Hey what's happening YouTube it's Richard founder of short-term rental
University and Airbnb super host and today I'm coming to you from Nosara
Costa Rica with 12 tips that you can take today to add profitability to your
short-term rental business immediately and in the future so this is really
applicable to you no matter where you are in your journey even if you haven't
started I want you to start thinking about adding some of these ideas and
services because the sooner you get started thinking about it the sooner
you'll actually do it and if you are in your business currently and you don't
have enough money to scale or get that second or third place here are some
ideas that you can implement immediately without any real resource start
generating more profitability I encourage you to save it and use these
savings towards your future purchase so let's get right into it so I've taught
in the past about expense management you want to keep your expenses down that's
pretty obvious pretty straightforward the other thing you can do is you can
increase your revenue and that's really critical so the variables that are there
are your occupancy rate the rate your average daily rate per night and then
the third thing you can do is add ancillary services so you're increasing
the revenue per paying customer assuming already that you've got the occupancy
and you're using dynamic pricing again I'm a big fan of beyond pricing so let's
just assume that you've got the right occupancy and on the right prices so you
can't really dial that up anymore for more profitability and you can't scale
to grow your business so this is the video that you want here are some things
that you can do and how did I come up with this list I modeled the masters and
what I mean by that is I was looking for a great place to stay in Hawaii I'm
going there next month with Erica and I was looking through it and I saw on the
Airbnb app they have Airbnb plus I film videos on Airbnb Plus in the past and
they now have Airbnb lux which is a business that they bought and they're
now introducing into their platform and that's their super upscale place and so
I said I wanted to learn a little bit more about it I clicked on it to learn
more about it and in addition to all of their beautiful verbiage about how they
handpick and 300 data points to find all the right places and so on they also
offer additional services so it's meant to add value above and beyond just the
four walls like we often talk about create an experience add some more value
do these other things well rather than in
vent the 12 things that you should do and share them with you we're just going
to follow Airbnb x' lead in their newest offering the lux which is spelled l ux e
and we're going to go through some of these items and you can implement them
all yourself in your own location at your own pace
whether you do one or you do them all it's really consistent with what
motivates you what your neighborhood requires what your listing affords
itself towards but no pressure to do all of them just do one get started here's
how you can grow your business without any more expenses just following the
masters here's what Airbnb offers in their Airbnb lux and let's get right
into it so the first one I've actually done in the past and it's all for
housekeeping right now most Airbnb hosts offer housekeeping at turnover only the
place is clean when people check in it gets dirtied while they're there then
the cleaning team comes in for the next guest well I've had some extended stays
and some of my guests have actually wanted to pay for cleaning the beautiful
thing is I have the cleaning team and guess what my cleaning team like your
cleaning team probably wants more work not less work so if the guests are
willing to pay for cleaning while they're there why not offer it and again
I use my cleaning fees to pay my employees a living wage make sure that
they're comfortable pay for some of the costs of the materials to clean and I
have some wiggle room in there it's not particularly profitable but it is a
profit center and I also make sure that the place is you know maintained and of
CAP so if you have people that are there for an extended period of time it
enhances their experience it keeps your place orderly and maintained and you'll
make a small profit if you do this correctly
another thing that Airbnb offers is airport transfers in this day and age
with uber I'm not sure it's really important but if you have a place that's
hard to get to or off the beaten path or you have somebody who wants to align
with you you can get what's known as an affiliate Commission by working with a
local taxi company transportation provider limo service again you're not
going to get rich on this stuff but it's about adding more value to your guests
experience differentiating yourself from your competitors and making a little bit
of money consistently similarly they offer car rentals maybe the way to go
for something like this is Toro tu ro I've rented from them in LA I rented a
Mustang convertible and that's an entrepreneur who instead
of you know sharing his home is sharing his car if you do something like that
make sure you've got all your liability and insurance and I just want you to be
smart entrepreneurs but there's some money to be made fresh groceries when I
rent villas down in st. Barths they send me a list of items that I can put in the
villa in advance of my arriving so if I want you know I don't drink but it could
be beer and wine it could be cheese platters fresh fruit whatever you need
offer to your guests and say I'll stock your fridge when you come in it's
whatever you want there and mark all of that up
generally speaking you should mark things up more than you think your time
is valuable so if you're going to do this or you're going to outsource it to
somebody make sure that you're being paid for your time and charge a premium
somebody who wants that service isn't looking to get the most inexpensive
service they're willing to pay for your time your knowledge and get the right
stuff so you can offer fresh groceries child care if you have people that
travel as a family and they're coming to your place well maybe they're attending
a reunion or a football game or something like that and there's a couple
of periods and there's a couple of hours when they don't want the kids because
they've got something else to do whether you or a neighbor or somebody else or
you partner with a childcare provider offer child care you could make a little
bit of money on that the next one I think is pretty obvious and we've
probably done this ourselves offer a chef have somebody come in using their
own like you know menus and skill set and so on and say we'll have a private
chef come to the villa prepare a meal for you and this is what it costs
again you mark that up and or the chef pays you a commission so it's enhancing
the guest experience and it's helping you profitability wise as well this next
one I think you have to be a little bit more upscale and I'm not sure exactly
what it means but I'm gonna share it with you because Airbnb thinks it's
important and that's the purpose of this video a butler so go ahead and get
Wilfred or whoever all buttoned up and ready to go and provide a butler
similarly a driver again I'm not sure that that's something that's required
now with uber but if you live in a place where there's gay tours and so on
partner with a local transportation company and have people give people the
opportunity to have a car and driver for the day and tour
round restaurant concierge have the ability to help people make restaurant
reservations restaurant reservation recommendations just really facilitating
to ensure that they have a great time when they stay at your home and in your
community and making it easier and you're not necessarily gonna make a lot
of money from the restaurant reservations but you could probably
partner with some local restaurants who'd be happy to give you you know free
meals yourself when you go there because you sent them X number of guests or
whatever just be creative spa services you know again maybe you have a spare
bedroom and you can connect with somebody who comes to the home with a
fold-out table and they offer massages or right here you know like there's no
reason it couldn't happen right here so just start to think about the different
product offerings that you have and why people come and what people might want
to do and then just partner with people equipment rental maybe people don't want
to travel with I don't know their skis or their snowboard or their golf clubs
or their surfboard and so now you have a partnership with somebody that offers
high quality equipment for rent and again you get a referral fee when you
find somebody like that and then the last one that they offers family gear
and this might be high chairs and cribs and pack and plays and toys and stuff
like that if you have a lot of families traveling you don't necessarily have to
like stock it all at your expense and have it there at their disposal but
maybe partner with somebody in your area that that's their business and they come
and they deliver it all and then when this group leaves they take it all away
and they clean it all up and sanitize it and like you don't have to do it very
much in any of this right these are ancillary services that you partner with
people they do their expertise you take either an affiliate Commission from them
or you mark it up a little bit and again it's not about getting rich quick but
all of this stuff adds up if it adds a hundred dollars of profitability in a
month that's twelve hundred dollars in a year and then you add a second service
or a third you start to increase and you start to save and you reinvest that
before you know it a thousand dollars a year you'll have ten thousand or twenty
thousand dollars saved up and that can make a big dent towards your next
purchase so I want you to contemplate it and I want you to think about which of
these services you want to add and in what order and experiment with it I
think you'll have more success than you think
look if this sounds really interesting to you and you're committed to grow
your business to that next level join me November 2nd and 3rd at STR you live in
Miami where we will go deep and I'm committed to help you get to that next
level let's go so if you don't know exactly where to get started I have an
expert who is actually in the services business in a prior life and she's here
to join us so Erica come please help the audience how do you find people like
this and I can think of nobody better than Erica who used to run basically a
very high-end concierge type service and would get requests like this from the
who's who in Jackson Hole billionaires flying in and how would you go ahead and
find any of these service providers where do you start well what I would say
is reach out to those that either execute at your level or higher so for
example a number of times people reached out to me and they were traveling they
said you know we're going to you know Miami or we're going to Aspen and we
need this assist miss well I don't have relationships necessarily in Aspen so
what I would say is reach out to someone in Aspen that would know well if you
want to execute at a Four Seasons level reach out to the Four Seasons speak to
someone at the concierge desk they're so helpful they're so knowledgeable they're
so friendly they know the area and they work with the best so ask questions you
know develop a relationship with them how you know create enough value where
they're invested in your success right and so if you say hey I have you know
these guests that are coming and I want to deliver X you know can you share with
me who you would use nine times out of ten that they will do that the other
option to is find me in the area there are so many concierge businesses and
personal assistants executive assistants that are not affiliated with one client
but with numerous and so if you can kind of get them on contract or retain them
and say hey I've got you know these three properties
and you know my area and when my guests come and stay you know at this house or
this house you know whatever or just even the one property but you're wanting
to provide that luxe accommodation have them at the ready you know sit so that
basically they are resource and they can answer all of those questions and an
assist and step in as needed but it's not you doing it it's you know someone
else who is skilled and happy and available really talented at it
let me ask two quick questions for you listen to all of those twelve
suggestions yes in your experience have you been asked to provide any of those
twelve all of those twelve what about like the cribs and the gear rental
absolutely a great example there's there is a company of business in Jackson that
has all of that that's what they do and they come and they bring off bring hi
tears and cribs and play pins and no booster seats whatever it is that you
need provide it in the home and then you know they can pick it up you know when
that when the guests leave and you would be surprised you know the number of
resources that are out there that you can utilize exactly to make your life
easier and to make your guest life easier and then the second question I
would have is to some degree this was your prior job right like a very
high-end concierge executive assistant I don't know what language you describe
but you did all of this and I think you did quite well right like there is money
to be made in this we're not telling people like go make no money right like
this was great how you fed yourself and how you lived and thrived absolutely so
people can make some money on the side gig of their side gig absolutely
absolutely can I mean and it got too big for just me I had to hire you know
additional people and grow my team so there it is a thing and one of the
things that I taught the attendees in Nashville is as Airbnb grows be
entrepreneurial and start to think outside the box and create services and
businesses there's a whole ecosystem that will rise as a result
the size and the you know how great air B&B is for so many people so maybe some
of you will have more success in this service thing than you have in renting
your own home and maybe that's where you go but just keep your mind open right or
think of things beyond those twelve things exactly Flores
hair salons you know all there's any number of different things personalized
shopping I mean just tours right the the Airbnb experience but not what Airbnb is
currently doing to your snowboard tunings an unbelievable amount of
opportunities so for those of you that are listening and watching this video
please go ahead and comment below what additional services do you offer how
much money have you made give us all ideas we're not in competition with one
another we're actually peers that's a beautiful
part of the community so you might leave a comment here about what you've done
and somebody leaves a different comment and that helps you you implement it you
make $5,000 a year more and we all grow so comment below please go ahead and
like the video and subscribe to the channel but just recognize if you're
currently capital constrained and you can't scale because you don't have
enough money there are things that you can do right now to grow yourself and to
grow your business and to grow your opportunity set you just have to be
entrepreneurial and keep your mind open and we hope you found this video helpful
folks like it and subscribe