as. As full service as a hotel. At a hotel, you got toothpaste and a razor at the front desk if you need. When you got somebody down there that can answer a Question for you.
[00:10:45] In real life, you know, they might even have a coffee bar that's ready to go, maybe even some breakfast.
[00:10:53] That. That is not what we're doing here. This is a house.
[00:11:01] So dare we remind these folks that that's what's going on, that it's not a full service situation, and maybe they've been traveling and they were just at a super nice hotel and they just checked into your house and they were used to people bringing stuff to you. So do we say, hey, I'm sorry, but we don't really bring stuff to you, or does that get us in trouble? Is that because you never want to say no to a guest? Right. If you say no, that's not good customer service. We always try and find the word yes, always.
[00:11:30] But where do we draw the line?
[00:11:37] I think it's probably best the way things are right now. But I may consider moving forward, putting a little note in my. At least in my guidebook that says, hey, this isn't full service. If something breaks, you know, you know, tough turkey, that kind of thing.
[00:11:53] I mean, what about Walmart plus, is that full service?
[00:11:58] Instacart? Is that full service? It's teetering, right?
[00:12:06] I'm happy to do it, though, you know, if I can find something. If we, if my team can find something at Walmart plus, that's gonna make that guest stay a little better.
[00:12:14] Go for it.
[00:12:16] Happiness prevails. If they're happy that juju is in the universe and you will get more bookings and your prices will go up over time.
[00:12:24] But again, I do feel, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like guest expectations are a little high based on my own travels, because when I go travel and I stay in a house, everything, it's not as. Not that great, you know? So I'm sitting there like, well, is this the first time you ever stayed in a. In an Airbnb quote, unquote? Because this one is way better than most of them.
[00:12:49] I don't know what you were expecting. Maybe you were expecting to complain and get money back, but we ain't playing that game around here.
[00:12:58] You know what I'm saying?
[00:13:03] So I think the solution, I, I probably, I'm ready, I think, to put a little note in my guidebook that says this is not a full service property. But again, you know how it is. Nobody reads a guidebook.
[00:13:16] Well, Luke, why do you have a guidebook? If you're. Nobody reads the guidebook, come to management Monday and I'll teach you all about it.
[00:13:22] Stsplus.com guidebooks for another Day We've done several podcasts on guidebooks. Not going to get into that today, but I am. I think I'm going to add a little a little nugget there in the house section of my guidebook for not full service is not a full service property. We're gonna do whatever we can to make you happy, but we're not gonna come turn the sheets down and put chocolate on your pillow like they do at the Plaza. By the way, have you looked at the Plaza recently? It's like $2,000 a night.
[00:13:49] So for $2,000 a night you can turn my sheets down. You know what I mean?
[00:13:56] Anyway, food for thought. Something to think about.
[00:14:00] Are the guest expectations too high? Are the hosts under delivering.
[00:14:10] I'll leave you with this. The guest is always right, no matter what. And I do have a quote for you as well. We hold what we hold on to perpetuates our reality. What we let go creates new possibilities. Luke Carl asking you to not overthink it. Short term rental management.
[00:14:37] Sam.
