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Episode 012 - The 23 Things You Need to Provide for Your Guests

for guests Mar 16, 2021
 

 

What are the things that your Guests value the most?  Which amenities do they really appreciate?  We’ve listed them right here for you.  Listen now and subscribe so you won’t miss an episode.  

 

Plus, contest details are inside this episode!  Enter to win BIG!!  Go and Grow! 

 

 

Transcript of this Episode:

Hi, this is Michelle, the master of money mindset, and you are listening to the BNB dash boss podcast.

And in today's podcast, we're going to be talking about the 23 things you must have in your property. This year. Stay tuned. Our show today is brought to you by. Audible is where you get your audio books online and get a 30 day trial into the audible membership for free. By going to audible trial.com forward slash S T R revenue.

That's audible trial.com/s T R revenue. You'll get your first audio book for free and 30 days into the audible membership just for trying us out. You'll love audible. Right [email protected]. You can find our $7 courses available for you to try out, find out how to cohost, how to do rental arbitrage, or how to invest in real estate.

We're all three, by going to B and b-boss.com and clicking on our store. And you'll find our $7 courses right there. Try us out. You'll love it. You'll love those courses. And they're only there for a limited time. Also, don't forget our contest. We've got our contest running right now and every week we're picking up.

And everyone's names are going to be put into a drawing at the end for a final prize of an Amazon Dodd with a little clock on it. And your guests will love that. There'll be able to walk right in, ask Alexa to connect to their account, and they'll be able to play their favorite music, ask for the weather or whatever else they want to ask Alexa to do pretty darn awesome.

And I would really greatly. You going to iTunes and leaving me a five star review. I appreciate it. So please do take a picture of it. Send it over to me at Michelle at BNB dash boss. Let me know that you did and we'll enter you in those drawings. So let's get into the 23 things to have in your property.

This year, I'm going to start off with the first things are all going to be about safety, okay? Because most people forget the safety items and their properties when they first get stuck. Somebody calls and says, I cut my finger and they they're like a first aid kit. I didn't even think about that. So here are the safety items that you should have first and foremost, inside your property, you should have an emergency contact card.

Number one, if there's someone from another country, they don't know about nine 11, because they have different numbers for emergency. In different countries. So you can't just assume everybody knows call 9 1 1. So please put a card up and let people know, just dial these numbers. Here's where you get emergency services.

Here's the closest hospital. Here's the closest doctor's office. Here's the closest urgent care and put it in side your physical book and then post it and put those plastic sheets around it. You can laminate. Or you can just put it inside a nice little plastic slip, but put it somewhere in the kitchen.

Like when they open up a cupboard it's right there. It's going to be where they see something all the time. Like they can't. You can put it inside the medicine cabinets. We do that too. So it's in a few different places and in the cabinet, by the stove, something that they use an open up often. So they're going to know where it is.

So inside your house rules, book inside the physical book that you have inside your home, and then posted like at least three other places, that's an emergency contact card. It gives them all the information. Yeah. Also we'll tell them exactly where your fire extinguisher is. We keep ours right by the stove.

Obviously it should be right by the stove. I know some people don't like the aesthetics of it. They'll put it somewhere else and that's okay. As long as it's easy to get, to make sure you go over with people where things are, it should be on that card. Fire extinguisher is right here. If you do not have it out in the open on a wall and you have it somewhere else, make sure it's somewhere close to where a fire would be.

And it's close to a fireplace close to the gas stove somewhere like that is. So if it's in the cabinet right under the sink would be the next place that most people would look for something. Make sure you have it in an obvious place. Not tucked away somewhere because they need to get at it. You should also have smoke detectors.

And carbon monoxide detectors inside your property. A lot of older places just have the smoke detectors. And I'm not sure if you're aware because we flip properties. We know properties. Now you have to have your smoke detectors change every 10 years and updated. So that's going to be something you want to look into, not just keeping the batteries fresh, but making sure that the smoke detectors and the covered of monoxide detector.

Are legitimately newer, the new fangled things. That's what you want. You want those new fangled things. Okay. So those are the safety side, right? What is the number one thing that every guest wants? The first thing that they want is not really a physical thing. It's literally, they want the place to be clean.

They want a clean environment. If you take and poll guests across the nation. And actually probably I'm sure in every single country. They're going to say, you cannot cut corners on your cleaning crew. You have to have a clean place to stay. So this is not really, it doesn't count as a number of things to have, but it is going to be your number.

One thing. You have to make sure your place is cleaned. So I do recommend, and I don't care how careful you are. I do recommend that you get a cleaning company and you pay for a cleaning company as soon as you possibly can. When you first get started, it's probably not something that you can afford. It's going to be the first thing that you do buy, when you start affording anything with your short-term rental, your place has to be sparkling clean.

It has to be sparkling, clean inside and out. And you know what? I think I'll just post the Corona virus. One that I did with my friend Maria Giordano, because she's a nurse. She gave all these great steps for your cleaning crews. So have your cleaning staff listened to that, but that's going to be the number one thing for guests.

Well, let's get into the physical things that you can have. The number one thing that guests say that they want is fast wifi. It is the most important thing when it comes to your guests stay. Now I know a lot of people, if you live somewhere out in the middle of nowhere and you can't get it, try to get it.

I know you think that people just want to calm and relax in the great outdoors, but that's not how people are in here. They will complain because they can't get wifi. They will complain that they can't get wifi. Even when you print that they can't get wifi. Even when they know you don't have something, they're going to bitch about it.

It's the craziest thing. So make sure that if you can, at all, possibly have wifi that you get wifi, you have to have internet nowadays. You just do, there is a great service called stay. Fi if you can get that, that would be really wonderful to put on your wifi because it collects the data. From your guests.

So you can build your email list and send out emails to them. You can tell them about things that are going on in the area, you know, special events, or maybe you're going to tell them about new hiking trails or something that, you know, they were interested in by building your list. You can offer them special rates at the time of year that they usually travel.

And we'd get a lot of families down in Florida who will come back year after year after year. Our older snowbirds they'll come back and they'll stay in the same spot and they literally will have their friends stay in the same spot. And they'll all come back together year after year after year. And I know that COVID kind of put a damper on that, but it's still very relevant and having a list is a great way to save money, mark.

Because all those stays can book with you directly and you won't have to share that income with Airbnb or whatever service you provide. You can get that yourself. And you're not going to have to share that, but do remember if you do start booking by yourself, you have to put that money away for any taxes and things that Airbnb usually collects.

Now, most of our properties have some kind of special something that posts the wifi password, right? The wifi name and password are printed somewhere, framed and put somewhere prominent in a couple of places in the property. If there's a desk, if you have an office space for your property, because we have a lot of places that we rent out corporate.

And so there's a specific desk for people to sit in and that has right above it in a little frame, the wifi name and password. So you want to make sure that you have that printed. You also have to have that inside your automated messages. So you can have that triggered by a keyword. So if someone emails you something and the keyword password.

Hits or internet or something like that when they trigger the messages, then it automatically like right away, sends them back an email that says, oh, by the way, if you couldn't find it, here's the internet name and password. We have those automated messages to make sure you guys do that. Now here's something that, to me, it's the number one thing besides the internet, obviously internet is important, but it's not important for me.

The mattress is really important and we just recently had a guest complaint about a mattress that we just bought and we ended up taking it back because. It was our second complaint. The first one I think I thought, okay, well maybe they're just complaining because maybe they've got like a really stiff mattress at home and this is a middle of the road kind of mattress.

But no, when we got our second complaint, we went over and took a look and sure enough, it was a faulty mattress and we have to get rid of. Mattresses are really important. And now more than ever, the really inexpensive you can go on consumer reports and we looked up all the mattresses that they had in their mattress.

And the number two rated mattress was about $500. So there's no reason why you can't get a mattress. That's really good. And top rated. So make sure that if you're in a warm place, that you don't get too warm of a match. So look at that among your ratings too. You don't want people sweating to death when they're sleeping in Arizona, right?

Or in Florida, I guess, in other parts of the country where it's cold out, you wouldn't mind so much having a mattress that kept people warm. Here. We have to be really careful of that. So make sure you get a calm, durable mattress. Number three, a smart TV. This is imperative nowadays. I mean, when you have old stuff, it's going to be bulky and heavy.

Now you can have a smart TV and the thing can be huge and you could probably carry it with your little pinky. It feels like there's so light. Not only are they light, but they connect easily to the internet and people can watch their own Hulu, Netflix, whatever they want to watch, they can plug in themselves and you don't have to pay for cable.

I don't know why people still want to pay for cable. There are some places we have cable. It's included in our HOA. And so we have to have it and they're going to be there, those dinosaur TVs until they die, because the cable covers it. They got HPO, they got Showtime. They can't whine about anything else.

Except for the fact that I got an old CV, we do try to make it so that they can, I can connect to the internet on the TV. So on those old dinosaur TVs, we might put something like a Roku or something on it, or one of those fire sticks otherwise. You have to have a smart TV. I don't recommend if you don't have cable that you have those Firesticks people will take them and they take them all the time.

They disappear constantly. And you don't even realize it until, you know, a couple of people down the line, they go, you didn't have it. Nobody else complained about it. So you didn't know it was missing and you don't want to blame the wrong person for taking it. It's one of those things that we do not suggest that you have a fire stick or something that you plug in to get a smart TV and less.

It's an older dinosaur one. You don't want to pay for replacing the television, but the TV is what are they now? Especially around Christmas time, you can get a really nice TV for a couple of hundred bucks. Seriously, back in the day when we started this thing, putting a nice size TV in a place was probably going to be seven 50, close to a thousand dollars.

You really got to appreciate the fact that technology has really made things less expensive as time has gone on and less heavy because you can do it yourself because TVs home-like hush in the past, they have been so, so heavy. Let's move on to blues tooth speaker. We do our best to have Bluetooth speakers somewhere.

And that might be just a JBL speaker system or something, but something they can connect their phones too, and listen to their own music. We try to have that somewhere within the house. We use that sticky tape. I don't know if you've ever heard me talk about it, but we've got this really great sticky tape that we use.

And it's kind of thick and cushy, but it's sticky on both sides, kind of gooey, sticky, easy to peel off. We also use that sticky tape in places where someone can bump something and something fall over easily like a bedside table. If you've got like a wobbly bedside table or not too big one, and you don't want the lamp to fall over when somebody wakes up suddenly or something happens to shake them.

We use that tape and it holds those things down. It kind of deters people from stealing too. So that's kind of nice, but I like Bluetooth speakers. I also love charging stations. One of the last places we set up, we put this cool little charging station in there and we hit it on the side of a dresser because the dresser wasn't very big and we didn't want to clutter.

It was like a plug-in type of charger. We stuck it with that sticky tape on the side, and then we got this really cool pointing finger. You could see it on the wall. The finger was pointing. It points to where they plug in and can charge their phones and stuff. So people love that. We got all kinds of where did you get your finger?

And you're like the finger. What finger are they talking about? Oh, the finger, it's a pointy finger and it was pretty cool. And I think we got it at my goals. It points to the charging stations. Again, these are definitely something that people can steal, but guess what? More people appreciate them than they get stolen every so often.

We'll get one. But it's a ride off anyway. So we just replace it. It's better to have it than not have it. People love having them and they appreciate them. A lot of these things I'm going to put in here, you've got insurance and your insurance is going to cover everything anyway. So just get it smartly.

Easy entry for guests. You really have to have smart locks. If you're still using keys, you got to get a smart lock. You've got to get an easy lock and it will connect to your phone. It can connect to Airbnb or whatever system you're using, generate the codes and send them out automatically. It makes your life a lot easier and it makes your guests life a lot easier.

And let me tell you why. If you use keys, we still go through this with pool keys, by the way. So pool key. For some of our units are the old fashioned pool. Because it's in an HOA or something like that. So we don't have control over the keys for the pool. So sense. We'll hang the key. And we put like a big floaty thing.

That's bright orange. So please don't leave this. It's going to float in the pool. If they accidentally drop it, it's bright orange. So you can't miss it. It's like a hunter orange, but the thing is they still get lost and we do have to charge for those lost keys because we have to replace them and we get charged.

Replacing the keys. So we always keep at least an extra key inside the maid's closet, ready to go. If somebody loses the key or something, the fact is keys get lost all the time and they get left behind. They get put into a bag or somebody puts them into their purse. Or, you know, just imagine when you're going to pull, usually got one of those pull bags and you shove everything in there.

And. Maybe you didn't take it all home and wash it. You shoved it all back into your suitcase and you get home. And there's the key. I have even taken a house key when I was staying at a BNB up in Canada and I had decided to leave a couple of days early. One of my friends had invited me to the city in Toronto, where she was.

And she said, come stay with me. We'll go look around the town because she's Canadian. So she was going to show me around and she showed me this lovely time. And when I got there, I returned my rental car because I was just going to be downtown anyway. And I was going to be right there by the airport. I could take the train right into the airport, so I didn't need the rental car.

And when I turned everything in early, I realized that on the key for the rental car, I had put the key to that. So I immediately went over to the hotel across the way and had them mail the key back for me to the owner. So I said, you know, it's going to be a couple of days, but it didn't really matter because I'd already paid for a couple more days.

So they couldn't have gotten another person in there, but at the same time, even I forgot to give the keys back. It happens doing key exchanges nowadays is absolutely ridiculous. You should have a smart lock on there and you can change the code. Anytime it makes it really safe, especially for your short-term rental.

I don't recommend it for your home, but I definitely recommend it for your short-term rentals. Oh, and it's really nice too. To use the last four digits of their phone number, if you can, if you can't that's okay. But give them something that's pretty easy to remember, especially if their phone dies, because a lot of times people are like, well, they can just look it up.

If they're out, they can look it up on their phone. They're like, yeah, whatever. Didn't bring a car charger and they're renting a car and their phone dies. And that happens a lot when people are out. So they're like they had no way to get in. And it's really a hassle because they don't know how to get ahold of them.

And they're going to be pissed by the time they do finally get their phone, charged enough to get a hold of you, to just get into the place. So give them the last four of their phone or something that is familiar to them, make it familiar enough to them so that they don't need their phone in case their phone dies.

To get into the place. It does make it easier. You also want to make sure that people have climate control directions. So in Arizona and Florida, all our places are in relatively warm spots. And so in the winter time in Arizona, it gets really cold. Like it doesn't snow usually, but not here. I mean, up in the mountains.

Yes. But. But it will be really cold. It drops down by 30, 40 degrees every single night in the wintertime, and it can be quite, quite cold. So you want to make sure that if you're in the summertime, when it's 118 degrees, It's a really important to have AC on and where someone is coming from a different climate, they're not acclimated to your place.

Right? So we get people who come in from the Midwest and in the wintertime, it will be cold for us. And they'll be wearing shorts around Arizona. And just like, you're not from here are you guess they're all wearing shorts and they're super, super warm. But we would have the heat on a lot warmer than they would, but it's the opposite in the summertime, in the summertime, because we're acclimated, we've been here three decades or more.

We can set our AC on like 78 degrees or whatever, and we're completely comfortable because outside. It's 118, so it's like 40 degrees hotter outside and we're super comfy. And people look at us like, we're crazy because they're like, oh, I always have my air set at 69 or 72 or something. So your comfort level is not going to be your guest's comfort level.

So I've been saying this for years with short-term rental revenue is I don't like those nests things. Everybody says, oh, it's going to save you money. And. And maybe they're cool for after a guest leaves, but while a guest is in my place, they get to set the AC for whatever the heck they want to set it for.

Now, if they leave and they go somewhere, I don't care. I really don't because I want them to be comfortable on there, stay on their vacation. I don't make it a point to make them miserable and adhere to anything. But making certain that they don't break something. That will be the only place I draw the line when it comes to heating or cooling is when somebody keeps setting it way lower and freezes up the system.

So I'll explain, Hey, this is Arizona. It's going to be really hot and we know you're going to be hot. So obviously we're going to let you set the temperature for whatever you're comfortable at, but let me just give you a little tip. If you keep pressing it down to like 59 degrees. Cause you think it's going to cool down faster, that doesn't work.

All it does is put a lot of pressure on the poor little AC system and it will freeze up. So if you want it to be 72 degrees, set it for 72 degrees, don't go lower than 65 because in Arizona, That will freeze up your system and our heat pumps freeze up. It's anything lower. So we do set the line there. We draw a line right there and let them know that they're going to break it.

We can see what you set it at two, because they are smart thermostat. The thermostats are smart for a couple of different reasons because we turn them off when somebody leaves the property or not completely off, obviously because you don't want to put too much strain on the refrigerators and things. So you can't have it too hot in there, but we do turn things down and up when somebody leaves and then when they do, we can also set it for when somebody's going to check in so that it's cooled off or heated up before they get.

We can also see what they're setting it at. And it will revert back automatically to 69. When anybody sets it lower than 65, it just automatically bumps it back. Why is the number one thing that most people want in the morning that is coffee? People want some good coffee or good tea. So we make sure that we offer coffee and tea.

Regular and decaf. Obviously not very many people drink decaf. I do. So I always appreciate it. We also have a couple of different kinds of tea. So we have chai tea, a green tea and a breakfast tea. We'd like to offer teas as well. In most of our places, we have creamers in there. We do the flavor creamers as three different flavors and the girls keep those stocked.

When you walk in, there's like this little layered thing where they put the sugars and all that stuff in it, it's there and it looks nice, but those are really important. People really look for coffee makers in coffee machines. I do not like K-cups K-cups I think have come and gone. They have had their time in the.

Hairdryers hairdryers are super important to have. You can have them screwed onto the wall or just set under the sink in a nice bag or something. Right. It's important to have hairdryers it's important because most people think of BnBs as a hotel and they forget their hairdryers. They don't pack them anymore.

And since they don't pack them, if you don't have one, they're going to get mad at you. Not because they forgot their hairdryer, but because you didn't have one, so hairdryers are important to have just like irons and iron boards, irons and irony boards are important because people might be there for a wedding or a business trip.

And you never know when you have to use them. When you pack things, you forget when you pack, if you don't. You're going to get a lot of wrinkles. So definitely, definitely have an iron and an irony board there for your guests. We have it always in the closet next to the laundry room, or we'll have it in the closet, in the bedroom so that somebody knows exactly where it is.

And that brings up the washer and dryer thing. I know a lot of the people used to argue about this. If you have longer stays, you have to have a washer and dryer and longer stays to me means if your average is four days or more, you really should have a washer and dryer. If your average stay is only a night or two, then by all means you can get away with not having one.

But if you have longer stays on average four days or more, you really need to get one because it's just convenient. It is a must for all those locations. It's must wherever you have kids. It's a must. If you have pets that you have in your place, there's a lot of different reasons, but a washer and dryer.

Very, very important. Okay. I touched on this before, when I was talking about the safety information, but we have our house rules that are online, that people can read before they book their stay. When they booked their stay, it's sent. When they're about to get there, it's sent to them again, there's a link sent to them on their phones.

They can link to it anytime. And we have a physical copy in the property at all times. House rules, contact information, check in and check out times clearly posted everywhere. Everything is all right. And we like to have that right there with what the local guide books tell them where to eat, where the restaurants are.

If you have a pet friendly place where the local dog park is where the hospitals are, how long it's going to take for you to get to the airport from where. Those are things you have to have and people need to see them. And there has to be a physical copy as well. Again, you never know when people are going to forget their stuff and not be able to charge their phones.

So just do it, just do it. Now. This is controversial. I believe you should have white sheets and towels. I really do. I know a lot of you are going to argue with me. And that's okay. You are entitled to your own opinion on this, but I am telling you out of the years of experience, the best properties that we have have white sheets and they get the most clean reviews.

Like, you know, they'll talk about our cleanliness the most, when we have white sheets and white towels, white says clean to most people. They see white sheets. They can tell if it's sturdy, you can tell right away if there's anything on it. If you've got nice white sheets, so a nice set of high quality white sheets and towels.

Very, very important, not the skimpy towels, either. Nice high quality. Okay. So that they can wrap it around themselves as big enough that they can wrap it around. Picture a chubby little Santa Claus, trying to wrap a tiny towel around them. That doesn't work. So what's the average size of your visitor, make sure they can wrap that towel around their whole body.

Okay. And when they get out of the shower, that is the size. And the quality has to be a good quality, just not too thin, not too thick, not too thin. That's what you need. And you need a spare set of sheets and towels something available for them. So in the properties that we have with high to beds, there is a set of sheets there for the height of bed, usually in the master closet.

Right. And they can just pull it out. Those come in like a bag, like a, I don't know, like, have you ever purchased a blanket or something and it's in this plastic kind of. That is just perfect for it. We buy those and we put clean towels, clean sheets, or maybe the whole bed set or a hide a bed. When we do that, we take that and we zip tie it so that when somebody opens it, we know that they used it.

We can tell that it's been used in that way. If it hasn't been used, we don't have to wash it every single time. Somebody. Because if there's something loose, anything loose, like a towel laying out or anything like that, it has to be washed. We don't reuse anything. I don't care if you walk in, somebody stayed one night and the bed was perfectly made.

You could tell your, your people did it because it was obviously not slept and they probably fell asleep on the couch. You still have to change the bed. Always. So we make sure that in order to save us a little laundry, we put a little zip tie and make sure that your girls, when they're zip tying them, we always make sure that they can put a finger through it because then you can get a pair of scissors in it.

If they zip tie them too tight. It's really hard for older people to get a pair of scissors in there and get them open that they would complain about that a lot. So now it's like a rule. So like I said, you want the local guide book where the restaurants, bars, things to do things, to see hiking, all that stuff.

Those are really great. And if you go to our resources, I'm not sure if it's up yet, but it's almost up in our resources online. You can find links to some really cool. Guide books like the guy books and the iPad ones that you can offer. We started offering those I-pads in some of our more expensive properties.

They're very popular there. They can get stolen, but in your expensive properties, not so bad because they usually don't get stolen. Those people have a nice deposit on it, so they know if it gets stolen, the deposit is gone. Also, we liked to have one. A lot of people really appreciate water, bottled water.

I know you think that maybe it's just because we live in Arizona. No, it's all across the country. People appreciate having bottled water or some kind of purified water there because they get thirsty and they don't want to drink the tap water. They don't know what your tap water tastes like. Think about the people who are from a place where they get well, water.

As opposed to somebody like you, who gets city water, and you're used to that taste. They're not used to the taste. And you're like, well, there is no taste because it's water. There's always a taste. You just don't taste it because you're used to it. So you want to make sure that you have bottled water for them and a luggage rack.

Most people don't even think about this, but we have luggage racks in every one of our properties. And we went to a BNB and they didn't, or like, where are we supposed to put our stuff? I don't like setting my suitcases that have been rolled around a bunch of airports on the bed that I'm going to land.

It's kind of gross. I want to be able to open my suitcase somewhere else. And that is a luggage rack. You need luggage racks. They're super easy to find. You can find them right on Amazon. They're not difficult to find, and they're not expensive. You can also go to bed bath and beyond because they have them as well.

Along with hangers, nothing is more irritating. Then getting to a BNB and they've got two hangers in the closet and you're like, what the heck am I supposed to hang up with this? I got to hang up some clothes. I've got nice suits or dress shirts. My jackets, all my stuff I hang up. I don't like anything to get wrinkles.

Right. So I roll it when I pack it. And when I get it out, I want to hang it up, get somewhere. And there's not enough hangers that is so irritating. So make sure you have enough hangers. So I'm going to stop it at these 23 things and we could go on. But how about you do me a favor and list some things that you think are very necessary for your guests.

And post them on this post inside of our Facebook page right underneath. And tell me what you have. If you think we should update this list and take something off, tell me what you think we should take off. And if you think we should add something, tell me what you think we should add. And maybe our list will grow or shrink or both.

And I'd really like to know. Don't forget our contest and don't forget the five-star review. If you have time, I would really appreciate that. Thank you so much for listening today. Have a great day. God bless go.

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