Julian Sage:                       00:00                    In this video we’re talking about Brian Chesky’s announcement and his four step action plan. So stay tuned.

Julian Sage:                       00:07                    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 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:                       00:34                    Hey, welcome back, host nation to another sort of vacation rental machine. I’m Julian Sage and I am with Jon Bell and Airbnb. John Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb just came on last night and made an announcement video. So if you’re with us while we were doing the live watch party just kinda like hearing what Brian had to say, we’re going to be recapping those for those that miss that. You still can go onto the host nation Facebook group. If you did want to hear from Brian about that message as, as that watch is in there, but we’re going to be recapping the things that he announced and how that’s going to impact small hosts and larger hosts. So the first step that Brian shared was that hosts are going to be getting a $250 million basically relief package. And this relief package is going to allow for hosts to be able to reclaim 25% of all bookings that were between March 14th through May 31st. So any cancellations that happened between that time, we will be receiving a 25% pay out for all of those reservations. So, Jon, what are your thoughts and opinions on this being a larger operator yourself? How is this going to be impacting your business?

Jon Bell:                              01:45                    First off, let me talk just about the overall conference and everything. It was really good to finally feel something from somebody at Airbnb that they at least cared about the host and things that they had on the platform. We all know that really it was just wrong in just almost every way that you should think about it, that they just said, Hey, we’re just going to refund those people, all the guests. And yeah, you just kind of have to deal with it. And that was really the piece that I didn’t like is that the platform either didn’t consult anybody on the outside at the same time, they just didn’t give us any type of warm and fuzzy or any type of option. All we really wanted was an option. I feel like, Hey, if we could have gave even the people canceling, Hey, would you like to fully cancel? Or would you at least like to postpone your dates for another stay? Something like that would have been better. But because we were all forced into a hundred percent refund, it hurts. So yes, they have come back around and now, there’s some regret that’s there.

Jon Bell:                              02:57                    And they put together this $250 million pocket of money for all hosts to actually recoup 25% of their lost reservations. I think this is good. It is a little late, but it is something, I mean this is definitely going to help us in the interim, but one thing it doesn’t help is what we’re going to do in the future. I mean, okay, so we’re talking about March. What about our April payouts or what about the people that had booked months out but still canceled their reservation for fear of continuation for the next few months? That is still left out there for us to figure out.

Julian Sage:                       03:44                    One really good question that came in that we don’t know yet is with this 25% payout, a lot of us are managers, so we’re using the co-host model. If we’re managing for somebody else’s property, how are we going to be getting paid out? Is the primary, is the hosts that we’re co-hosting for, they’re just receiving that 25%. And then are we receiving still our management fee? I mean for a lot of us, we’re the ones that are putting in the work, but somebody else is the one that’s getting the pay out. So how does that fall back to the co-host?

Jon Bell:                              04:14                    I tried to find the answers to the exact same thing. I couldn’t really find them. However, I’m thinking that this might go as similar as the regular payout methods that you have within the system. So if you have two routes, I think you’ll get paid out the same two routes because I think they’re going to treat it just like a regular reservation. So in that case it should go to both; the primary listing admin and the co-host. The other alternative of course, is that it goes to whoever gets those resolution payouts. And if you don’t know what the resolution payouts, I’m referring to, if you have somebody that damaged a place or maybe ask for extra services and you go into Airbnb and you schedule like a payout or request for funds, whoever gets that pay out might be the one that gets the total 25% pay out from Airbnb in this scenario. It’s still undefined. I don’t know the answer. If I find it out, I’ll post it within the group.

Julian Sage:                       05:19                    Another question that came in was do you think that hosts who refunded voluntarily will get the 25% payout? Because some of the options, it wasn’t just a mandatory cancellation. Some people were offering to just say “Hey, you know, because of what’s happening, I’m going to refund your stay.” Are those hosts that did have to cancel in response to this themselves, will they be receiving that payout?

Jon Bell:                              05:45                    The only thing that I can see as a definite here is that they say anybody that checked in between the 15th and the 31st, that they’re going to do the 25% refund. So if it falls within category, I think you’ll get that.

Julian Sage:                       06:00                    So step two of Brian Chesky’s action plan was the Superhost relief fund where Brian himself personally puts in $9 million and then his team raised over $1 million. So $10 million total that will be for Superhosts. And from the message it really gave a lot of people like a little jolt of like, “Oh, awesome. I’m a Superhost. I’m doing really well. I’m going to be getting free $5,000 grant.” But you just found out that that is not the case. And we actually have an article which we’ll include in the show notes that talks about this, but if you want to recap this super host fund and who this is going to be applied for,

Jon Bell:                              06:42                    Right. I was excited when I first heard this. I was like, “Oh, this is great. Hey, they have something. They’re just going to pay out a little bit extra for the Superhosts because they know that we have multiple listings and we’re always trying to keep a high quality of hostmanship in a sense. But then, I found out what the requirements were and I was really kind of disappointed. And then I kind of listened back to what he said. He said, “Hey, this got started by our employees. Like, Oh wait, okay. So this wasn’t one of your ideas. This came up from the people that you have supporting us that kinda came up with this million dollars. Out of what? I don’t know. How did somebody find $1 million within the company to then put aside and say, “Hey, this is what we wanted to do for hosts.” Do they really have that much authority to just put aside money for us without you knowing?

Jon Bell:                              07:42                    Okay, so then you found out about it and then you thought it was a good idea, so then you contributed $9 million to it. That all sounds great. But some of the exclusions really exclude the mass majority of all of us that are at least watching this. Let’s talk about what those things are, right? So one of the first things is you cannot have more than two listings. I wish I could see everybody right now and I could really have you guys start out by holding your hands up and saying, “Hey, we’re all excited that we got this,” and we’re just holding our hands here. Yes, I’m ready to receive. And I just asked you that one question about having two listings or more on a profile. And see how many hands go down.

Jon Bell:                              08:37                    Right? So I’m already out. I got more than two almost on every profile. Let’s talk about the profiles, right? So one, each profile has to be a verified profile. In some cases, that takes out a lot of the cohosted accounts that are managed by some of you guys because you’re not really verifying those accounts. So you’re out there. All right? So now your co-hosted account is out. You’re out because you got more properties on your profile. And the next thing is one, it’s just the title. You gotta be a super host. So if you’re not a Superhost, I’m sorry you didn’t get this, but if you haven’t been a Superhost for a year, you also are excluded. So how many people are still holding their hands up? This pool has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller, and “It’s just like, okay, this just sounds good.”

Jon Bell:                              09:32                    I think that some of this was still more of the, “Hey, we’re still going public. We need to sound real good. We have $250 million that we set aside for our hosts. We have another $10 million that we set aside for our super hosts.” Like it just sounds so great. I mean you almost left the whole thing that he did, like feeling there’s something I feel good about the platform. I might not even go to any other platform now because they kind of care. And then you start applying and you start looking at some of these set asides and it’s like, well that’s not me. Who is this for? I mean this is really just for, Hey, the mom and pop that truly are probably the bread and butter of what Airbnb is. But for us, the rental arbitrage person, the big cohost person, the person that just has multiple listings that they’ve put up on Airbnb, you’re still kinda swimming like, okay, well now what?

Jon Bell:                              10:34                    Now what do I do? I’m not too sure where to go. And then he bought up the point of, Hey, you got a stimulus money from the government. And it’s like, yeah, but you asked us to ask for it because you had to ask for it also which isn’t like you bought it to us. We had to kind of go out and do our own stuff at the same time. So we had our own destiny in the first place. So it still kinda is just like so really all we got is about the 25% of cancellations for a certain period. But what about the future is really what my question is. It still feels kind of empty for us that have businesses that operate within Airbnb,

Julian Sage:                       11:24                    You know, I think it really kinda hurts more for just like that grant because the majority of hosts that are pulling in, the majority of the money that is coming in through Airbnb are hosts that are operating at a professional level. So these are professional managers that are utilizing Airbnb and they’re pulling in all this money. And then for Airbnb to say, well, only the people that have one listing that have been a Superhost for a year, or one or two listings. So really just more of small operators, maybe they’re not professional, but maybe they’re covering the mortgage they get this money. What about the people that are professionals? What about the people that are bringing in the majority of revenue through Airbnb? What are they doing about that? And I feel like that’s where it kind of hurts a little bit more. It is good that Airbnb is coming in, this $250 million that they will be back given a retroactive is really nice. We didn’t honestly think that we were going to be getting anything. So, we’re grateful for that. But still, they really could have been treating their hosts better, I feel like.

Jon Bell:                              12:30                    They definitely should. And one of the other things I just had to open the bullet just to really read it and just think about. This is almost like loosely said. So like a lawyer could kinda like pick it out and this is saying, Hey, you must show a reliance on Airbnb as a virtual source of income. Let’s just say I got two listings, but I still got them on multiple platforms. Does that mean I’m not really reliant on Airbnb? I mean some of the wording is just kinda so loose like it just wants to exclude. The small pot of money just seems like it was calculated enough to say, all right, so how do we get this number down? And somebody said, well, if we exclude this and we exclude this and we take these people out, we probably only have a number of, I don’t know, 100,000 hosts that qualify for this. All right, we’ll run with that. That just sounds like a board meeting that you would have and just running down, how do I protect from spending all this money?

Julian Sage:                       13:33                    All right. So the third step in Brian’s master plan was the reaching out to previous guests who did cancel. Giving them a note saying like, “Hey, would you like to support your hosts because they are still going through a hard time.” And in that note, they’ll have the ability to be able to donate however much they want to the hosts is what I picked up on that. What are your thoughts on this step?

Jon Bell:                              13:59                    I got the exact same feeling and I thought this was pretty good. As long as they help also tell the story of, “Hey, the people you are staying with, our hosts, they are very personable. They’re people. They are not big, you know, hotel chains.” And yes, I think that some people will say, Hey, you know what I can spare this and I already did pay for it. I didn’t want to cancel. I know that this person, and was looking forward to my reservation and if they send something, it will be great. I think it is a good gesture. I think it’s also a great gesture if you do receive something from somebody to almost double it or triple it in credits for when they do come out. So if anybody does send anything back to you, you should definitely be grateful enough to do something like that for them just because not everybody will do anything.

Jon Bell:                              14:54                    I mean this is going out probably in reality a full month later from when they canceled, so it’s not going to be right up on their mind and they probably think, Oh, I got a message from Airbnb saying, “Hey, I want to send something to this host. Well, I don’t know about this. This was that long ago.” It just might not be right on their mind to do that. So it’s up to Airbnb to put it back on their mind and explain a little bit of the story because we’re not going to have the chance to go back and talk to them and persuade people to “Hey, can you send me $25?” We’re not. I mean really they could’ve came up with a bunch of other things. There’s so many ideas that we all had that we were talking about them doing.

Jon Bell:                              15:44                    I’m sure they listened to some. I’m sure that they excluded a lot and this is what they settled on. I still think it’s something good to keep going forward in the future for even just the regular cancellations. Okay, your event changed. All right, you want to cancel, you got your refund, but Hey, do you want to contribute $10 to the host for the trouble of you canceling your reservation based upon whatever event is not necessarily happening. It’s out of the control of everybody. So I think it’s just something to add moving forward.

Julian Sage:                       16:21                    Yeah. I think, I think Brian even knows that it’s not going to be a major thing. Even in his live video, he was just like, a little bit helps you know, just a little bit here and there can actually help help you. It’s not going to be the $250 million package that they’re putting together. It’s not going to be like the SBA loan. It’s not going to be like any of these things, but you know, something is better than nothing is really kind of what Brian said in his message.

Jon Bell:                              16:47                    There you go.

Julian Sage:                       16:49                    So step four of Brian’s message was us being included in the covid-19 SBA disaster relief bill. What are your thoughts on this bill, Jon? I mean it really does sound really, really nice. It does sound like something that will be able to support us, but being a professional operator yourself, how is this going to be impacting your business?

Jon Bell:                              17:12                    You know what, Julian, I mean, it was really us, the hosts, the people that actually got in front of it. You and I, along with Patricia, we came out with something, a call to action for people to kind of go out and call and email your local politicians because we want it to be included in this whole thing. And then not too long after we aired all of that, Airbnb sent out a message saying, “Hey, we need you to do this.” So I don’t necessarily feel that great. He’s like, “Hey, we got you guys included.” No, it wasn’t all you. You didn’t really just get it all resolved without us doing anything. You asked us to do something because you potentially thought that it wasn’t going to go well and that we needed to get involved to force something to go our way.

Jon Bell:                              18:02                    So yeah. So we got ahead of it and we forced it and yes, we are included. Thank you for your letter that you sent. Thank you for setting up the link that you sent to allow us to email the right people in a simple way. Thank you for all the other people that listened to what you and I did, Julian and called or emailed their other local politicians just to make sure sure that we were included. So I don’t think the credit is 100% there. I kind of wish you would left it out just a little bit, but it is good to know that we are included inside of this bigger bill and of course I think this will be the first of at least four that come out that we could capitalize on just because of the continued duration that this might be going on.

Julian Sage:                       18:52                    So question of the day, what are your thoughts on Brian’s four step plan? Are you grateful? Are you still kind of angry or upset? Are you confused about how this is going to work? Leave your comments down below. We’ll be sure to be reading every single one of them

Julian Sage:                       19:08                    Until next time, host nation, keep on hosting. If you’d like Jon and I to answer your guys’ questions and be sure to go to the host nation Facebook group and use #askVRM. Hope you hosts found value in this episode. If you did, please go on over to iTunes and leave us a review as 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.

Julian Sage:                       19:33                    Keep on hosting.