hello youtube this is richard founder of short-term rental secrets.com and
Airbnb super host today's video we're going to talk about five ways to screen
your guests so to be clear I absolutely love the Airbnb community and 99.99% of
the guests that I've welcome to my home of the great and/or welcome back but
that said we always focus on the pain and what I want to try and do is
eliminate and share with you some of the things that I've learned over time to
help you avoid problems also if you're new recognize that you're going to be
uncomfortable at first trust that you're going to get better with experience and
just trust that everyone is good from the very beginning but be cautious and
avoid some of these things so the first one I want to talk about is something
that is not obvious there's not necessarily doing anything wrong but it
can lead to miscommunication and that's problematic in the guest host experience
and that's what I'm going to call third party Booker's so who's a third party
Booker it could be a travel agent booking for a client it could be a
secretary booking for their boss the problem with it is that since they're
not communicating directly with me I'm not setting their expectations and we
don't start to have that dialogue and so basically I want to be in communication
with the person that's showing up at my house so that any questions that they
had in advance have been addressed satisfactorily I'm setting the
expectations and we're setting the right tone for a great guest host experience
what I found on occasion is when there's that third party there's
miscommunication expectations are different and I've had incidents where
people want to check out earlier they want their money back it's not what they
thought and I try and avoid those as much as possible so the second one is
that big scary thing that we all read about and actually keeps a lot of would
be hosts away from hosting but it's really uncommon so like no reason to shy
away but that killer party that everybody sees about and the place is
trashed like it does happen it's really infrequent so what do I do to try and
deter that I put it in all my listings that there's no parties no events no
more than X number of people and then I pay close attention to who's trying to
book same-day bookings I really raise my antennae no reviews raise my antennae I
can get comfortable with them but I ask questions anybody that you know is in
the same city and has a last minute reason to book it better be valid and
then I just take a look at like their profile
photo and about them and I ask questions so let me give you an example just
recently I had somebody who wanted to book same-day for a few hours they were
from New Jersey which is a neighboring state and they wanted a discount and I
got me questioning who they were they had no reviews and I took a look at
their profile photo and it was three guys they look like they were about
twenty and one of them was actually holding a beer can
now I didn't think he was a great set before but when I took a look at his
profile photo I was certain it wasn't a good fit and I'm not telling you to be
discriminatory or jump to any conclusions I'm just saying listen to
your gut number three is try and have a good fit between like what you want your
place used for and what is actually used for it now that doesn't make a lot of
sense but let me tell you some of the real-life things that I've witnessed my
place is for travelers I prefer families to travel together sometimes there's a
couple of couples that travel together but I get requests all the time for
commercial shoots we want to do a product demo we want to have an
Instagram we want a book signing whatever it is and those are fine but
it's not exactly my intended use and so I use a different approach in
methodology when I consider those listings and that's what I do I consider
them I don't always accept them sometimes I do sometimes I don't but
when I do accept them because it's a commercial use as opposed to a family or
a business use I charge to X number four it happens all the time you're going to
get requests that exceed the number of people that you have you know capability
of hosting properly so for instance if you have a three-bedroom and you say you
can accommodate six you're going to get requests for people that say it's just
seven and he's only seven years old and he can sleep on the floor whatever you
sleep on the couch if six is your limit then don't take the seventh the reason
is it's more wear and tear on your place it leads to more you know potential
dissatisfaction wasn't quite as big as we thought if six is your limit stick to
it again I don't want anybody hosting from my position of weakness or needing
the money you're going to turn that person down there's a really good
likelihood that there's somebody behind them that's a better fit so sometimes
you have to say no to get to a good yes and the last thing I'm going to suggest
it sounds obvious but like check all the reviews I don't mean the last review or
the to last reviews if they have ten read them all you might find something
that you didn't like or like if they were smoking or they threw a party who
knows what it is just read all the reviews I can't tell you how many times
I've done that and I've been glad I did and just do that it's worth your time I
hope you found this helpful please like the video I'd love to hear from you in
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