Julian Sage:                       00:00                    In this video we’re talking about what you should be putting in your units to accommodate midterm and long-term guests. 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, giving you 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. I’m Julian Sage with Jon Bell and we are still talking about midterm and long term stays with these types of, yes. Now Jon, if someone’s going to be staying with you for a month, as a short term rental host, we provide so many things, whether that’s loads of coffee, tea, maybe we might even include like a bottle of wine. Of course, we’re going to be including some rolls of toilet paper. But if someone’s going to be staying with us for a month or longer, what are the things that we should be including in the units and maybe what are some things that we should be taking away?

Jon Bell:                              01:10                    Definitely, and this is one of those things, we used to talk about this with somebody that was staying 14 days or so and we would talk about maybe the supply of toilet paper that they might need. Well, the things have changed right now we’re in this position where people are staying maybe months on end. Do you try to overextend yourself and really put in a month supply of toilet paper? The answer in my case would be no. I’m really just going to put in enough for everybody to get started. That really means the room is set up as if somebody is just staying five days or less. So I’m not putting in 10 to 15 rolls of toilet paper. Although I get people that are inquiring, coming from New York saying, Hey, there’s a shortage of toilet paper in the units that I was in. So do you have toilet paper?

Jon Bell:                              02:03                    I really want to know because I’ll book with you if you have toilet paper. Yes, I will supply it. When I get those messages. I might even include an extra roller too. However, I’m not giving you a full supply, but what I am doing, I am giving you the links to everything that you would want to reorder. So for my units, I use pod style coffee that is somewhat exclusive. It’s not just a regular Keurig, so you can’t just go to the grocery store and just pick it up. So I make sure that they have in their hand a place to go to order more. Again, I put it on them to actually order it whenever they need it. What that also means is you have to give them access to receive some type of packages. So although I don’t allow people to collect mail from the mailbox, I don’t give them the mail key. They can receive package just to the place. So I did let them know that they can do those things.

Julian Sage:                       03:01                    Right. And if you’re using a digital guidebook, then that would also be the perfect opportunity for you to be able to put in your affiliate links. Now if you click below this video, you can also find all of our affiliate links that we use through this website called kit.Co. Kit.Co it’s a really great place for you to be able to put all of your Amazon links and if you don’t know what being an Amazon affiliate is, just look online. It’s very easy to be able to set up your own Amazon affiliate page and then you can have your guests be able to click on those links and then you can actually get a commission for whatever purchases that they do decide to make. And with that, Jon, when you are trying to include different things for your guests, are there any other things such as like mid-stay cleans or anything like that that you are offering to a guest that would be saying midterm or long term?

Jon Bell:                              03:48                    Absolutely. Instead it’s not a mid-stay clean. It is a mid stay sanitation because we know we have this extra buzz word that is going around. We need to capitalize on it when we can. Hello. I can come in and sanitize the entire place for you for a fee and change all the bed linens and all that stuff. Yes, we will be dressed so we can protect ourselves and you, in case you’re there. So let us come in and do this for a fee. So yes I am pitching that to everybody that is coming and staying. I send them reminders after a few days and I re follow up again just to let them know and I’m still not providing an extra supply of things like extra sheets when I know they’re not using any auxiliary bed or anything. I’m still trying to entice people to request extra services that I know I could facilitate like that mid stay sanitation. At the same time I might even charge them for extra things that they would request outside of restocking some items. Again, the grocery stores are open so they are able to pick up most items for themselves. And I think the guests that are actually coming in, they know that, Hey, this is just a starter supply. I need to go out and get my own.

Julian Sage:                       05:07                    So Jon, how often should we be offering these mid-stay sanitations or these mid-stay cleans? Should we be charging more for our regular cleaning fee or leaving it as is?

Jon Bell:                              05:19                    You know, it’s all things to kind of juggle around. If your cleaners are doing something more than what they used to do, then yes, I think you can creep up the price for the cleanings to let them know. Just make sure if it’s an exorbitant number that you identify and let them know why it’s so high to begin with. That means you might need to say it in your description. You might need to say, Hey, we do a blank sanitation before whatever stays or we make sure that the place is vacant three, two days before as Airbnb is trying to force out on all hosts. So we want to make sure that we capitalize on one, on on the tie that’s in front of us, right? We get a lot of buzz words that I will continue to use from here on out. If I were to bring in some new devices, we all know about ozone machines.

Jon Bell:                              06:10                    Well now we’re talking about electrostatic sprayers that can go out and spray and sanitize all these different items. It’s one of the devices that the airlines are going to start using. We could incorporate this into our regular cleaning or add it as an extra service for a Mid-stay cleaning and still charge a good amount just because it takes a little bit of time and it’s going to be sanitized. Right now, sanitized is one of those words that actually should mean dollars or adds value to either you or your guests, so you want to make sure that you are doing your part to make sure that they are safe and your crew of course and you can still make some extra money, especially because we’re at minimum price or below minimum price. We need to make that cost per guest go up. Question a day. How many rolls of toilet paper are you dropping into your units for a stay that is longer than 60 days? Leave it in the comments down below.

Julian Sage:                       07:10                    And until next time, host nation. Keep on hosting. If you’d like Jon and I to answer your guys’s questions and be sure to go to the host station, 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.

Jon Bell:                              07:35                    Keep on hosting.