Julian Sage:                       00:00                    In this video, Jon’s going to be sharing his experience of Airbnb and all these cancellations that are coming in and how Airbnb has been responding to this. So stay tuned. 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:                       00:37                    Hey, welcome back, host nation to another episode of vacation rental machine. I’m Julian Sage and of course I’m with Jon Bell. In the last video that we made, we were talking about the coronavirus and things about such as like not trying to cancel on guests, just that they are coming from places like China or if they are Chinese. But things have kind of taken a little bit of a escalation. And now instead of us having to consider if we should cancel on guests. Now Airbnb is kind of put this position where they are just canceling anybody and it’s really causing an impact on the business. Andso Jon’s going to be talking about his experience with this some of the other videos and other hot top posts that are making videos and talking about this and some of the proof and evidence that they’ve captured. Jon is also going to be giving his feedback on that as well. But Jon, as a host that has over 30 plus properties majority of those being through the arbitrage model and you are also using cohosting. Can you talk about how Airbnb and the choice that they made to just give full refunds? Basically it doesn’t really matter who it is or what their excuses just anybody’s canceling and how that’s impacting your business.

Jon Bell:                              01:45                    Well, I mean, the impact in my personal business is vast. I mean, I went from a very healthy calendar as far as bookings go. And for those of you in my current market, you know that March starts the highest season in this location, the cherry blossom festival, all of that stuff is starting to take place in DC and it’s spring break. And the museums are one of the places that the people come to. So as far as all of that, because things have really gotten shut down in my local market, all of my bookings in general have dwindled down to just a few people that have just stayed or are trying to hedge it out or just going to come anyway. I’ve had a guest tell me, “Hey, as long as my flights aren’t canceled, I’m going to come.” And that has probably been the best response from a guest that I’ve got doing this whole thing.

Jon Bell:                              02:42                    Otherwise, people are somewhat waiting until the last minute to just make a decision on whether they’re coming or not. Airbnb has really just kind of cut off hosts in this regard. If I really think about the other platforms that I’m on, if we want to take in HomeAway VRBO, they sent out a message to guests and hosts basically leaving it as a suggestion that we should give a full refund not making it an easy mandatory type thing if you mention a few words. I liked that approach a little bit better because it also gives me an angle to still either capture some revenue or what I’ve been doing with those guests is saying, “Hey, listen you don’t have to cancel. What we can do is credit you a stay for the exact same length later in the calendar to some unforeseen dates. But just because we don’t know if this whole thing is going to be over in 30 days or if it’s going to be over in six months. So because I’m able to still keep their funds and just move them to another day, that does help me make payments on my rental arbitrage properties prior to them actually coming in stay.

Julian Sage:                       03:53                    It’s gotta be pretty infuriating though because like you said, these other platforms, VRBO, HomeAwayTripAdvisor, all these other ones, they’re basically allowing the host, you know, this is your business, so you have the choice to be able to say, am I going to refund you or not? And that’s what they’re giving the position as. Airbnb really though, they’re taking away that position from you and they’re saying it doesn’t really matter. You can cancel it and then, you’ll get a full refund. I don’t want to go into all the details about them like taking the tax money and stuff like that. I think I’ve seen some other posts about them maybe like taking that back. So I don’t wanna call them out on that, but it is very real that they are giving full refunds. And I have heard of people that they are canceling and then they’re just rebooking and getting a cheaper rate because everybody’s rates are dropped. So they’re canceling and then they’re just rebooking on the same time, trying to play the system. Has that happened to you yet?

Jon Bell:                              04:47                    That has not happened to me, but it is something that I thought about because right. I mean, of course as a host, when you start seeing things eliminated from your calendar, you want to go into this fire sale kind of mindset, and you want to discount as much as you can just to attract anybody. So yes, people get the advantage to, Hey, if I book now I could save maybe hundreds of dollars on the night because this guy has reduced down so far that I can just take advantage of the new price. And at the same time, if they really booked up until a couple of days ago, they could cancel again without penalty. Luckily there’s been some minor changes on Airbnb’s policy that will restrict them from canceling, I believe from this day forward, this day being the 16th.

Julian Sage:                       05:35                    So Jon, what are your thoughts on Airbnb? Is this a platform that, that you’ll continue to do business on or do you think it’s like, “Okay, Airbnb, you’ve lost it. I’m moving completely away.”

Jon Bell:                              05:45                    You know what as I’ve said in multiple videos, Airbnb is a platform. It is a marketing channel. It is someplace that we should be at the same time, it should not be our bread and butter or our only source of acquisition. So I look at it just as, Hey, it’s a place where people go and book. I don’t need to be there. But places to book are also at other sites like HomeAway, booking.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor, all of these places are available for us to add extra exposure. So I would suggest to any host, “Hey, you might need to break that tie to Airbnb or dependency on Airbnb just to help your business survive going forward.”

Julian Sage:                       06:28                    So, Jon, is there anything that we should be doing as professional hosts to call Airbnb out or to do something cause that that really is really kind of a foul play on their part, not giving power to the host of the people that are helping them make money as opposed to what all the other platforms are doing, which is giving the hosts the ability to choose how they run their business.

Jon Bell:                              06:49                    Absolutely. I think that we all, as a collective, have more power even against the big company or the company that we feel is though is going to feed us. We need to just, Hey, make a stand, make a statement, let them know exactly how this is impacting us. At the same time Airbnb needs hosts to do what they do. So if we do decide, Hey, we’re going to go completely off of Airbnb, that does hurt their pockets. So we could really just go back. I mean, there’s been other videos, other posts, other people that have been talking about things that I feel like have gotten a good response and return from just being able to voice whatever they need to voice. So just like anything, it’s up to us, the professional hosts to go out, voice exactly our opinion, voice what we’re looking for.

Jon Bell:                              07:37                    I mean, I do think it might possibly be unfair to get full revenue from all of our guests, but maybe there’s a happy medium in between that we can kind of settle on. So we’re not just left hanging because that’s how we feel. We feel like we’re left out in the cold without any consideration or any further thought or discussion that Hey, this is what we’re thinking of doing. Had that come out, we would have said something completely against it and probably would have been better off than what we are right now. Again, we don’t know how long this is going to really last. So thinking of that everlasting effect, we need to make sure that Hey, we have something, something to show for our loyalty to a certain platform.

Julian Sage:                       08:25                    In the next video, we’re going to be talking about the coronavirus and the impact on the short term rental market and also about that tail end. So after this happens, after this big fear, a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety during this time, what is it going to be the after effect and how us as operators will be able to keep on performing and keep on operating this business during this cool down period. So 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 is 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. Talk to you hosts in the next step episode. Keep on hosting.