Julian Sage:                       00:00                    In this episode, we’re going to be talking about what to do when a guest checks into your Airbnb unit, but wants to shorten the reservation. So stay tuned.

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.

Julian Sage:                       00:35                    Hey, welcome back, Host nation to another episode of vacation rental machine. I’m Julian Sage and I’m with Jon Bell and this is the new segment of VRM. So we’ve gone through our VRM formula. And we’ve really just been covering, we’ve covered a lot in these past these past six months. We’ve been putting out a lot of content. That’s two episodes a week for the past like six months, basically gets you from, from point a to point Z. We’ve covered everything of our formula. So now we’re going to be going in and filling in questions, filling in other things that you guys have with a new segment that we’re going to be calling ask VRM. So if you put #askVRM in the Facebook group or on Instagram and you have a specific question that maybe we haven’t answered yet, then put in #askVRM, #askVRM and we will answer your guys’ questions in the Facebook group on Instagram or wherever you are posting.

Julian Sage:                       01:32                    So what am I #askVRM was a situation that happened to me personally. So while I was in Columbia, I had a guest that checked in and then they checked out and they, they had all these different excuses which weren’t true, but they didn’t like whatever it is. And Airbnb let them leave and it canceled a reservation that was supposed to be for 27 days. So almost a month long booking. It was a really nice reservation. I was looking forward to, but they wanted to leave early and I got left out with a situation that wasn’t the best. So Jon, what do you do when a guest checks into your unit and then they just decide to cancel or leave their reservation early?

Jon Bell:                              02:11                    Julian, I remember the call when you called me and told me this scenario, I told you, and just tried to let you know, there is something that the guest doesn’t like and sometimes you just got to resolve that issue.

Jon Bell:                              02:23                    But you kinda gotta do it quickly because for some reason they just want out. It could just be the neighborhood. It could just be maybe they thought the place was bigger. But yes it does happen. Guests will book for a very long stay and somehow some way they just want to alter it and make it shorter. And where you thought you had a big reservation, a big payout, all that stuff gets chopped up and modified. Your payout is shortened, your calendars open back up and you don’t have any future bookings. That stuff hurts, but there’s really not too much you can really do about it. In your scenario, what happened when the guest did message Airbnb about your reservation?

Julian Sage:                       03:07                    Yeah. So when the guests messaged Airbnb, they started saying things like, Oh, the hot water wasn’t working and the house was too cold.

Julian Sage:                       03:16                    So in my mind, what I did was I went on the nest thermostat, one of the tools that we recommend because we can easily check, modify the temperature. So I went in and it was, you know, 70 degrees. I put it up a couple more degrees. The thing about the water though is, you know, this was a basement unit in my house. I knew that the hot water was working, but they made these claims. So when the guest spoke with me, they said, Hey, there’s these issues. And I said, okay, well let me try to modify that. So I told them, Hey, I’ll raise the temperature, but I couldn’t do anything about the water. So when they contacted Airbnb to kind of go through the refund process, now Airbnb reaches out to me and they said, Hey, your guest is claiming that there is no hot water and they want to leave early.

Julian Sage:                       03:56                    And they actually processed that refund. And when the guests actually told me that they were going to be only staying for maybe a couple days initially, from a 27 down to a two days, I modified the reservation, but then they just went through with Airbnb and they left early.

Jon Bell:                              04:09                    Wow. Like I said, man, this happens. It’s, it’s one of those things that is just part of the business. Yes, it sucks. You cannot pigeonhole the guests and to just staying because of they booked the reservation and the place is what you advertised. You can’t really just lock them in. If we all go to a hotel a and we go to front desk, we check in and we just get to the place. When you’re like, Hey, I don’t like the room. We go back to their front desk. We might ask for a different room.

Jon Bell:                              04:41                    If we go to a different room, same result we just ask to leave. It’s the same thing that we have to do for our guests and they should just let you go. You can’t really just hold tight and just try to lock them in. I know you want to. In these scenarios it’s better to have your hospitality at heart and yes, you got to let them go and just hope that they leave you a favorable review at the end. One of the things that we talk about in VRM is to trick the system a bit and let’s go ahead and just mark it as a bad review. Even though we’re going to leave a good review for the guest, we just want to post it as late as possible. That way somebody else might be able to book before they see whatever they are writing. The guests could write a three-star or above just because maybe the place was just one thing that they didn’t like. Like maybe it was just a location. They didn’t like the commute. So they’ll just note, Hey, this was too far for me and probably still give you a good review. That’s the best case scenario you can get out of this.

Julian Sage:                       05:43                    One of the things about the cancellation policy though is that there’s a moderate and the strict, but if a guest is checking in and then wanting to leave early, does the cancellation policies still apply?

Jon Bell:                              05:52                    So I recently had a very similar scenario. Like you, I had a guest that was coming from overseas with their family. They were staying at one of my newer units. It’s in an urban but hotspot. So it’s, it’s almost in transition. It’s probably the best way to say it.

Jon Bell:                              06:11                    It’s in the city, so it’s not like this clean, pristine place where are you just going to find all people that drive, you know, all the high end cars, no homeless people or anything like that. So I don’t know what this guest was looking to expect, but they booked in the city and like in the heart of the city, like a really happening area. The guys got there, they started messaging about safety and I just kind of felt like this was going to be an issue. I almost want to move them out the city, but they were adamant that this space was perfect for them. They stayed three days. This was a 15 day reservation, over $4,000 and they just canceled and just moved. I mean, I looked at my cameras because we were supposed to have cameras on the external of the home. Looked at the cameras, they packed up and they just rolled out and canceled through the app.

Jon Bell:                              07:06                    One of the first steps that I did was called Airbnb to figure out if they called to complain about anything. Airbnb said no, they didn’t complain. They canceled through the app and they just canceled and walked away. Well, of course, my next question is, well, what’s my payout now that they cancel? So to answer your question, I have a moderate cancellation policy and what happened is the guest had to pay 100% of the stay that they stayed up until the next day. After that, they had to pay 50% of the reservation for the days that they did not stay. So all in all the guest got back $1,000. Now, the calendar is opened up and I’m free to book somebody else. That would be the best case scenario in this case. But you do have those guests that will try to throw anything and everything against a guest policy or guest rights policy in a sense to just get out of it free and clear.

Julian Sage:                       08:07                    I felt like your guest was fishing for something that would just get them out as free and clear as possible. I can just say, Hey, it smells like smoke upstairs. I think it’s about to burn. I don’t feel like it’s safe. So many things kind of go into just when you have a reservation, somebody really could book. And just say to Airbnb, we all know that Airbnb now has a policy that says if your listing doesn’t look like you described, the guests can cancel at any time. The guests can use that to their advantage.

Julian Sage:                       08:38                    One of the first things I was thinking about in the situation was, you know, I had 27 days that was blocked out and they had reserved three weeks in advance. So during that whole time, I didn’t have anybody else that could be booking those dates.

Julian Sage:                       08:54                    So, you know, it leaves a real sour taste in the host’s mouth when a guest does this. So what I’m thinking initially is, how can I try to get my money’s worth? And I think the problem that I had was that when they put in the request saying that they would modify their stay up to two days, when I tried contacting Airbnb and saying, Hey, well they booked for 27 days, they just looked at the modification and they said, Hey, well, you said that she could shorten her stay only two days. But then even after it got shortened to two days, then she decided to leave. So Airbnb paid me for the two days that they stayed and not the 27 days.

Jon Bell:                              09:31                    Yeah. Again, best case scenario it sucks, but it’s not every guest. So the best thing we can do is just get ready for the next one and just be poised and ready to go.

Julian Sage:                       09:43                    So question of the day, what is one of your guest’s experiences where a guests checks in and wants to check out early? Leave it in the comment section down below. Until next time, host nation,

Julian Sage:                       09:55                    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 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. Keep on hosting.