[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 Carl.
[00:00:16] Short Term Rental Management. How the hell are you? We're going to cover a lot of topics today with Luke Cash Flow Carl.
[00:00:24] Matter of fact, I got. I got rock ignized, we call it in the old rock and roll business at the DMV this morning, of all places.
[00:00:35] Well, at the recording of this podcast, I should say yesterday, right? But some guy said, are you Cash Flow Carl? I'm like, yeah, dude. And I thought we'd met before, but he was like, oh, my wife told me to follow you on Instagram because you're so motivating. And I was like, oh, hell yeah, let's go. So you can find me on Instagram at Luke Cash Flow Carl. Love to have you over there.
[00:01:00] Today we're going to talk about rental real estate, managing vacation houses in vacation towns and the fact that they are not hotels, something we talk about often.
[00:01:09] The fact that they are small potatoes. Also something we talk about often.
[00:01:13] It's just a house. It's just a house. It's just a house. But before we get into that, I'm going to coin two phrases today. All right?
[00:01:26] Hospitality.
[00:01:30] Matter of fact, why Hospitable didn't call it host biddable. Hospitable, I'll never know. I bet you it came up. Maybe they weren't clever enough to come up with it. I came up with it. I'm taking credit for it right now. I have it written down in my notes here. Hospitable.
[00:01:47] Hospitable.com.
[00:01:49] that'd be a great name.
[00:01:50] Unfortunately, Hospitable probably already has that basically locked down and everybody would confuse you with them if you tried to name your property management company Hospitable or something like that. But I'm using that word from now on. Hospitable. That's a Luke Carl word. I'm taking it. I'm taking another one too. And it is guest spectations.
[00:02:10] You got to set the guest spectations because they are going to show up and expect one thing and then they are going to be mad that it wasn't what they thought it was going to be, which is actually my main topic today. Setting your guest spectations, something we talk about often, but they open that door and it's not exactly what they were thinking it was going to be in their head all of a sudden. It's a very common thing for people to want to fix it right now. Oh, my goodness. I have to turn this into what I want, what I thought it was going to be. I have to turn it into that right now. And what does that involve? That involves you and your crew getting over there to change things.
[00:02:48] It's not a hotel. I'm sorry, but to a certain extent, when you open that door, what you see is what you get.
[00:02:55] We don't have somebody living here on staff that can clean up after you and fix things that you break that you want to blame on us for being broken. Because again, it's just a house.
[00:03:09] And that's where the guest expectations get screwed. Because, sorry, sorry for the language skewed. Let's go with that.
[00:03:16] Because they just came from a hotel where somebody brought them towels.
[00:03:21] Somebody did this, that, and the other. There was somebody downstairs that could answer questions, and that does not happen at a house. And shame on Airbnb and vrbo and booking.com for not doing a better job of setting the guest spectations.
[00:03:34] Matter of fact, now I'm seeing verbo commercials where they're saying, if the hot tub isn't perfect, we'll just move you to another house where the hot tub is perfect. That is dumb.
[00:03:46] I'm not saying that moving them to where the house has a perfect hot tub. And I'm not saying that they don't deserve a perfect hot tub. I am saying it's a stupid idea to be advertising that because your guest spectations are now going even further through the roof and you're never verbo. Your guests are never going to be happy. It's dumb.
[00:04:04] Don't do that.
[00:04:06] You. You are not a property management company. That's another problem with these OTAs. They spend billions of dollars marketing themselves. We love them. We can't live without you. But you're not a property management company. And when you say things like, if the hot tub doesn't work, we'll move you to another house where the hot tub does work. You are acting as a property management company, not a listing service.
[00:04:32] You're not a property management company, vrbo. And guess what I'm here to tell you. You don't want to be.
[00:04:39] You do not want to be. And when you start saying, we're going to switch you to another house because it's got a better hot tub, you are acting as a property manager. You are trading on some very. You're walking on some very thin ice with that stuff.
[00:04:57] It's dumb. It's dumb. Verbo.
[00:04:59] I hate to tell you, but I'm right. I've Been doing this for a very long time and you are now training your guests to expect too much.
[00:05:09] Now, guest shows up, hot tub sucks. I get it. We'll move them somewhere else. But let's not advertise it. And let's also come down on those hosts that have crappy hot tubs and also have a little sympathy for the host whose hot tub broke two hours before that guest got there and they had no idea it was broken.
[00:05:30] I'm telling you, the guest has been trained to expect too much.
[00:05:36] And they get mean. They do, man. I tell you, I've been doing this a long time. And guests being mean, you never get used to it. You're never going to get used to it.
[00:05:45] You get better at it. You get to the point where, you know, in most cases, you don't care, but sometimes on the wrong day, they just catch you at the right time. And bamboo hatefulness. It's hateful because. And again, I've said it a million times. Matter of fact, I do want to apologize. I had a podcast on similar to this recently and I was on the wrong microphone. I noticed on that podcast I happened to tune in and it didn't sound good. Sorry about that. I'm on the right microphone right now.
[00:06:10] But, yeah, it's hard. It's hard when the guests are mean.
[00:06:15] It can be hard.
[00:06:18] We're hiring realtors.
[00:06:20] This show is brought to you by the Short Term Shop.
[00:06:24] Join our exciting team team in the best vacation markets in America.
[00:06:29] We're currently hiring agents in Gulf Shores, the Poconos and Outer Banks.
[00:06:38] Email us at careers the shorttermshop.com that's careers@the shorttermshop.com.
[00:06:47] so it's about setting expectations. And again, they don't care about you. They are people on vacation. It is all about them. It is 100% about them. What can you do for me? This is my hard earned money. This is my only time in this whole year where it's about me, baby. I'm not at work.
[00:07:07] I get to drink whatever I want to drink. I get to sleep as late as I want to sleep.
[00:07:13] And the only thing standing between me and that is this stupid house and your stupid property management.
[00:07:19] That's reality right there. That's reality.
[00:07:23] So I'm not psyched about this new verbo campaign advertising move. I get it. I, I listen, I'm not right. I don't think you're wrong for moving them to the house that has a hot tub that works. The problem there is, you know, in most cases, that the host was not even gonna have time to get it fixed in time. You got to probably move them.
[00:07:38] I like that as a policy.
[00:07:40] I just don't like advertising it because now they're gonna, hey, Verbo, have you thought about the fact that they're going to show up and say the house in their brain, this house is not what I was thinking it was going to be. It's not what I wanted. I want an extra bedroom. So now all I have to do is call and say the hot tub sucks and they'll move me to a house that's nicer.
[00:07:58] You're opening a major can of worms with that crap. I don't like it.
[00:08:03] I don't like it. It's just, to me, it's not a good business move.
[00:08:09] But I, I mean, what do I know? They're. They're, you know, billion dollar company, multi billion dollars, 10, 11 billion dollars a year. What do I know?
[00:08:20] But I do know that I don't like it when the platforms get involved with the management of the property.
[00:08:30] It's a very fine line between OTA online travel agency and property management company. It's a fine line.
[00:08:39] Anyway, let's get back to the guest and the guest spectation. We call it the Purple Apple. This is something I've been teaching for many years on Management Monday, which you should come and join. You can do
[email protected] really what you should do is just buy a house with the short term shop and we'll teach you how to do it. And it's a wonderful job and it's a wonderful gig and it's a wonderful way to support your family's future. But again, it's just small potatoes little stuff. Don't overthink it. It's just a house. Okay, but the Purple Apple is all about setting the expectations. If your house has a super steep, nasty road, you need to make sure that the guest knows that the house has a super steep, nasty road way before they ever get there.
[00:09:22] You know, that's it. That's all I have for you today really is.
[00:09:26] Mostly I just wanted to brag about my two new cool words, hospitable hospitality and guest spectations.
[00:09:37] I'm taking credit for him right now.
[00:09:40] Guesspectations.com I already got it.
[00:09:44] So don't take it, baby. And you know it is. It is a true thing though. Set the expectation sector.
[00:09:50] We are no longer really doing.
[00:09:59] Maintenance calls while the guest is in the home. So you got to set that expectation up front because you know, again, they just came from a hotel where everybody did everything for them and did things for them. It's a house. There's nobody here to do that for you. There's. Where are they going to sleep? You know, and we can't support that with a house.
[00:10:18] It's not a hotel with 300 units that has somebody full time. You know what I mean? So you got to set that expect. Get that guestation.
[00:10:28] Because I'll be honest with you, what happened was we had a situation the other day where a guest complained that the toilet seat was broken. And I would almost guarantee you that they broke that toilet seat. And we sent our crew over there. They were happy enough, they were nice enough to go over there and change the toilet seat, and they didn't make it in a timely enough manner. It was a Saturday night, and so the guest said, never mind. Please come tomorrow. So my crew went over on Sunday morning, didn't get to go to church and the whole thing, and they were still rude about it.
[00:10:56] Now, to a certain extent, we do need to understand that these people are just out there.
[00:11:02] There's just nothing you can do. And they are going to leave you a bad review.
[00:11:06] They are.
[00:11:09] And it's unfortunate, but that's real life.
[00:11:13] And now she's still being rude about it, and it's like, dude, you know, I. I'm that solid. Se was not broken before you got there, and it's just a toilet seat, and it was still usable.
[00:11:23] That's. I just. I don't understand. And they. And these people. These were late April. Like, you know, there's a week or two in the late April that's really hard to book. They got it for next to nothing.
[00:11:36] And isn't that. Isn't that funny? Isn't it fun? Isn't that ironic that the people that get the best deal are the ones that complain the most?
[00:11:47] I used to be those people. And you're. You spend a lot of time and energy trying to get that perfect deal, and when you get it, it's still not good enough.
[00:11:58] And that's exactly what that's happening right there with these folks.
[00:12:02] It's called maximizing.
[00:12:03] And when you get it, you have buyer's remorse. You could have tried harder. You could have gotten a better deal. You could have tried harder. So we're gonna. We're gonna ruin this thing.
[00:12:11] And I used to be that person. And it's not fun. It's not a good way to live your life.
[00:12:15] There's a book on the subject called Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz.
[00:12:23] These people sought out the least expensive nights at the least expensive property, and they booked it. And they had buyer's remorse anyway, even though they spent a lot of time trying to find it. You know what I mean? It's maximizing. Read the book. It's fantastic. Changed my life. Absolutely changed my mind. Thank you, Barry Schwartz.
[00:12:39] Thank you for changing my life with Paradox of Choice and setting the guest spectation and being hospitable.
[00:12:50] Luke. Carl, I love you.
[00:12:54] Don't overthink it.
