Every host of a vacation or short-term rental wants to mitigate risk. Guest screening is one way to spot potential red flags, from guests who are more likely to throw wild parties, to hardcore fraudsters using properties for sex trafficking and drug smuggling. But how does guest screening work? And how can it be done fairly?  Get extensive insights from our guest Ela Mezhiborsky, Co-Founder and CPO of Autohost. Autohost provides an identity and fraud prevention platform to hosts of Airbnb and similar vacation rentals. You’ll learn the signs of “iffy” guests, plus various screening method ..read more

Meet Paul Zukauskas, Global Vice President of Customer Success at Guesty. Guesty is property management software for short-term and vacation rentals -- an end-to-end solution, simplifying a property manager’s daily tasks: distribution across online travel agencies, automated guest messaging, collecting payments, calendar management & more. How many booking channels should your properties be on? Are smaller, niche channels worthwhile? Paul shares his input. We also discuss new players in booking platforms and where the extended stay market is going amid today’s “nomad culture.” Plus: what ..read more

How might you increase your short-term vacation rental revenue by 13%? By making your AirBnB rental more accessible to people with disabilities – and those tweaks are easier and less expensive than you might think. People with disabilities and limitations are spending money on travel, particularly those age 65+, and it can pay to cater to their needs. Dr. Rosemarie Rossetti is the author of Universal Design Toolkit and an authority on designing and retroactively fixing spaces to be more accessible and marketable. In this episode, she’ll open your eyes to details in the home that can increase ..read more

Do guests in short-term vacation rental properties get injured and sue their hosts? Yes. Should that scare you away from making money through platforms like AirBnB and VRBO? Not if you take the right approach, says Justin Ford. Justin is an international short-term rental safety expert and the Director of Safety & Certification Programs at Breezeway. In this episode, he gets super-specific about what you can do to maximize safety and minimize risk. Justin covers preventive details you may not have thought of, from proper lighting and unsecured carpets and mats, to fire hazards from applia ..read more

Do you host short-term vacation rentals on platforms like AirBnB and VRBO? Do you charge the same price for every night’s stay, all year? To maximize your income, you may want to rethink that approach and explore dynamic pricing. We’re talking with Anurag Verma, co-founder of PriceLabs, which provides a dynamic pricing tool and data solutions for property owners and managers. We go deep into how dynamic pricing works and how it can put more money in your pocket. We discuss how demand factors like seasonality can impact pricing, and how dynamic pricing can reveal if your rates are too high (re ..read more

Owners of the short-term vacation rental properties that we manage have lots of questions, and understandably so. We recently tapped every team in our organization, from guest communications to housekeeping, to find out what questions property owners most commonly ask. In this episode, we address the four biggies: - “What is dynamic pricing?” - “Why can’t I get website links to all of the booking sites my home is advertised on?” - “Why do I see my property published at different prices across different listing platforms?” - “Why can’t I access my property at free will?” Host Killian Gordon ..read more

We’re talking holidays with Bon Hewlett, Property Care Manager & Executive Chef with Hostē. Booking short-term vacation rental properties through platforms like AirBnB & VRBO is becoming a popular way for families to spend holidays together, especially in larger homes. We detail proactive, pre-holiday maintenance tasks that hosts and property managers should address to keep guests safe and comfortable, especially in anticipation of holiday meal prep. We discuss ways to elevate the vacation rental experience for holiday guests, and how to minimize putting staff to work on holidays, whi ..read more

We’re joined by Koryn Okey, VP of Client Experience for Breezeway, a property care and service platform for hospitality and property management providers. Koryn formerly worked with Flipkey, a channel that helps property owners collect and display guest reviews. We tap Koryn’s insights into the short-term vacation rental property management industry, including how technology may disrupt guest reviews in the next 5-7 years. We discuss the challenge of satisfying guests with unrealistic expectations or disappointments beyond our control, plus Koryn shares her best advice for property owners. We ..read more

In this episode we’re joined by Bon Hewlett, executive chef with Hostē Experiences, the newest arm of Hostē’s hospitality services. With Hostē Experiences, guests of our 160 managed short-term vacation rental properties can book exceptional experiences to enhance their stay, including in-home chef-prepared meals, wine tastings, guided yoga sessions and more. Bon reveals what he learned in the trial-and-error process of refining Hostē’s dining services, providing hints to AirBnB property managers who want to improve their bookings and reviews. He shares what he sees for the future of Hostē Exp ..read more

Thinking of buying a property to use as a short-term vacation rental on platforms like AirBnB? Do you manage vacation rentals and want to move into a new geographic area? You can maximize your chances for success by assessing a geographic area for clues that a vacation rental will (or won't) work there. In this episode, we'll touch on pertinent issues including permits, an adequate local labor force, competition, inventory, seasonality, and the "vacation demand" of a given area. We'll share tips for sidestepping disaster, and even tell you how to make the most of a slow season. Listen in. You ..read more