Julian Sage:                         00:00                     In this episode we’re talking about guests’ inquiries and when they are requesting things like discounts. So stay tuned.

Julian Sage:                         00:07                     Vacation rental machine helps hosts just like you learn how to start, grow and scale your short term rental business. The show’s all about creating systems that help you automate your business, give any more time and money freedom. If you’re ready to start living the vacation rental life, then subscribe to this podcast today. Come and join us on our Facebook group, the host nation where we’ll be talking about starting, automating, and scaling a short term rental business. Now onto the show.

Julian Sage:                         00:33                     Hey, welcome back host nation to another episode of vacation rental machine. In this episode, I am with this very, very special Jon Bell and we are talking about guest inquiries and requests for discounts; so things that typically don’t fit within our model for automated messages. So in the past few episodes, we’ve been talking a lot about automated messages, the check in and checkout process, but there are going to be situations where guests are inquiring about things that our automated messaging platform, a smartbnb is not able to catch. So Jon, what do you do when someone messages you because you’re constantly getting notifications all the time that you know people message and that message goes out, but how do you catch those ones that the smartbnb platform isn’t able to catch and how do you respond to those?

Jon Bell:                               01:16                     In the rare case that my automations don’t answer their question, let’s just say somebody asks me about” “Hey, do I have a high chair already inside of the apartment? I would look at that message and basically just respond “yes.” There already was a message that went out after the inquiry that is almost enticing them to book now because I can’t keep this thing from flying off the shelf.

Jon Bell:                               01:41                     So before you really get into all of these questions, book it because I might be answering them for no reason. That message goes out to everybody. That’s included in just one of the smartbnb templates that’s already there when you join. So I just leverage that. That goes out for every inquiry. And I just answered those sub questions that I get in the initial message. Or sometimes there’s a follow on message, but when a guest asks questions like “Is there parking available?” There’s an automation that goes out for that. They might ask about configuration of bedrooms. Sometimes I do have to respond to that directly, but for the most part if they say anything about pets or where to park, sometimes they might ask for the wifi code like right then and there. I think that’s a little weird, but maybe they just want to have it. There’s an automation for all of that that just automatically goes out. Automations are what keep me from just looking down at my phone all the time.

Julian Sage:                         02:43                     So obviously, Jon, when you’ve scaled up and you have over 30 properties, that’s a lot of messages that are coming in and out every day. Are you having to go in and actually manually look at every single message that is being received and sent to verify that none of those questions that wasn’t picked up is being picked up by you?

Jon Bell:                               02:59                     I do look when somebody books because well that’s what I want to see. I want to see somebody booking and that automatically makes me look to see “Hey, what room are they in?” And if they do send a question, then I do look at it from there. I do always look at my request or my inquiries. Those are very important to capture and convert very quickly.

Julian Sage:                         03:23                     So sometimes guests are going to be asking things maybe for like discounts. How do you respond to a discount requests? Is that an automated message or do you have to manually put that in?

Jon Bell:                               03:34                     You know, I used to be very stingy. I used to just send an automated response that says “Hey, we use dynamic pricing and our pricing is competitive and this is pretty much the lowest you can go.” I have since stopped doing that because I still want to capture the guests. Sometimes, they just want a special offer. Sometimes some people just want something. I mean, I’ve sent special offers with maybe $25 off of what they’ve asked for and they book. I also sometimes when I can tell that the special offer won’t make a big difference for the guests, I’ll tell them “Hey, if you book, I can credit you back $30 or so.” I don’t give too much. When it comes to discounts in general, I feel like my pricing during the times when it needs to be very competitive, is very competitive.

Jon Bell:                               04:27                     So if somebody is asking for a major discount, I really don’t entertain it too much. I might offer a new location that could fit their budget. When I’m talking to a guest that wants to book long term I do just try to figure out, “Hey, what’s your budget in general monthly? If you’re looking for a month, I’ll try to see if I can make that work. But I might ask the guests to just book a short stay. That way they know “Hey, this is the appropriate apartment for me.” And then we can talk about booking direct afterwards.

Julian Sage:                         05:01                     So it sounds like with discounts that there is a lot more personal factor into that. And maybe even a little bit more sales involved because a lot of people, they look at, let’s say the retail price, but even though that might be the retail price, they want to see some type of discount there. They want to see some type of special offer because a lot of people just get some type of satisfaction knowing that they can get just even $5 off is what it sounds like.

Jon Bell:                               05:26                     Yeah, I mean you said it best. I mean some people really just get joy by not spending whatever the listed price is no matter what it is.

Julian Sage:                         05:36                     So question of the day, what’s the weirdest inquiry that you’ve gotten and how did you respond to that? Leave it in the comment section down below.

Julian Sage:                         05:42                     Until next time host nation, keep on hosting. Hope you hosts found value in this episode. If you did, please go on over to iTunes and leave us a review, that would greatly support the show. If you’d like to connect with Jon, the community, and I, then go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation.

Julian Sage:                         05:58                     Talk to you hosts in the next episode. Keep on hosting.