Jon Bell:                               00:00                     In this episode, we are talking about early check-in requests and late checkout requests and whether you should do it.

Julian Sage:                         00:08                     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.

Jon Bell:                               00:35                     All right, host. I’m here with my friend, Julian Sage and we are talking about early check in and late checkout and whether you should accept it, what you should charge or how should you respond to this message during certain circumstances. Julian, I know since you have your own place, you’ve received this request probably about 50 times by now. How do you handle it whenever you get it?

Julian Sage:                         00:58                     So, Jon, for me personally, I don’t really accommodate or think too much about the early check-in, late checkout process but I know that there are ways to be able to maximize that rental income and you can actually make a little bit of money from that process. So I’m curious as to what you are doing to be able to do this at scale.

Jon Bell:                               01:14                     All right, so for me it’s an automated process, right? There is a message that goes out to the guest day of check in that lets them know, “Hey, early check in is available.” I’m sorry that message goes out the night before check -in. It says that early check in is available and there are certain levels that you can pick for check in that also come at a cost. So definitely if you’re not charging for late check in or early checkout, you are leaving money on the table. Sometimes, it’s not much money that you’ll collect, but it is something just on top when you’re looking to raise revenue per guest. This is really, really, really important. So yes, that automated message goes out for early check-in. For late checkout, it’s does the same thing. Right in my checkout message that goes out the night before it says, “Hey, I don’t know if you got a late flight or whatever, but you can check out at 5:00 PM for this fee or this time for this fee.

Jon Bell:                               02:15                     So it’s really key to try to automate that stuff. I’m not really looking at my calendar saying, Hey, I could send this message or I can’t send this message. It’s just my booking windows are set to a certain thing and I know that, Hey, I’m not going to book past this time so I could send this message and know that I won’t mess myself up. There is some coordination with the team the next morning to make sure that “Hey, they’re not going to go try to clean at 11 or whatever the checkout time is. Pretty much that process is automated. But what’s key is that you need to accept it when you can. If you are maxed out a 100% booked, you really don’t have the capacity to even allow it unless it’s just an hour. Sometimes I just tell people, “Hey, it’s a little too late to request,” but you know what the best thing I can do is just say, “Hey, you just got to leave when the cleaners come in.”

Jon Bell:                               03:10                     Sometimes they run about an hour later. Sometimes that’s the best that I could do. Other times, if somebody gives me a good compelling story, maybe I’ll do it for free or it’s the holiday time. Somebody wants to check into one of my highest end places at noon, right before Thanksgiving. I’m probably just going to say, “Sure, go ahead. You can do it because it’s the holiday time.” They did a long reservation. So I look at all those things. When it’s a short reservation, no. I would be “No, you got to pay because you booked for two days. You booked at my lowest price that I wanted you to book. So I need a little bit more out of you. That’s how I handle it.

Julian Sage:                         03:50                     So what exactly is like a late checkout? Early check in? Is this like 30 minutes early check in and 30 minutes late checkout? How do you justify the cost for a person that is requesting just to stay a little bit longer?

Jon Bell:                               04:02                     So if your checkout period is at 11, I might send that first tier at 12. I might send the second tier at two and the last tier at five. So that way, there’s just a grade of price increases that go along with those times. Sometimes, that looks like $20 an hour. Sometimes, it looks like a lot more depending on the property.

Julian Sage:                         04:26                     So this sounds like some really higher level stuff, Jon. This is actually some of the stuff that we actually share in the BNB empire builders mastermind group because now we’re not just talking about simply just a check in checkout period which probably a lot of you, new hosts that are listening to the show if you are just getting started, maybe you don’t really need to think about this very in depth.

Julian Sage:                         04:47                     You’re just trying to get started and just trying to start your vacation rental machine business. But if you are planning on scaling and making this a profitable business, you have to model what things like the hotels are doing. Hotels do offer late checkout, early check in and stuff like this, but we are also about maximizing that rental income.

Julian Sage:                         05:05                     So if you are interested in the BNB empire builders mastermind group, then click the link down below to see if the mastermind group is open and you can fill out an application. If it’s not open, you can join the waiting list. If it is, then you will be sent a confirmation after your application has been sent in. So thank you so much Jon, because these are some really, really practical tips for those people that are maybe at that next stage and are looking to really start optimizing their income.

Julian Sage:                         05:30                     And it sounds like this is actually a really nice profitable way. If you have multiple rooms, multiple properties, I mean those, those dollars start to add up really quickly. How much would you say that out of 30 properties that you’d be able to make off of a early check in late checkout?

Jon Bell:                               05:44                     I’d easily say an extra $500 a month. But let me add this. For those people that are using the cohost method, these extra fees and stuff, even if you charge them through the platform, they go to you directly, they don’t go back to the property owner. So if you’re splitting your primary and your secondary payouts, this service fee goes directly to you.

Julian Sage:                         06:07                     And all of these payouts are through the Airbnb platform?

Jon Bell:                               06:11                     Yes. So anytime you offer an extra service through Airbnb and you click that extra service fees, those fees go directly to you, the co-host.

Julian Sage:                         06:21                     So these types of settings are things that you have to be able to set in your account to make sure that you are configured to be able to receive those types of payouts. So if you are looking for some more of that in depth work, then definitely you want to check out the BNB empire builders where we are really focused on maximizing your rental income and building our BNB empires.

Julian Sage:                         06:41                     With all that being said, 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 because 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 episode. Keep on hosting.