Jon Bell:                               00:00                     What’s up Host Nation. This is Jon Bell. In today’s episode, we’re talking about guests’ books. Do you need them?

Julian Sage:                         00:07                     Vacation rental machine helps, so suggests like you learn how to start, grow and scale your short term rental business. The show is 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 that subscribed 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:                               00:32                     Welcome back host. I wanted to talk to you guys about guest books today, so there are few different types of desk books that are very popular. Technically it’s only two in my opinion that we should talk about this in digital guest’s books. We all know and are very familiar with physical guestbooks because most of us have them or already have read stuff about them. There’s also a digital guest’s books out there, but which one should you have in your unit? Let’s go over some pros and cons of both to kind of get a better idea of what we really need. All right. Physical guest books, that’s the book that you’re going to have in the room. It shouldn’t be laminated or something like that. It normally goes into a place where the guests can see it and they can flip through and read all the items and stuff that you have available.

Jon Bell:                               01:20                     One of the biggest pros of having a physical guest book is that it’s physically in the room and readily available for the guests to use during this day. Another advantage is it doesn’t require the guests to have any type of device to read or to just get access to the guestbook itself. One of the cons of having a physical gas book is when you need to update it. Updating and physical guest’s book could mean that you have to reprint the entire book or page and get it re laminated or whenever you need to do to get the update pad and if it’s just a small change, you might not want to throw that in or you might not want to make that change right away because it’s just a small change, but it costs you however much to print out the guests in general. The other disadvantage to have physical guest book is your guests cannot travel with it.

Jon Bell:                               02:08                     They can’t really walk around outside of the place to have it in their hands and find exactly where you’re talking about going as far as recommendations and stuff like that. That walks me right into digital guest’s books. Some of the biggest advantages of having a digital guest book is you’re able to put it in the hands of your guests before they check-in. It’s handheld, so you might be able to include instructions on how to check into the property at the same time. Maybe include maps and stuff to get to the place from the airport or from wherever they are, or maybe tips and tricks on just navigating into the unit itself. If it’s a tricky place to check-in, so if they’re away from the apartment or home, they can open it back up and possibly even find directions, walking directions, wherever you’re, you’re suggesting that they go inside the guests book, so that is another big plus.

Jon Bell:                               03:05                     One of the other advantages of having a digital guests book is you can include all your recommendations for local shops, restaurants, stuff like that. They’re able to kind of walk with that in their hand and they can go in and some of the other digital guests books you’re able to include maybe photos or coupon codes maybe that you’ve already pre-negotiated with vendors. So if you’re able to do that, then you’re able to give them something that they can go grab a bite to eat, maybe on a discount or go get a massage on a discount or whatever you negotiate. Or with your other [inaudible] business owners, they’re also able to see all of your extra services prior to checking in. So one of the services that I do do is kind of like a romance package thing where we do some champagne and some other little things that we set up just around the room as a fee.

Jon Bell:                               03:55                     Of course, our guests can actually purchase that before they check-in and we can just have it set up VR cleaners before they check in and everything is that the reverse of that would be just having the roam open and available after they check-in. We’d have to kind of go in and do that dance and it’s a little more difficult to offer that service. So I prefer the digital desk books, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have physical guestbooks books as well. I just like to have something in their hands. I can also drive extra revenue. So those are the biggest advantages of a digital guests book. Couple of cons about a digital guests book. One, there is nothing physically inside of the room. The best you might be able to do is maybe a QR code that somebody could scan to open up your guests book via an app or just the browser.

Jon Bell:                               04:50                     Oh, on their device. But it requires their device. Your international guests might not have internet access until you give them a wifi code. So unless you give them the wifi code in another means they might not be able to open this digital guestbook. So there are some complexities when it comes to that. Having a physical guestbook outside of that, Airbnb plus does require that you have a physical book inside the property. So keep that in mind if that’s one way that you guys want to go, what’s needed in a guest book. This is very easy, right? We need to put our tips on places that we want to go, places that we want our guests to go see top restaurants. Most importantly, the wifi code, emergency contacts, any details about operating any devices or locks or anything in the home that might be tricky things to see.

Jon Bell:                               05:45                     Any tips and tricks that you have about the apartment. If something is difficult to operate or you want to just include special instructions on how to do a certain thing. That could be maybe opening a back door or it could be operating a dishwasher. Include those instructions inside of your book. There should be parking details, your checkout process, possibly your check in process. That should include emergency contacts, ways to exit the property. We also want to include our house rules and one other thing that we might want to include is are extra services. If you do have those extra services that are there for a fee, you should put those in your desk books so that your guests can actually see them made, maybe want to order them and you can set up whatever it is that you are trying to add as a special added. So guest books are definitely another way to include extra services. Try to create some extra revenue. It should be a part of our daily business too. Try to get more dollars out of our guests. So let’s make sure that we do with this guest book, right. There are a couple of tools that I can put out there for you guys to try. We want to include some of those links down in this post.

Julian Sage:                         07:00                     Hope you host 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 you can go on over to our Facebook group, the Host Nation, talk to your Host on the next episode. Keep on hosting.