Bee -n- Beetle Hosting

I recently supplemented my Airbnb and VRBO listings by rolling them out on  Booking.com . I generally think Airbnb's platform is super-easy to use and very polished. VRBO lags a bit behind (an example I can think of right now is the lack of scheduled messages, like pre-check-in, etc.), but it still generally usable. Booking.com , on the other hand, takes some getting used to. Figured I'd use this page to catalog some of the things I find weird or that I just don't like. I'll add to it as the list gets longer. Booking.com  Requires An Additional Booking Request Step Whereas Airbnb and VRBO use a two-step process for handling booking requests (i.e., the guest books, the host approves, and then the booking is complete),  Booking.com  requires THREE steps (i.e., the guest books, the host approves, and then the guest has an additional 24 hours to "finalize the booking").  This leaves the host with the conundrum of "Do I block off my calendar for 24 hours, hopi...

I manage my Airbnbs directly, meaning I visit each property after each turnover, so I can ensure quality for the next guest. Since we do laundry onsite, laundry takes longer than housecleaning, I have my housekeepers start the laundry, and then I hang around to finish it, getting a little deskwork done while I wait. Also, one of our short-term rental houses is my personal residence, and so when my house is booked, I'll spend the night at whichever of my other houses happens to be vacant. Finally, I really like working remotely in coffee shops and restaurants. I have a local Mexican food place I visit nearly every morning, and they're used to me doing daily email while enjoying my tacos and coffee. In the afternoons, I like to work at coffee shops for a change of scenery. All this adds up to a workspace that looks different day to day, and often hour to hour. And while it's fairly easy to pull together an ergonomic office setup in a fixed home office, it's harder to main...

 We recently had one of our Airbnbs leveled after the extreme heat in our area knocked it significantly out of alignment. It's a 100-year-old house on a pier-and-beam foundation, supported by blocks on the ground. It has a large crawlspace, and while exploring it between visits from the foundation crew, I discovered there are quite a few uninsulated pipes and hanging wires under there. This is a problem, because in addition to blazing summers in our part of Texas, we have sustained hard freezes as well. Uninsulated pipes are asking for unpleasantness next winter, and the hanging wires make trips into the crawlspace both more inconvenient and less safe than they strictly should be.  I figured it'd be as good a time as any to handle that stuff, especially since the large work crew is likely to have scared away any snakes, rodents, and other fun critters who might otherwise live under there. So I've spent a couple days under the house, tying up wires and insulating pipes.  I...

Simply put, if you're not using a rewards credit card for your short-term rental expenses, you're leaving money on the table . Expenses for your Airbnb, VRBO, or direct-booking listings can add up quick. We like to bill everything we can to our business credit card, generating a solid amount of points each month. These expenses include: Utilities Consumables (TP, paper towels, shampoo, hand soap, etc.) Towels & linens Dynamic pricing (like Pricelabs ) and channel management software Furniture and accessories (coffeemakers, silverware, kitchen towels, etc.) Repair materials Business travel & meal expenses Business vehicle expenses Mobile phone service Our current general-purpose card is Chase Ink Business Unlimited , which gives 1.5% unlimited cash back across all categories, with no annual fee .  We like how straightforward it is : For every $1000 in expenses we charge to the card, we get $15 back. Our expenses can sometimes hit $5,000 per month, and that's $75 back...

We browse a lot of hosting discussion forums, and like the good ghouls we are, we love a good "hosting gone wrong" story as much as the next person. However, we can't help but notice the pattern that a good 90+% of these stories boil down to one of two root causes: The person doesn't actually want to host The property doesn't actually lend itself to being a good short-term rental Let's look at both these in turn: Not the Right Hosting Intent We get the feeling some hosts, when you get right down to it, are really weirded out by the idea of strangers occupying their property, and react with behavior that leaves guests with the impression that "I don't like you; I only want your money!". We're talking hosts who watch their cameras obsessively. Who hit guests with an extra charge because they had their mother-in-law stop by for dinner, putting them over the "allowable guest limit". Who throw couples out when one partner books the place...

What's the best keypad entry door lock for your Airbnb? Browse the hosting forums, and you'll see tons of recommendations for pricey smartlocks like the Schlage Encode or the Kwikset Halo . While packed with features, these are full-fledged WiFi-enabled smart locks, which can run more than $200.   While a great choice for remote hosts, or hosts seeking automated solutions to manage multiple properties, they could be overkill for hands-on people who host out of their primary residence, or who otherwise visit their Airbnb every turnover. In these cases, it's about as easy to enter a new code into an inexpensive non-WiFi keypad lock directly as it is via mobile app ... and at a fraction of the cost. It could also be that you're just trying out hosting, aren't sure if you'll like it, and don't want to overspend on keypad locks at this point in your Airbnb journey. This applied to us on our first property, so we tried out the HuTools Keyless Entry Door Lock . ...

Some days our Airbnb adventure is, well, more of an adventure than others. I took what I thought would be our first direct booking, meaning outside of Airbnb or VRBO: The guest contracts with us directly, and we collect payment without a middleman. This is something we generally want, as it not only increases our margin, but gives us some redundancy so we're not dependent on one or two platforms. Last Friday, I got a surprise phone call from a guy who found the house listed as a 'Homestay' on Google Maps (which I didn't know was the case). He was very friendly on the phone; said he's a crane operator on a major nearby construction project, and needs 3 weeks of lodging while his travel trailer is in the shop, after which he'll move into that.  So, I figured I'd start him in our current Airbnb for the weekend, and the move him to the new one (in the house where I live) for the remainder. We worked out a price and I wrote up a little contract and everything see...