Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Shame on me for being nice to these people. Shame on my, my company for offering these people, you know, a full refund on when we really shouldn't even said anything, I guess, you know what I mean? Like we're trying to be, go above and beyond, be courteous. And now we're being penalized. That property has been delisted for seven days. We're shut down for a week. And we have called VRBO 14 times and they don't care.
[00:00:28] A couple of topics I want to talk about, actually, I don't know three topics at least off the top of my head. On today's episode of Short Term Rental Management, we're going to cover the VRboHospitable integration, we're going to cover the new VRBO ad campaigns and we're also going to cover I got one of my properties shut down on Verbo, man.
[00:00:57] And this is realistic. It's a real thing. It happens. So those are our three topics today on Short Term Rental Management.
[00:01:06] Okay, so topic number one, the Verbo ad campaign.
[00:01:12] And I believe I may have already talked about this on a previous show, but we're going to talk about it again. Do we need to do the Verbo ads? And I think the answer to that is yes.
[00:01:23] You'll go to accounts.expedia.expedia group.com and you can set up your campaigns. It's an advertisement basically where you will select how much money you want to spend on these and basically they push you closer to the top of the pile. This is like what we used to do for boost points on VRBox where you would earn points for reviews and stays, et cetera. And you could redeem them like a video game, like a, like an arcade for, you know, boosting your listing in the search results. It was a kind of a weird concept. They did away with that a while back, a couple years ago probably. And now they're doing these advertising campaigns and we've spoken to VRBO representatives and the account managers, et cetera, and they're saying that, you know, $5 for a small property, up to $15 for a large property. And that's kind what I'm doing I'm actually doing right Now I'm doing five bucks for one to two bedrooms, zero to two bedrooms, and I'm doing $13 a night for three plus bedrooms. And I'm doing it on all my properties and I'm running it indefinitely. It's very easy to set these up. Matter of fact, I had Claude set it up for me. It took Claude a little time to figure out what I was trying to say and I had to pay attention and work with. It took about an hour or two to set it up, but now I could just go back to Claude and say, hey, can you please change my one to two bed, my zero to two bedroom ad campaigns to $6 a night. And it would do that for me.
[00:02:55] Be honest with you, it's faster to do it yourself, but you could let that run in the background while you're doing other things. So that's kind of nice.
[00:03:06] Now I'm actually, I've set up a fee for the same dollar figure on VRBO that basically the guests are paying this.
[00:03:16] So I've set up a $5 per night for all my zero to two bedrooms and three bedroom plus $13 a night. I think I'd set it up as a community fee because you know, if you're directly, directly integrated with VRBO to Hospitable, which is what I use, you have management fees and you have community fees right there on your dashboard. So I set it up as a community fee and I am basically charging that feedback to the guest. So yes, I should be a little bit higher up in the rankings in the list, you know, on the advertising should be easy to find my properties that cost me money now with Verbo and I am charging that back to the guest even, even if they didn't find me with that campaign.
[00:04:04] Also keep in mind that if you are using Claude to do this, you can just have it do the Chrome extension on Hospitable to change all of these things. Now Claude's got the MCP to Hospitable so it may be able to do it through that. But when I was doing it, it was doing it was making these change. I don't know if maybe the MCP API couldn't see the, the fees on Hospitable. There's certain things it can't see. It was doing it with Chrome extension, but it worked out pretty well.
[00:04:35] And so we got a VRBO community fee of $5 per night. We're charging that back to the guests and theoretically we should be ranked, you know, cream of the crop.
[00:04:45] Hopefully, you know, sort of how that works now they only, you only get charged for it I think if you, if they click on it right, you know, and, and book it that way. But I am charging all of my guests this fee so we'll see how that goes moving forward. You know, if, if I'm not really getting many people that are doing it that way with the ad campaign, then I don't need to charge the extra fee per night, so something to keep an eye on. And again, the community, you know, experience manager, whatever that works for Verbo told us five bucks for small properties, 13 bucks for large properties. So that's what we're doing.
[00:05:26] Do you need to do this? No.
[00:05:29] I mean, there's a lot of people, seems like based on social media that don't even like vrbo.
[00:05:35] Now, I will say I'm grandfathered in at the annual subscription. 700 bucks. I think it's 700 now. They changed it. It was like 400 when I first started.
[00:05:48] And you can't get that anymore. So keep in mind, if you're not grandfathered in, I could see why you would be less interested in vrbo. But for me, I'm grandfathered. And so I'm actually motivated to get more verbo bookings because, you know, somewhere around $15,000 in bookings a year, that's when my verbose stays start to turn into simply like a direct booking.
[00:06:13] And I'll go ahead and share screen on this here real quick so you can see what I'm talking about on Hospitable as far as these fees.
[00:06:19] You can see here, I've got my cleaning fees. Don't ask me why, they're a little different per property here.
[00:06:24] And then I've got management fee.
[00:06:29] Why? Just because these are actually new. I didn't used to have these. I'm trying it out for a while, see if anybody notices or cares. And then I've got this community at $5 per night of community fee because that's what they offer me on here on Hospitable. And I can, you know, I'm directly integrated with the Hospitable to vrbo. So I can do it from Hospitable rather than having to go to VRBO to do it, which we're gonna talk more about that in a minute. Now, again, above $15,000 per booking, I am motivated to get to that point with more Verbo bookings because it basically becomes no fees at that point. I've already paid my fee in the form of an annual subscription, so it basically becomes a direct booking, if you look at it that way. So I am motivated to have I personally, my organization. The way we do things. We are motivated to have more verbo and we like verbo, you know, no, no, knock on any of the other ways to rent a house. We like them all.
[00:07:22] And then you can see the ad campaigns here. So where you can Set up. Well, I'm not going to show it because there's too many things on there that you know, whatever we're going to get way in the weeds. That's for you to figure out. You'll figure it out. I'm not going to give you, I'm not going to hold your hand. I'm not your property manager. You're the property manager. You can go on there and set up your own ad campaign, no big deal.
[00:07:46] It's really very easy.
[00:07:48] Setting up the payment methods to pay pay VRBO for the, you know, ad is the most difficult part. You gotta go put on, put in all your banking info and things like that.
[00:08:01] Okay, so now for the direct integration that has recently come out with the Hospitable to vrbo. I was not very interested in doing this. First of all it is a little bit more expensive I think if you do the math. I don't remember but I think you're. And you end up paying 1 point.
[00:08:17] I think it's 0.9% too hospitable to be partner integrated.
[00:08:23] And I was worried about doing this because it was so new and I figured there would be kinks to work out. So I kind of waited on it and eventually actually when I started playing around more with AI, I was like, well, it's going to be easier for me to just do all this stuff from Hospitable rather than to have, have to make Claude go to vrbo and Hospitable and maybe Airbnb and all these different websites be easier just to do it from, from Hospitable.
[00:08:45] And of course with the API connection to Claude that is very attractive as well. So we went ahead and did the full partner integration from Hospitable to vrbo. And at first there was a little bit of a panic there. A couple of weird things happened at the beginning. Like I couldn't, there was a messages coming in from somebody who couldn't figure out the deadbolt. They were trying to open the door and they couldn't figure it out. And those messages were not going to our Hospitable inbox. They were on VRBO only luckily I was paying attention and caught it but ended up just being. We just needed to wait. You know, it was like just a little bit of a time delay and it was just that one guest for whatever reason and it hasn't happened since.
[00:09:27] Also I will say we've had to call VRBO customer service a couple of times and they have partner integrated customer service and it seems to be much better than the standard customer service. They actually transfer you. There's a separate phone number which we had to dig pretty deep to get that number, but we found it, so we're calling that number now. But if you call regular customer service and you're fully integrated, like with owner res or whatever, it's a different department. And we've found so far that they are much more helpful than the regular customer service. So that's kind of nice. And like I was showing earlier, you can do things with your VRBO listings on your management software dashboard with Hospitable.
[00:10:08] Rather than having to go from Hospitable, you could used to be you could only do airbnb things on Hospitable's website slash dashboard. Now you can do those.
[00:10:17] I'm sorry, you would have to go to VRBO to do those things. But now you can do all both platforms and your direct bookings right there on your Hospitable dashboard. And of course, Google Vacation Rentals, which is much less complicated and booking.com is on there as well.
[00:10:34] So it's just nice. In other words, long story short, we are slowly moving into the future with this stuff. You know, our management software can now finally at least mine, see and operate things on my VRBO listings.
[00:10:52] Now, I know other softwares have been able to do that for longer than Hospitable has, like owner res, like escapia, etc.
[00:10:59] Which is actually owned by Expedia.
[00:11:02] So anyway, I'm pro so far. I've only done been doing it. We did it about a week ago. I'm so far very pro hospitable verbo direct integration. And I would recommend that you go ahead and do that if you're worried about the 0.9% or whatever it is that basically, I hate to say it like this, but Hospitable stick in their hand in the cookie jar there.
[00:11:21] Just charge a 0.9% management fee to your verbo guests and, you know, make up the difference. It's. Man, it gets complicated with all these promotions and, you know, fees and cleaning fees and management fees and this discount and that promotion and the mobile booking promotions and, you know, I mean, it gets convoluted after a while, but, man, we're all just doing everything, everything we can to get it in front of as many people as possible. That's the goal. Get the damn house book. That's the goal. Work your ass off.
[00:11:54] And if you're listening to this podcast and you're picking up what I'm putting down here, you're already working hard. Never harder than everybody else, especially harder than your competition, to be honest with you. If you're listening to what I'm saying right now on short term rental management, first of all, I love you and I would really appreciate it if you could hit me with five stars on Spotify. Thank you. Go ahead and do that right now.
[00:12:14] Five stars, Spotify. Appreciate that.
[00:12:19] But to be honest with you, if you're, if you're rocking at this high of a level, like going full steam ahead and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, you, I'm a little bit worried that you're gonna burn out. Let's not burn out. You know what I mean?
[00:12:32] So be careful with that. Just do your best and know that you're, you're doing better than everybody else, you know. And if your calendar is not full, that is your damn fault.
[00:12:41] And get it full. Whatever it takes. Supply and demand. It's a good old fashioned supply and demand. You've got oranges to sell and if you don't sell them, they are going bad. They're gonna, you know, so that was topic number two, the hospitable integration. So far I'm liking it. I'm glad I did it. I was kind of nervous at first because, you know, when they come out with this new technology, no matter who it is, tends to be a little on the wonky side of things.
[00:13:08] But it's working out great and I'm happy with it. So pretty cool from there. I did want to mention that I did have one property suspended on VRBO and I'm not very excited about it. Let me tell you the story there. And this happens. You know, we do constantly have to live in fear of the platforms deciding we're not good enough for them, which is really annoying because the last time I checked, I'm the property manager. Not you. Not you, vrbo, not you. So and so, I'm not throwing any other names out there, but this is what happened.
[00:13:41] I had a house where the H Vac again, nothing wrong with the H Vac is functioning properly. But it was the heat. The, the peak of August, peak of the heat of the whole year. Florida property house is only 7 years old. Therefore the H vac was only 7 years old. I'm going to give you the whole damn long story.
[00:13:59] It's a, it was a two and a half ton unit on 1800 square foot, two floors. So it was probably a little too small.
[00:14:07] And it's a zone unit. So it's just one unit running both Floors and it's got a dampener, right? So it's 11 floors to, to not be pushing air when the other floor is pushing air.
[00:14:18] Unless you got thermostat on 68 degrees on both floors and then you got a problem. And I was running into that with some guests cranking these thermostats down to 68 degrees each.
[00:14:28] And what was happening is it's pushing forced air through both zone system, both zones and it just cannot keep up.
[00:14:36] Supposed to be pumping basically one zone at a time when it's a peak heat of the season. Like that's kind of how a zone system works, right? So you got two thermostats controlling the same H Vac unit.
[00:14:48] So anyway, it was a peak of the summer and it was having trouble keeping up and not bad. It was, you know, be like 73 in there at like 2 in the afternoon and then by the evening it was totally fine. But we had a guest coming in and I had decided that I didn't want to deal with this anymore. I was going to upgrade the unit.
[00:15:06] So I got with my H VAC team and we decided to go with a 3 ton variable speed which was extremely expensive. We went basically like the top of the line model is a little bit bigger and it's pushing lots of cold air.
[00:15:19] So problem solved. However, the guest was coming in and we offered basically as a courtesy, you know, hey, the H Vac is working, but at the heat, the peak of the day, it is not quite keeping up. We're actually going to replace it as soon as you leave.
[00:15:36] Replacing it on Monday. They were coming in on a Friday, we're replacing it on Monday. We're more than happy to offer you a full refund if you don't want to stay here.
[00:15:46] To be honest with you, I don't think most property management companies would have even said anything. Most of them wouldn't even know this was happening.
[00:15:53] So. And that's not a knock on you? I'm not saying anything, I just work hard.
[00:15:59] And she got very upset and was like, oh my God, I gotta find another house now. Again, this is not peak season. It was very, you know, I think it was pretty easy for her to find another house and we gave her a full refund. Come to find out, 10 days goes by and we've got, we've got a suspension on this property now because Verbo flag does with a cancel.
[00:16:17] Even though we called them and involved them from the beginning, we said, hey, this H Vac is not keeping up. We're Putting a new one in here. We've offered these folks a full refund. We're happy to do that.
[00:16:31] And the guest canceled. The guest even said, please cancel. This should have been a guest cancel or a admin cancel. But for some reason we got a host cancel.
[00:16:41] And we didn't know until we got an email that says, your listing has been suspended.
[00:16:47] And it's a real bummer, man, because we were offering these people a courtesy. You know, we could have just never done anything, never even offered, never done any work at all and made more money, but we were being nice and went out of our way to, you know, present these people with an option, a solution to a 2 degree in temperature possible issue.
[00:17:10] So shame on me for being nice to these people. Shame on my, my company for offering these people, you know, a full refund on when we really shouldn't even said anything, I guess, you know what I mean? Like we're trying to be, go above and beyond, be courteous. And now we're being penalized. That property has been delisted for seven days. We're shut down for a week. And we have called VRBO 14 times and they don't care.
[00:17:37] You know, their policy is if it's been more than 10 days, you can't get it reversed.
[00:17:42] We didn't even notice this. We didn't even know this was going on. Why would we even think this was happening? Because we called VRBO and said, hey, we're happy to offer them a full refund. Looks like they do wanna cancel. This should not be, this should not have been a host cancel grant again. Now I'm kicking myself for bringing it up at all. I should have not said anything. I could have made more money.
[00:18:04] I could have made some money.
[00:18:06] I ended up not making any money. And now they shut my damn house down and it's not cool.
[00:18:12] And we're, we're literally. My team's literally on the phone with Verbo right now still arguing about this, but it's just part of it. And VRBO doesn't care. They're not mad at me. But it's their policy to shut the house down for a week. So, you know, luckily it's booked for the next week anyway. But I'm still trying to get this cancel removed out of principle. I don't want to cancel on my record.
[00:18:32] I'm like that kid at school that doesn't want any tardies, you know what I mean?
[00:18:36] We were almost late yesterday because little dude forgot to brush his teeth.
[00:18:42] And so we had to Stop and grab a toothbrush at the drugstore. And then his sister got mad at him and he was like, I don't want a tardy. You're gonna get me a tardy because you didn't brush your teeth, man. It's gross. You know, that's what. That's the way I'm looking at this. I don't want to have a cancel on my record with vrbo. It's not cool. But anyway, these are the things we gotta look out for. And this is where hosts crash and burn. They're like, oh, VRBO sucks. They suspended my listing. I'm never using it again. No, no, no, no, no, no, you can't do that. That's. This is the business we have chosen you. You chose to buy a house that you're going to rent overnight. And the way you do that is with VRBO and several other places, obviously. So we're dealing with that. And it's a bummer because again, we thought we were being cool. Went above and beyond. We had. Nobody ever said anything before these people, you know, but we said, you know what, this thing's not quite getting a temperature. Let's offer them a full refund just in case. And they wanted to take it.
[00:19:39] I had a friend of mine stay in this house right before this, and they never said anything. They were very happy with it.
[00:19:44] I just happened to notice on the thermostats, because we pay attention, that at 2 o' clock in the afternoon, it was one or two degrees too hot and it was functioning properly. I had it checked twice.
[00:19:58] Completely functional, working perfectly. Only seven years old, you know, so just goes to show you, you know, it's just part of it. So I'm shut down on Airbnb for another four days on that or whatever. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry.
[00:20:14] VRBO for another four days.
[00:20:17] When. When, to be honest with you, it's like, dude, who are you gonna find that cares more about their properties and their guests than us? Nobody.
[00:20:25] But I get it. It's just part of the deal, you know, and hopefully we get the right person and get that cancel removed and get that tardy off of our record.
[00:20:35] So there you have it, three topics for today. Number one, verbo ad campaigns. Yes, we do. And then. And that's another thing. I just set up these damn verbo ad campaigns. I'm giving verbo more money now and they gave me a suspension. Not cool, you know, so, yeah, I think the verbo ad campaigns are a good idea for, you know, for the right candidate. They May not be good for you, but if you're listening to this show, you probably are trying hard and it's probably a good idea.
[00:21:02] The VRboHospitable integration. Yeah, I'm gonna greenlight that. I was very hesitant to do that for a while, but it is working out and I think you should probably go ahead and pull the trigger there. And again, the customer service is a little better, although they haven't been able to delete this, remove the suspension.
[00:21:19] And then my crazy story about the. The air conditioner guests, you know, so now good news is that that house has like the. I mean, stupid, ridiculous dollar figure on that H vac. I was shocked. But they were able to put it in.
[00:21:34] They had it in stock and it was, you know, super top of the line high dollars a train, which in my experience is that's. I like them not feel that they're the kind of. The best in the business.
[00:21:45] They do. They are very expensive in some cases, but.
[00:21:50] And again, variable speed, which is very expensive as well.
[00:21:55] And that house has had zero problems. It's cranking hard and doing great.
[00:21:59] One more tip. Keep an eye on your thermostats. Make sure they're in auto rather than on.
[00:22:04] Sometimes the guests will switch them to on, and next thing you know, it's just running all the time. You don't necessarily want that in a single family.
[00:22:12] Sometimes you might, but we usually like to switch those to auto. So it's a nice little tip of the day from Luke the long hair, cash flow. Carl and I love you. Please give me five stars, especially if you're on Spotify. I don't have as many reviews on there. I like the Spotify. I use it every day.
[00:22:31] What else? The shorttermshop.com. i just. I love what I do. It gets so hard sometimes, you know, people are grumpy and you gotta deal with it. That's the gig. People are grumpy.
[00:22:44] Grumpy and entitled. And you've got to give them what they're looking for. And that's the gig. And we're happy to do it. I love you.
[00:22:53] See you next Tuesday. And don't overthink it.
