Julian Sage:                         00:00                     In this episode, we’re talking all about Airbnb’s tools such as instant book and their smart pricing, and if these are tools that you should be using. Stay tuned.

Julian Sage:                         00:10                     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 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

Julian Sage:                         00:35                     Hey, welcome back Host Nation to another episode of vacation rental machine. In this episode we’re talking all about the Airbnb tools, the suite of tools that they have, such as their instant book and smart pricing, and if these are something that a professional should be using in their business. So John, why do you think that instant book is such an important tool for booking on Airbnb?

Jon Bell:                               00:57                     It’s such an important tool because we are professional operators, right? So we want to be making money in our sleep and one of those ways is to actually allow instant booking. When those people from overseas want to book your place, instead of just getting a request to book, you might be a little slow to respond and they might decide, well I want to go over to this other place where I can get instant gratification that one, I got a place waiting for somebody to accept a booking for somebody that’s trying to find a place to stay is one of the hardest things to wait for. Cause you just never know when it’s going to come through. And then sometimes if you get a request to book and they haven’t submitted payment just yet, then it kind of goes back to them for request of payment. If they don’t pay it within a certain time, then the booking is canceled and you wasted time doing that.

Jon Bell:                               01:46                     I recommend that we have all instant book places or listings just for that simple fact of we can just get people in, we don’t have to worry about things. And it’s just better that way.

Julian Sage:                         01:58                     I think one of the big fears that people have is like, I don’t just want anybody, like how am I supposed to vet people if they are just instantly booking my place? How do I know that they’re going there and they’re not going to be causing problems or that you know, whatever the issue is.

Jon Bell:                               02:12                     You know, part of this business has to do with trust, right? So we’ve got to trust the people that are kind of coming in, but we need to set ourselves up in a position that we know that the people are coming in are going to treat them with respect. So one of those ways is if we cancel out one day bookings, we know that we’re not really going to have too many parties there. You might get somebody that wants to come in for maybe three to four days, man, but still have a party. I can’t say that you’re going to 100% eradicate that risk, but we have other measures and systems in place that tell us when these things are going on. And to be honest, when they do happen, you’re able to kick that guest out, keep their entire deposit or whatever they paid for the booking.

Jon Bell:                               02:56                     So it’s not so much of a bad thing, you just to protect your property, make sure you’re not being an annoyance to your neighbors. So I don’t think that’s right. Too much of an issue. One of the things I do require is that they have a verified profile. So you might get a person that wants to book it, comes in as a request to book, but they don’t have a verified profile. So what I do is send them a message with the instructions on how to verify their profile as well as that I’ll approve their request as soon as they do this step and I’ll check back probably 30 minutes later and normally it’s done. Or they’ll send a message saying, Hey, I got it done. Can you approve and approve it? And we’re good. So that is probably the only block that I have on my listings that stops somebody from booking instantly. So go for those verified profiles.

Julian Sage:                         03:47                     Now, the second tool that we want to talk about is smart pricing. A lot of people are thinking, Oh well maybe I don’t need dynamic pricing, which is gonna be another tool that we’re going to be talking about, that we’ve mentioned previously on the show, but Airbnb has their own kind of like dynamic pricing called smart pricing with a recommend certain prices to you and a lot of people think that that that’s what they can just go with and that there’ll be okay. What are your thoughts being a professional operator about using Airbnb smart pricing?

Jon Bell:                               04:15                     Well, let’s kind of backtrack and go with why Airbnb started smart pricing, right? Airbnb wants to make sure that we have all the tools and pricing and stuff that we need to make sure that they get the reservation right. Again, Airbnb gets paid when people book, so the best way to get people to book is to control prices, which doesn’t necessarily mean your pricing is going to be top notch, right? You might not be bringing in what you need to be bringing in. Just because my pricing says I can get you booked at $89 and you know we all get those things. I’d say 400% increase in bookings. That smart pricing kind of telling you like, Hey, I can get you all of this stuff. If you reduce your price well below what you want to accept. Normally I’m like looking and I’m like, Oh my God, no, I would never do this room for $89 I’d have a minimum price if I don’t go for that minimum price. I normally go unbooked or I might do some other things with pricing. We’ll get to that later in another episode to try to influence people to book. However smart pricing is not it. We need to be dynamic. Smart pricing does not include all the events and stuff that are going on in the area, so you just don’t know when it influx and when to actually be a little lower. So don’t use smart pricing. That is not a pro recommendation.

Julian Sage:                         05:41                     So I guess one of the things that we have to clarify is that because Airbnb, when they’re advertising their smart pricing, they’re saying like, Oh, increase your bookings, you’ll get 400%, 500% you’ll, you’ll have your calendar fully booked. You know, I guess people are probably thinking like, Oh, if my place is in book then I’m not making money. But that’s not the case.

Jon Bell:                               06:01                     No, that’s not the case at all. I mean we want to make sure that we are profitable, we’re keeping the right type of guests coming into our place. So the first way to avoid some of those issues is pricing. Right? I mean, if I could have a place for $25, I’m sure I can keep it 100% booked. But does that mean that the guests that I get for that price is what I want? Is that a part of my brand? No. So I don’t follow along with their pricing. Again, if you’re a pro, you’re going to use some type of pro tool for pricing. I have been in the Facebook talking about price labs and use wheel house. There’s also beyond pricing. Those things are all great tools. Check them out, see which ones you like. You look at the pricing. Some of them take a percentage of all your revenue. Some of them are flat fees. Once you have multiple listings, you should really, really, really, really be on top of pricing with some type of tool.

Julian Sage:                         06:56                     Right? And we’ll be covering pricing a lot more in depth in a later episode. But this section, step six is all about the tools that you will be using. You know, now that we have already gotten all of our pre-listing materials done in step five, so question of the day, what are you going to be using? Are you planning on using Airbnb smart pricing or your own dynamic pricing? Leave it in the comment section down below.

Julian Sage:                         07:20                     So I wanted to congratulate the host nation family. We have reached over a thousand members. So if you haven’t joined the host nation, definitely want to do that and want to give a big shout out to some of our members because they have actually gone and acquired their first properties and they’re following right along with the vacation rental machine. John’s always in the comment section and answering a lot of your guys’ detailed questions. So a lot of really good stuff. And we’re growing this. You guys are taking action making. They can big steps, kicking butts, stake in names. So I congratulations to everybody that is part of this community.

Jon Bell:                               07:53                     Alright, again, special congratulations to the people that just got their first listing. They are also a member of our meetup group. It’s local in D C sorry for everyone that is not in this area, but we meet up once a month. You can find that we’ll post the Lincoln to in this video for that. But special congratulations to Jay, Mark and Cole, they all got their first listing. They’re up and going. I’m, I, I get some messages and texts from these guys. And yeah, they’re flying by the seat of their pants, but they really excited about what’s in the future for them. So I’m excited to help them get there. If you’re not in any of these groups, you know, you got to get there right now. These videos are good for you if you just wanna listen, but if you really want to put some action to things, you got to get in the group, start some conversations and we got some other things going. So all of that will come out soon.

Julian Sage:                         08:41                     And 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 what 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. Sewed, keep on hosting.