STRSS 15 – Professor who runs an Airbnb hostel while traveling the world w/ Toby Doré

Video Transcript

00:00:00
This is episode number 15 of short term rental success stories. Welcome back to short term rental success stories. I’m your host, Julian Sage. This is show where I talk to hosts about their journeys and starting and growing the short-term rental business. My goal is that you’ll be able to walk away with practical information. That’ll help you become a better host and learn how to scale your business if you’re a host and you know, how important reviews are. So if you do find value in the show, please go on over to iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting site and leave us a review so we can feature it on the next episode that I had the honor of speaking with Toby Duray, Toby manages over 33 listings ranging from rental arbitrage owning, and co-hosting Toby is quite possibly the coolest university professor as he’s a world traveling nomadic backpacker, who also runs a hostel, which he lists on Airbnb.

00:00:47
There’ll be having started in 2011 after reading the joy of less decided to take a minimalistic approach to his units and allow like-minded travelers on a budget to stay after traveling and experiencing life at hostels, he took his new found experiences to create his very own Cajun hostel, which is located about two and a half hours outside of new Orleans and Lafayette Louisiana. So he shares a lot of useful information about running a budget friendly property, how to manage people’s expectations with shared sleeping spaces and how to structure your team. So you don’t have to manage everything yourself, if you haven’t done so already going over to our Facebook group, short term rental success secrets to talk with Toby and other successful hosts. You like my show notes for this episode, go to Short Term Sage dot com backslash or if you’d like my show notes sent directly to your inbox every week, then go to Short Term Sage dot com backslash show notes with all that being said onto this week’s conversation. Welcome back hosts that I have the special honor of speaking with Toby doré. Please let the audience know a little bit more about who you are and what inspired you to get into short term rentals.

00:01:50
Okay. My name is Toby Dory. I’m a full-time professor in Southwest Louisiana located in Lafayette, Louisiana, and I got into hosting about eight years ago when I was actually moonlighting as a, with, as owning a production company. And we were doing live music. You’ve answered as well as some friends and I managing a lot of music clubs. I was preparing for a, a road trip across the United States, and I knew that my time in booking and promoting live music was, was gonna be ending soon. And I actually learned from some of the musicians that I was booking from California about using Airbnb instead of hotels to travel and to use them as I prepared for my road trip. I also happened at the time I happened to be reading a book called the joy of last, and it was all about just cleaning out your house, taking everything, even the pictures off the wall.

00:03:02
And basically the beginning of it’s a minimalist book. And so I decide all this kind of happens all at the same time. So I decided to also list my house and I even got bookings within days at the time. No one really knew about Airbnb and Lafayette, whether to use it as a guest or as a host. And so I rented a car and took off to Canada immediately got my, my house booked for one group of guys that were here in town for work, grew booked it for two months and I took off. And then when I got to west Texas, I decided to use Airbnb. I was actually had already used it as a host, but I booked into language, Texas. I booked a in, out in the desert, a dome shelter. It was called completely off the grid for one night in Terlingua, Texas, right outside of a big pan.

00:04:08
And then from then, you know, I, I slept in a motor home. I slept in a teepee in a girl’s backyard in downtown Portland and, and then several other places along the way. At the same time, I was getting tons of requests for my house daily to stay in my house down in, back in Lafayette, back at home. And so when I returned home, I was, you know, I owned this house for 12 years. It was a three bedroom house and single with no kids. So it, it, it got to a point where the Airbnb income was paying for my mortgage and plus bills. And I was now, I had this new hobby of, of world travel. So I, it was great extra income along with my full-time job. So I, I actually rented out a small 400 square foot apartment to live in and sort of renting out my house full time on Airbnb.

00:05:17
And then also when I would travel, I would rent out this small apartment that I was leasing, and I still have that apartment today. And I still use it. I don’t stay there very much because now I, I manage five different apartments like it, small four to 500 square foot apartments. And so it continued, the business continued to grow. I developed, I started an LLC and then I, I took a trip to Europe and stayed in hostels for the first time. And I, when I returned from that trip, I decided to not only ran out my three bedroom house, I actually decided to convert it into a mini hostel. So I created a dorm room in my office with bunk beds and then put Kiko locks on the door. I got that idea from, from staying with a guy in Vegas who basically he was a military guy and he had four bedrooms in his house.

00:06:24
And that’s all he did was Airbnb and had keypad locks on each one of the doors and on the front doors. So that’s, that was way before now. It’s, it’s almost kind of a standard thing for Airbnb hosts, but back then, it wasn’t a common thing. Everybody either left keys underneath the, underneath the flowerpot or somewhere like that. I hear the keys are met you at the door to most likely met you at the door to give you the keys, but that was something that nobody was doing at the time. And so it’s interesting now when I go to conferences and things like that, I can see, you know, the entire company is devoted to these different types of keypad locks I was doing this seven years ago. So, so yeah, and so now I have, before Airbnb ever had co-hosting platforms, I began co-hosting with my next door neighbor.

00:07:25
And he had a three bedroom house with a studio apartment in the back. He lived across, he lives across the street, still does, but he owned a rental property next door to me, and he was getting tired of his. He was getting tired of people destroying his house basically. And so he decided to let me manage his house on Airbnb for a percentage. And, and eventually over the few years, the word got around town. And so now it, up to this point, I’m managing, I have five. What I consider clients five different clients. He was the first one and there is everything from a small studio apartment to the two bedroom house, two bed, one bath, three bedroom, three bath. I manage a home two hours away in new Orleans. So that’s kind of the setup at this point.

00:08:30
You know, I, I think it’s super funny and interesting Toby is that you, you, you read this book, you had kind of this, you know, a different lifestyle, you know, traveling and music. And then, but from this kind of unique lifestyle, you decided to, you know, take out more minimalism and that’s really shows like in how you manage your properties. And like, even now, like when we were, you said you don’t really even have like a standard like home, you own like a big, big home, but now like you just live in these units that you’re renting out. Is that correct?

00:09:06
That’s correct. So I think the backpacking trip to Europe had a huge effect on that. Even after reading the minimalist book, it was the combination of those different things, realizing that I could move around from eight different countries in two and a half months with just a backpack, you know, and then seeing that this was a lifestyle of, you know, this was what Europeans did, you know, all over Western Europe, you know, that and Australians, and it’s a lifestyle that people, at least in my part of countries don’t know anything about a very small percentage of us. Anyway, it was just backpacking. And so when I got home now, it helps to be single, no kids, even at this point, but I was 35 years old when I took my first backpack trip. And so when I got home, you know, it, it started to wear on me a little bit app, but not until a few years later, but I still continue to backpack.

01:10:13
I still stay in hospitals, but yes, I don’t really have one particular place. And part of that is kind of because of the business model, because I’ve just continued to add units, two of the units I added on to my own property over the past four years, I first converted storage shed into a tiny house. And then when it was finished, I would actually bounce back and forth between that first apartment that I leased that I’d been leasing for about six years now, I guess I would bounce back and forth, but I, you know, I would travel for three months in the summer, one month in the winter, two weeks for spring break. And so, you know, I, I, wasn’t just going to leave all my stuff in there. I would put it, I put it in storage and the housekeepers came in, fixed. They fix it up and then get it ready.

01:11:10
And it almost immediately gets booked. So that money, essentially, anytime I travel, whether it’s overseas or if I just take a weekend trip to new Orleans, you know, in my mind, the sacrifice for me, living, living with a backpack is that I’m actually paying for my accommodation, but where, where, you know, wherever I’m staying, especially if you know, I’m staying in houses and get paid hospitals and guest houses. So that started, oh gosh, seven years ago, STO I just got back from Puerto Rico and I just took over a small apartment that I’m leasing and I fixed it up and got it ready just in time and then listed it on the three channels that we use and it immediately got booked. So it was books an entire 10 days. I was in Puerto Rico. And then when I flew home, I checked right back in and that’s where I’m staying tonight. So yeah.

01:12:13
You know, I just think it’s, it’s so cool. You, you you’ve really invested into your, your business the way that really fits your lifestyle. You know, you have this minimalist, this traveling nomad, a nomadic type of lifestyle, and that shows in the, the units that you do. And what’s what is pretty cool is that you, you know, you’re, you’re a full-time professor, but you’re also doing something that is niche. You know, you’re doing the more hostile type type of units have. What, what, what is your, what is your experience with like managing more like a hostel as compared to renting out like a whole home? Have you found it more profitable or have you found it more of like a headache to have just a bunch of, you know, multiple units in a single or multiple listings and units like in a single property rather than just renting out the whole place as is,

01:13:06
You know, and the fact that I’ve done. So, I mean, I basically have my own house with his mortgage and it has the house next door. We don’t have bunk beds per se, but I, you know, I do think, yeah, I do think it is a little more of a hassle. However, I feel that it’s really hard to compare because I see how well our, our, our houses are two and three bedroom houses do without the multiple rooms. But I also think that there’s an advantage in the slow season, but I think, you know, the overloading thing is that, you know, I just fell in love with that hospital atmosphere and, and it, it was just a desire and I never really sat down and pinpointed, Hey, or even gave it a try, just take all the bunk beds in the private rooms, list it, put the listings down and just try to do the whole house.

01:14:09
I didn’t want that. I didn’t even really want to try to do that because I have both. And to me, they’re all doing well. It is, I think, yes, it’s absolutely more of a headache than just if I just rented out the entire house, I could also just shut down the Airbnb. Now I have another place to live and I could just rent it out long term, but I, I don’t think that would be as profitable, but this is just kind of the business model that I chose. And I wanted to give these backpackers who back pack the United States, you know, an opportunity to travel and stay in a hostel here in south Louisiana. We have one other hostel here in town, and I think there’s entire states bordering states with us, or right down the road that don’t have any houses at all down in the Southeast.

01:15:02
Now new Orleans has probably eight or 10 different, you know, hostels. And we have two in Lafayette. I’m not aware of any in the rest of the state of Louisiana. And so you can literally try across state to state. I haven’t checked in a while, but I’ve tried. I know just traveling. It’s, it’s interesting, but at the same time, we’re not on hostels. That’s calm. We’re not on a hostile world because everything is automated. So even the hostel we have, we don’t have someone, we don’t have a front desk. We don’t have somebody checking people in. So I haven’t really come across anybody who does exactly what I do. Even the other hospital in town, they have a desk, they check people in, they take cash or are they do bookings online, but we don’t do that. We don’t have a credit card machine. We don’t take cash in the door.

01:15:59
And so it’s really hard to describe to some people. Another thing that I found very interesting was I was talking with the engineers at the Airbnb Oakland a few years ago in LA. And I was explaining to them that how time consuming it was that every time somebody booked a bunk bed in my room that, you know, I had to block out the whole house manually. Or if somebody rented my entire house, then I had to go in and manually block out seven other listings. And I said, yo, would it be possible to, to create a system that automatically blocks this for me? So I don’t have double bookings if I make a human mistake. And they literally just looked at me like nobody’s ever asked to sack. Yeah. Nobody’s ever asked us that question. And we actually use a program now called cause now we have 15 different properties, four of them, you can share the property. And we use a company called a software program called your Porter. And it actually does that for us. And so it actually links with the Airbnb calendar booking.com calendar HomeAway. So, so yeah, that, that was kind of interesting looking back on that as well was I, I’m not really, I’m a, I’m a hostel that happens to be only listed on these traditional short term rental manage the sites, but not necessarily that the main hostile sites. Okay.

01:17:45
You know, I kind of want to talk a little bit more about that. The one thing that kind of comes to mind when I think of a hostel, I think of something that’s cheap, something that is for someone that is maybe younger, you know, maybe they are just looking just for a bed. They’re looking, you know, the, the hostels are going to be getting more of like a traveling younger, more someone that maybe wants to party and see the area. Do you find that with, because the, the, the, the units or the bunk beds are typically cheaper that you’re getting like poor quality guests, or are you not finding that, that it’s an issue dealing with like, people that are maybe too loud or trashing the place or anything like that.

01:18:27
So stemming back as a traveler from what you, you, you said there, I noticed a change just right around the time I started doing Airbnb was when I started traveling and backpacking internationally and pretty flipped frequently. I’ve been to 45 countries now. And so, and I’ve stayed in hospitals and every, I think every one of those countries, but I remember my first trip, they were still, there were still places that call themselves youth hostels. And I also recall, recall using, you know, searching around on hostels.com and there being a maximum age. And, and within a few years, I didn’t see that anymore. And now I’m not saying they don’t exist anymore, but, you know, I, I watched that kind of evolve. It was interesting. I think it has something to do with the popularity of Airbnb. And, and, and especially in the United States, people starting to get more used to sharing the homes and learning what hospitals are other than our movie, of course, but that’s just, that’s just something that I noticed now, as far as the problems I have noticed, I haven’t noticed that many problems with booking the entire house, but the biggest problems I’ve had is locals.

01:19:55
So when you have a local that is staying in booking a $20 bunk bed, your first question is why, if you have Lafayette, Louisiana listed as your hometown on Airbnb and nine times out of 10, that person has actually booked for someone else. And I’m not saying this happens all the time, but I mean, I, I could, you know, it’s, it’s, it happens. And when we do have a problem, basically you have someone who’s booking for a relative or booking for a friend. And why is this person staying in a hostel in their own hometown? But, so that’s why most hostels, a lot of hostels, even the other hospital here in town, they have a rule that they don’t allow locals to stay in their hospital. And so, and I think it’s specifically because of that reason. So the problems that I’ve had are that way, but like, as far as like it, you know, is it a nagging problem or I’ve never thought about, you know, shutting down the, the, the dormitory.

02:21:02
Absolutely not. I, you know, it’s, it’s kinda neat to see the people that show up and they they’re, usually Americans are the only ones that have never stayed in a hospital. And they say, you know, it’s my first time doing this, but I know for a fact that, you know, since I started that dorm room at foul, literally thousands of people from multiple countries and visited Lafayette that probably would have never done. So at the first place, my private rooms are only, you know, 30 to $50. So they’re not really that expensive either, you know? And so they have that option, but then you go up to a hotel room here, you’re gonna pay cheapest at like a three-star motel. You’re gonna pay $70. So almost doubled. So, and it’s a route straight through new Orleans. New Orleans is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States world.

02:22:09
And we’re exactly two hours on the interstate, straight down from new Orleans. And so I feel like, you know, I’ve contributed to international tourism in, in the city. Another one of the reasons too, is I mentioned that other hospital, but they really didn’t promote. So when you’re talking about people coming in and trashing the place, ironically also I was, I was also booking live music when I decided to turn, turn my house into a hospital. And this other place in town was world renowned as a live music venue, who also happened at a hospital. And many people didn’t even know, especially the locals, that there was a hostel inside that they were bunk beds that you could rent. And so this is, this is the, the other hospital in town. And so I started to feel like I was the place where you could go back and sleep.

02:23:04
Whereas there four or five nights a week, there’s live music plan right outside the door. And so that must fear became kind of that particular hostile. And in my hostel was placed where, you know, it’s pretty much lights out 10 or 11. O’clock, it’s more, I wouldn’t say family-oriented, but I’d say over 60% of my guests are co or single travelers in the dorm room, but they’re not twenties. Even we do have our share of, you know, 20 to 25, but you know, between 30 and 40 years old, lots of book, the, especially the prior. So I haven’t really had that many problems. I have almost 3000 reviews on Airbnb. So I figure, I think it’s about 40% of, of our guests leave reviews. So, I mean, you’re looking at, I don’t know, close to 10,000 guests that I’ve, I’ve hosted. And, and I don’t feel like that’s been a big pro

02:24:18
You know what, I just think it’s, it’s very interesting because there’s not many people that I, that I know, or that I’ve heard of that are doing like a hostel model with, with the short-term rental. You know, usually it’s just like, they’ll, they’ll list like a single room. And then, you know, then you know, that that person leaves, because one of the things that that is curious to me is like, when I think of a, like an Airbnb type short term rental, I think of like, you know, maybe like it’s going to be a variety of things, but I’m, I’m leaving. People are very review oriented and they’re like, if, if everything’s not perfect, it’s gonna be a bad review. And you have so many people staying in that place that, you know, maybe they could, you know, maybe, maybe they a little bit noisy or maybe, you know, they don’t leave the bathroom perfectly clean and it’s not going to be perfectly, everybody wants, which can result in potentially, you know, a poor review. So how, how do you, how do you manage that and how do you handle just like the amount of the occupancy in a single place and people’s expectations.

02:25:26
So, and you know, this really, again goes back to the, the quality control with respect to what you were saying about me bouncing around. So when I decided also, you know, to continue to be a nomad in myeloma, hello, hometown, I’m also pretty much forcing myself to be moving around to these disk, just different locations or somebody’s living in the house that are even next door to the house. And I still continue to go in and check on so I can see those kinds of things. Typically, when we get a complaint, I have, one of my housekeepers will, will notify us. We actually use WhatsApp to communicate with one another. So we have a housekeeping staff, myself, and a reservations manner manager who’s overseas. And he actually does the communication with keeps the communication with our guests. And he’s the link. And then he’s also the link in between the channel, whether it be, you know, Airbnb or another channel, he’ll contact them, he’ll contact the, the, the guest.

02:26:48
And, and so if we have a complaint, you know, it’s a big deal to me as far as, you know, addressing it as soon as possible. And of course it has happened. So it’s, it hasn’t been a huge problem, but typically we can get it addressed pretty quickly. Even when I’m traveling. I always had had someone here at home. Again, I mentioned my resume is manager lives in overseas, in another country. So we’ve always had to have someone kind of in charge if, if I’m not around to, to be there, if there’s an emergency or something like happens separate from a maintenance person. So we have an on-call maintenance person. So if it’s a electric electrical problem with plumbing problem, then he’s there for that. But if it’s a problem with a guest that is making the other co guests uncomfortable in any way, if I’m not around them, I’ll have some type of part-time managers. At times it’s been a housekeeper I’ve used interns from the university that were really, really mature about those situations and were able to handle them. So, so we’ve always had somebody here, what I call here on the ground to handle those types of situations. But it’s, it’s been miraculous really though. Like it’s, it’s really, hasn’t been, it doesn’t really happen that often.

02:28:26
Do you find, you know, because of big, big worry for people is like, you know, the, the cheaper that you go, you know, the, the, the lower, the quality guests that, that people are afraid of getting, you know, that are going to cause issues going to be, you know, be party people gonna be loud, not treat your place, you know? Right. But you’ve, you’ve lived, you’ve taken on this nomadic, you know, hostile lifestyle, and now you’re also running this type of hostile lifestyle. So is, is that just kind of like a myth? Like, is that just something that is not true?

02:28:57
Yeah. So I definitely think I have more problems than other hosts because of the pricing. So, you know, this is one of the reasons why I got into this. It wasn’t like to, to become a millionaire or anything like that. I’m far from that. I actually, I think I had that perception out there. You know, this is a whole another podcast because we’re going through taxation and, and, and maybe someday regulation, like in new Orleans right now, short-term rentals are not regulated, but basically we, I, my business model is to make sure that they’re at this continues to be a unaffordable place. And this is why Short Term, the short-term rental business has really exploded is, is because it’s an alternative to a hotel. Now, there are definitely more so now than ever. Airbnb is out there that are much more expensive than hotels to cater to people who just don’t want to stay in a hotel and would prefer to stay at home.

03:30:12
But our business model has always been to keep occupancy rates high, particularly with, with the clients that I have, but also my own places. And at the same time, you continue to provide an affordable place for people to stay that normally wouldn’t have ever visited Lafayette. It is kind of still, it’s hard to say it, and it’s, it’s not really a secret anymore, but it’s, it’s, there are still people who will skip over, I think, but tourism has just increased dramatically here. And also, I think I mentioned this earlier. I think that I do much better in the, in the slower seasons than others who just keep their pricing. We, we evaluate the pricing every one or two months, we look at the market and we, we, we, we do have increased pricing as well for special events. So it’s, it’s a formula that we kinda have always paid close attention to in order to keep our booking rates up. So, and that’s also an attractive aspect are so that our clients, where they have input on the pricing for that, for the homes that they own, but, you know, it’s different from client to client. Some of them don’t really, they just let us do whatever we feel is best. So, but yeah, I definitely think we have more problems than others, particularly with the locals and stay because of the rates.

03:32:00
So. Okay. So with, with, with your, with your property, would, would you consider taking on more type of hostile units or making more like hostile type units? Or is this something that’s like, it’s just, it’s just a part of who you are. So this is what you want to do.

03:32:18
Not right now in the last six months. It, I, this is kinda, this is a new thing for me. And last six months, I took over two separate properties that were very much distressed properties. And, and I, I negotiated into a, more of a commercial type lease where I was responsible for fixing the place up, even though I didn’t own the place and exchange. I, I got into a very financially, as far as the square footage of the house and the location, a really good financial situation, as far as my lease, compared to what it normally would’ve leased for an exchange I was allowed to, I’m allowed to sublet on, on Airbnb, but I had to use my own capital money to fix the place up. And I did that really quickly with two properties just in the last few months. And so right now, I’m like, yeah, this is I it’s about everything I can handle without hiring a full-time manager.

03:33:36
And I can’t do that right now because, you know, since the beginning, I basically invested the great majority of the profits back into the business. Now I, and I have been asked by multiple people to come and look at properties and look at the possibility of, yes, I’m putting up putting together a traditional hostile, as opposed to short term rental or an Airbnb guest house where, where we would be on booking.com, it’d be multiple rooms, multiple dorm rooms. That’s what I would consider a traditional hostel. So yeah, I have looked at those properties, but the situations where no one really wanted to put up the capital to convert, there’s not really anything out there that has multiple rooms where you can do shared bathrooms. So there will be a, there have been a lot of construction involved and, you know, my air B and B business that it’s all automated.

03:34:40
Like, like I mentioned before, as far as the check-in procedure, we don’t have to can with cash or anything like that, which I probably would have to, if I, if I opened a traditional hospital, it’s not off the table, but honestly, after eight years, I’m really, I really more interested in focusing, starting to focus on my travel blog, hopefully one day being a podcast, or like yourself, that that’s kind of the direction I’m going in. Not that I’m going to get out of that, but if, if a good opportunity presented itself, I definitely wouldn’t, wouldn’t hesitate to, to look into it.

03:35:27
And what has been the most challenging part of starting your short-term rental business?

03:35:33
I think it was one of the reasons was so attractive was because I wasn’t really making much money according to the time in my second life as a music promoter and eventually our owner, but, and, and immediately, you know, it just with, I use my cell phone to take pictures of the house and it was renting out for twice what I would have gotten if I would have rented it out long term. And so that was the easy part. Some of the, some of the big problems I had, I had a really bad construction problem with the first apartment that I, that I managed and that I added onto my own property, which what I mean by that is I just had a huge problem where I had a contractor that I had to fire halfway through the project and hire two other groups to come in and finish the project.

03:36:38
And not only was it, it ended up costing twice as much as it should’ve cost it, but I also, it also, the plan was to start renting it out short term, not to live there and that pushed that date back. And so that was a point where I almost gave it up at the same time I was leasing other properties. So I, I, I mentioned I do lease three properties right now, but I was leasing properties at their actual value. And the first one was doing well. But then there was this period where there was, I felt like there was kind of a saturation there where there were more hosts than there were guests. And I think I want to, I would like to think that that’s kind of reversed now to, up to this point, we have now more and more people are learning what Airbnb it B is.

03:37:36
And, and so we have a lot more guests compared to hosts, but there was this saturation parts. We also hit the summertime, which is a lower season, not the lowest season, but lower season for us. And all of these things kind of snowballed at the same time. And so I almost gave it up, I guess that was about four or five years ago, but then I stuck it out. And so now, and then that’s where the cohosting platform popped into my head. Again, I mentioned the Airbnb conference that I went to, they were giving these presentations on why we’re coming out with this cohosting platform. And I was just thinking myself, I’ve been doing this for three years. I was like, why don’t I, you know, instead of renting a place from me, why don’t I, you furnish the place and I take a percentage management fee.

03:38:34
And that was kind of, you know, that’s kind of the model that is the model that I use now for five properties, the other three or, and these five properties, some of them have multiple units. So, so, but I do I, for those out there listening, I would just be very careful about the lease option and making sure that you, if you’re starting this up, making sure that you understand the market and the low season and ICS in your area and that you can afford to pay the rent and the bills. I don’t pay the bills on the houses that I manage with clients where there’s, oh, Sherry the least houses I have to pay for electricity, you know, electric gas, if they have it, cable, internet, et cetera. So you got to put that all into place. I wasn’t very organized as far as with spreadsheets initially, but it’s not just a matter of using the spreadsheets to make sure that you can pay your bills, but it also gives you a really good advantage to look at how, you know, how the, how the market has done three years ago. You know, looking at where your houses are located. All of my locations, except for one are very close to the downtown areas. So that’s another reason why there’s it’s attractive and we don’t have any hotels. So that’s, that’s something else that, that you have to take into consideration.

04:40:20
And what has been the most challenging part of scaling your short-term rental business?

04:40:26
I’m not sure by scaling you mean

04:40:29
Taking on more properties, making it bigger than just your initial property,

04:40:34
But I owe the toughest challenge of course, is, is manpower management and time. I’ve never done this as a full-time job. I’ve always done it as a, as a side business. And so, yeah, there has been times where it’s more stressful than others. You know, you’ve got to either when a housekeeper quit or you have to let them go, you have to replace them. Somebody’s got to go out there and find a new housekeeper and in cover, cover their job. You’ve got to find people who, who are, you know, who are organized very, very lucky to have, have had this reservations manner manager for so long. Well, you know, managing people is not something for everyone. I don’t think it’s something that everybody necessarily enjoys, but if you’re gonna manage or have a company that manages 15 different properties, you know, that’s, you know, you can’t do it all yourself, even if I didn’t have a full-time job.

04:41:44
So that’s, that’s been a big, the biggest challenge is, is managing people. And so I think my background in administration, it’s interesting how it all kind of, you know, it, it comes together because with my full-time job at the university right off the bat, I was an administrator right out of school. And so I was managing other professors. I was managing students. I was dealing with multiple supervisors myself. And so my PhD is in administration. So it’s kind of, you know, that helped a lot, I think, going in, and I also had some business partners in the music industry who today are some of the most successful business people at Tanner. And so I learned a lot from them. I took my experience from the music business, they, the production company and, and still today of constantly asked for advice. I’m lucky to have one of my best friends is one of the more successful businessman in town. And so we got to learn together. And even though it was a completely different business, but I think that, you know, that’s the biggest challenge I would say was, is managing the, your staff

04:43:07
And, and, and what do you, what do you do to set your units apart? Like I know that you said that you have another hostel in the area and they also have like a music venue, which might be very attractive for people that are traveling and, you know, are looking for that, you know, cause I’ve, I’ve stayed in a hostel when I, when I went to new Orleans and, you know, they had like a pool area and they had like people that would cook and stuff like that. So, you know, some people choose to stay there because it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s fun, you know, it’s, it’s young, there’s other young people there they’re traveling. What, what do you do to set your, your unit apart from maybe even that one?

04:43:40
Okay. So one of the first things, I think some people really like the fact that I know it’s the opposite with many people. So people really like the fact that they can just show up any time they have the code, they can punch the code, they can check in themselves and then, you know, and then leave when they want to. And then secondly, in all our private rooms and private studios, we don’t do this for, for a dormitory guests, but all the other guests are, they rent full house. We leave a bottle of wine and some gourmet chocolates for every guest. That’s something I think that’s pretty unique. And then I think that might be another reason why we, we attract so many couples as well. And then we have a guide, a full binder about a 20 page guide of, of places that we recommend so that you can potentially even avoid other places.

04:44:43
And so that’s something I think that’s helpful. We also have, when you open the refrigerator, we have raging Cajun, a local brewery, and it’s called raging Cajun beer. We have swamp pop, which is a locally owned code, Coca Cola company. It’s not Coke call. It’s a Cola company. So they it’s, they have different flavors, bottled water. And we even have gumbo, which is people don’t do most people know what gumbo, the Cajun soup. We keep that in the freezer. And then we leave a donation box to help with the cost of leaving those items. And so that’s something that’s, I think is really unique. Sunday, Monday nights, downtown, and somebody who’s not from here, never been here, they just don’t feel like going out. If they do go out there, they’re limited to either an all night diner or fast food. And so, you know, sometimes it’s really hard to find stuff on Sundays and Mondays. And so that that’s also helps and I make the gumbo myself. So, so it’s pretty authentic. So yeah, I think that those are some, some, some, I guess, things that separate me from some of the other places,

04:46:05
Would you consider yourself like a hostel or would you consider yourself more like a traditional short term rental? Just with like a bunch of separate listings?

04:46:14
I don’t even know to that. I, I, you know, I just, I can’t, it’s hard for me. I, I tell people I own a hostel when I’m traveling lately, I’ve been telling, you know, cause I travel a lot and meet a lot of people want to stay in hostels. I stay in Airbnbs and I’d say half 50% of the year I’ve even stayed. I think even a few years in the past, even more than half of the year, I spent away from Lafayette, but I I’ve, I tell people I own an Airbnb management company. And if I’m at a hostel, sometimes I’ll say, you know, yeah, I own a hostel myself cause I do. But you know, it’s, it’s a little of both. I don’t think there’s a name for it. I think if there is a niche in what I do, that’s it, I, oh, if people who have a house on Airbnb one or 10 that they own, they, you know, well, what do you do?

04:47:19
I have an Airbnb. It’s really not for many people. I don’t think it’s a many people as a full-time job. There are other people who own hospitals, some of them with, with 50 beds, all in one property, there is another company that I’m aware of here in town. And I’m sure there’s other, not in town, but here in the state of Louisiana that isn’t, short-term rental management company and I’m all three. And so when you change that question, it’s really difficult. I do all three, at least properties in a sublet them, I turn my house into a mini hostel and I also manage properties as a cohost. So I don’t know that there’s really a name for that.

04:48:06
And so, yeah, it just really depends on, like I said, on the situation. I, I, I don’t, I have really time to every person I meet to go into, well, I do this, I do this, I do this. Oh. And I also teach tennis. And I’m also a sports medicine professor and you know, all kinds of other things that I do. But so I kinda just say either I have a short-term rental or Airbnb, some, some people don’t know what short term rental means. Most people Americans don’t know what a hostel is. A lot of cases, unless I’m at the hospital and I’m telling the owner of POS. So it, you, I kinda just do it to relate to, to, to the person that I’m talking to.

04:48:50
And is there any product that you couldn’t live without in your, your listings or your, your, your rentals that has saved you time and money?

04:49:00
Anything? Oh, anything that saves me time and money as far as I’m sorry,

04:49:05
What was it like a products

04:49:07
Or products, you know, with the Kiko locks? We, we, we just get, we just kept using the same locks. We usually standard slosh lots from a home Depot and really mainly B just because our housekeepers are comfortable with changing the codes and they, and they, they do, they serve their purpose. They’re pretty reliable. I haven’t had many problems with them and that is a start-up cost. So if I have a client who’s interested in me managing their home, then I will say, you know, what am I startup costs and out, you know, two sets of linens for every bed, you know, and towels and bath towels and that type of thing, and, and a lock on the front door and that’s their startup cost. And then they’re ready to go in, of course the desk to be furnished. So yeah, those other products, the chocolates that we leave are, are really expensive, but I won’t ever back down from that.

05:50:21
And like, I just kinda go with it. We don’t buy one particular kind of wine. We go to a local liquor store, wine shop and they have a bargain bin and it’s really usually really good wine. That’s dead, it’s overstocked. And, and so we get it pretty cheap. And then, you know, it’s been mixing and matching a lot as far as linens and towels and things like that. We’ve used all kinds of different things. I kind of leave it up to my, my older, not older, but my more experienced the housekeepers that have been with me for a long period of time, as far as cleaning products, but, you know, we’ve done it all. And it’s just kind of, there’s not really any particular product that we’ve really stuck with or endorsed or anything like that.

05:51:16
And is there anything that you do that has helped your guests leave positive reviews?

05:51:21
People love the chocolate and the wine and people talk about it. The ones that do partake in, in, in reheating, the frozen gumbo. And they also, I had one guy who said my one who said my gumbo was playing. That was interesting. Well, I purposely don’t season it, highly seasoned it cause most of the people staying in an Airbnb are not accustomed to really spicy food. Like we are down here. And so, but yeah, I mean, if you knew where the ingredients, I put some, some extra ingredients in there that give it a lot of flavor. It, you know, people are very serious about their gumbo, the people who cook the gumbo who eat the gumbo and about the authenticity of it.

05:52:13
So leave you a bad review because of your,

05:52:16
Just one guy said, he thought my gumbo was planned, but I just thought that was really interesting. But, but for the most part they it’s possible. Yeah.

05:52:27
That not only do you have to provide an exceptional place to stay, but now you have to provide like you have to provide five-star gumbo.

05:52:33
Yeah. But yeah. So the job and the wine, and then, like I said, they, even, they even college comment as a positive thing that it’s a self check-in procedure, you would think Airbnb guests, you know, you know, one of the things and you do, you know, it’s like I have a host there answers the door and you know, you’re staying in the house to show you around things like that. But there is, it’s impossible for me to, you know, with that many listings. So even before we know, because of my, my full-time job, it, it’s hard to stay on that actual first property where, you know, I’ve got, when I’m home and I’m not traveling, I’m running a business, teaching tennis. So I had a full-time job teaching sports medicine and have a social life. And now there’s all kinds of other stuff going on so that when I travel, I don’t have to worry about those things as much.

05:53:31
So it’s hard to, you know, that’s one thing that they don’t really comment on, but I don’t think we get negative reviews crazy enough. We’ve never been Superhost. We are like four point we’ve been 4.7, you need a 4.8 out of five average. We’ve got so many listings. And we always, when we add a new listing, there was always some kind of kink where we get a three or a four star here and there. But right now we’re actually at 4.8, we’re just waiting for 15 more days before, oh, we had a cancellation, we had, we, we did qualify for subrosa last year. And we had a guest show up at three o’clock in the morning and claimed that they had the wrong code to get in and couldn’t get in at booking a hotel. And so when you get a cancellation, it not to your Superhost status back an entire year, so we’re waiting about 15 days. But other than that, we have, you know, 3000 reviews and we’re actually 4.85 stars. So that,

05:54:44
Wow. Yeah, that’s, that’s really good. Especially when you have such, you know, a high, high turnover and you’ve been in this for such a long time, is there one house rule that has saved you before?

05:54:56
I don’t know, house rules, we’re pretty lenient. We do say, you know, if everybody’s comfortable in the house, it’s not, it’s never really been a big issue, but we’ll do, we do say like 10 o’clock would be quiet time and no smoking in the house. But other than that, we don’t, we don’t really have many other house rules and miraculously, we haven’t really had any, any problems. You know, we have designated spaces to park. And, but now, I mean, I don’t, I don’t know that we, you know, I, I checked into, I, I stayed in a hospital up in, I believe it was, I was down in Dallas and, and which I think was the, one of the only ones may had a entire page of house rules. And, and it’s different when you run a multiple room, multiple bed hospital like that, but do you have any,

05:55:54
Do you find that maybe the house rules are maybe not like really that helpful, like is a guest that’s bad just going to do what they’re going to do. And it doesn’t really matter what are in your house rules. Cause you, you, you, you have a lot of experience dealing with people that are, you know, you know, going to be staying there for cheaper and you might be worried about like, if they’re going to be noisy or if they’re going to be a yada yada, yada. So have you found that like how she was just really, you know, maybe coming more from a place of fear, something, or what are your thoughts on that?

05:56:26
Well, the other one, again, like I said, you know, the no smoking inside is, is a major one. We, we have people who do it has created problems because you can’t just get rid of smoke, especially cigarette smoke before the nest jet guest check in. We have, we have fortunately in a lower, slower seasons, which is not really that often we have the ability because we have multiple places to move them over. Usually sometimes even next door or less than a mile away and sometimes to an upgraded apartment. So that has been, that was, that is definitely a lifesaver for us, right? At certain times where we’ve had, because we’ve got multiple properties that we can move them to a different place, as opposed to them going out and having to stay at a hotel. And either us are the guests having to pay for a hundred, $150 a night hotel.

05:57:24
So, but we do allow pets in certain locations and not the others. So somebody brings a pet and they’re not supposed to, that has been a broken house rule that has created a problem, particularly dogs and cats that slept in the bed with him, literally had the throw away comforters and things like that. A lot of the people have allergy requirements. I know we’ve had people who got upset with us because we actually had alcohol in their refrigerator and on it. But those are just really, we don’t really have a whole lot of rules to begin with. We’ve more of our style is just, you know, no smoking, no pets, no pets, 10 o’clock quiet time. Now we’ve had cases where, of course everybody’s all hanging out together and it’s after 10 o’clock, it’s not a big deal. We do have festivals to people book. We have a lot of festivals here, so that’s kind of it, we just address the problems when they happen. And, and I don’t know. I mean, I don’t have a lengthy list of, of different habits, the house rules. So it’s not, has been a really problem.

05:58:43
And what, what would you do differently if you had to start from scratch?

05:58:49
I would have been much more careful about leasing a house, thinking that I was going to be able to just start a business off of leasing a house. And in subletting, I would have pay more close attention to keeping bookkeeping right off the bat. We, I, you know, I didn’t start keeping spreadsheets until I think almost a couple years in the business because I just knew I was making money. And I mean, it wasn’t like at the time when it first started, nobody there weren’t really many other hosts in town. So it was just basically, I hadn’t really started as a business. It was just something to make extra money only had I was had two housekeepers and me. So, but yeah, I think starting that earlier and making sure you’re doing a really dollar to dollar bookkeeping in any business, but it is, it is a business. And so that would be some, some suggestions I would have.

06:00:05
Yeah. And in paying attention to your reviews, of course, that is miraculously helpful back then, again, there’s so many things that have gone through the business, this business model since I’ve started, but you know, today you’ve got all these Facebook pages groups where you can ask questions and within an hour or less, you’ve got multiple different hosts that can give you advice when you got questions that didn’t exist. Know, you know, whenever, when I started as a, as a host, but there’s some good books out there, of course, on managing Airbnb that didn’t exist when I first started. So that that’s available. Now. I couldn’t say I could have done that over back then, but yeah, I think that’s about it. It’s just, I assure you good book keeping and making sure you have good financial arrangement with the, with your cohost.

06:01:14
And do you have a favorite book that you can recommend that has changed your business or your life?

06:01:23
This is not an Airbnb book, but what all while the, the joy of last book got me into Airbnb and right around that time, I also read a book called Vagabonding by Ralph Potts, which led me into solo travel. And in converting the house into a hostel, I went to a travel conference last year. And I mean, it’s still one of my favorite books. And I was thinking, you know, I’m going to get to get this guy to sign my book and shake his hand and take a picture with him. And I actually got to hang out with him for a pretty decent amount of time. So the author of that book. So Vagabonding, and that’s mainly about solo travel, international travel, like going places where people don’t normally go. So those are two books, the joy of last Vagabonding Airbnb hosts book get paid for your pad.

06:02:21
I was on Jasper rivers, number 200 on his podcast. And so that’s a good one as far as strictly like learning how to be a host. There was another good one where they gave away. And I, I can’t remember the name of it right now. It’s a couple that sold their house and they started traveling all over the world, strictly staying in Airbnbs. And I have it on my desk at home. I just can’t remember though, but they actually gave it away at the Airbnb open conference in our, in our DD bed when he checked in. So those are some pretty good ones.

06:03:01
Okay. Very cool. Very cool. And if anybody has any questions about like running a hostel or anything like that, is there any way or checking out your blog, is there any way that anybody can reach you?

06:03:10
Yeah, so I prefer our, our, our hostel email address. If they have information that they want to stay at our places, that’s what we use that for the occasion hostel@gmail.com. If they want to ask me questions specifically, it would better be better to use my blog email, which is toby@cajuntravelerdotnetandcajuntraveler.net is my, my blog. But so, yeah, and I’m on the Cajun traveler. Cajun traveler is we’ve got Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, everything, I’m the only Cajun traveler out there. So if they don’t want to send me an email, they can get, you know, find me anywhere on social.

06:03:55
Very cool. Yeah. I, I’d definitely recommend people go check that out and see what you’re doing to promote your brand and promote your business. So it’s been such a pleasure. I think it is very cool. What you’re doing. The whole hostel traveling nomad lifestyle. Ed is a very unique, you’ve really taken into this, this lifestyle full, and I congratulate you on your success and wish you the best of luck and we’ll keep updated on how your travels are going.

06:04:22
Okay. Yeah. I really enjoyed it as well. That was really

06:04:24
Interesting. All right. Take care of Toby. And until next time, host nation, keep on hosting, hope your hosts benefit from the show. If you found value, please go on over to iTunes or Stitcher, leave a review and let us know what you enjoy about the show. If you’d like to talk to the hosts that have been featured in these episodes, as well as the host nation, then going over to our Facebook group, short term rental success secrets, talk to your hosts and the next step sewed.