1. Focus on the uniqueness of your property

Every person is different. So is your Airbnb.

Stanford MBA program uses the famous essay question “What matters most to you” to filter out people who are not clear about their goal and vision in life. We are what we dream of and what we make ourselves. So is your Airbnb.

For our listing, we knew that the uniqueness is the proximity to the water. It has a breathtaking 200 degree view of the sound and mountains, with a flight of stairs down to the private beach.

Every time we took our three daughters to the cabin, we were awed at the view through the glass front door. It set a great mood for the entire vacation.

We wanted to bring the same experience to the viewers of our listing.

That’s why we chose the photo that has nothing but overwhelming blue as our main listing photo.

Imagine you are sitting on the dining room table, staring at the blue water, and enjoying the dinner that you just cooked. Don’t you want to be there?

To build up on the story, we highlighted that the property sits between two State Parks — Camano Island State Park and Cama Beach State Park. You can easily walk to either of them from your own beach.

To create an even more interactive experience with the ocean, we provide various amenities, such as kayaks, paddle boards, and shovels to dig clams. We wanted to give our guests tools to create a happy, relaxing time with families on the water.

We even provide a hot tub on then deck. Who would not want to sit in a steaming hot tub to stare at an unobstructed view of the water and the pitch black sky with stars at night?!

That was our story and our uniqueness. How about yours?

At this point you might say to yourself that your Airbnb listing does not have this kind of uniqueness.

You must dig deeper!

There must be a great reason that you chose your property in the first place. Is it because it is closer to all the tourism activities? Is it because it has a great gym in the building? Or right next to the best rated ramen place in town? Or, simply because you got the place for a great price enabling you to provide a more affordable stay.

Find your competitive advantage!

2. Let amenities bring your guests’ experience to the next level

In the hit show “Stay Here” from Netflix, the host mentioned that you need to use 10% of the income to provide amenities to the guests. They claimed that this would create a pleasant surprise that could linger through the guests’ entire stay. They also mentioned that the gifts need to be local and memorable.

For us, we provide a bottle of red wine for the guests. While the cost is not even 2% of the cost for a minimum two night stay, it sends a good message and shows the guests that we care. I have stayed at nice Airbnbs around the world, but I have never received any welcoming gifts before.

More importantly, we focused on providing a high quality stay. We spent a long time to find a diffuser that could create a signature scent and imprint Cama Beach cabin in our guests memory.

It is like the White Tea scent in a Westin hotel. No matter which Westin you stay at, the scent doesn’t change. That scent also becomes a link that ties guests’ memories of staying at the hotel together.

Somebody once said that there are two keys for an Airbnb or hotel stay — the bed and the bathroom.

Everybody wants a good night sleep to rest well to enjoy the day during the vacation. We shopped for all new, high-end mattresses, provided different heights of pillows, high quality pillow cases, sheets, you name it.

How many of you want a fuzzy towel after getting out of the shower? That’s what we provide. Don’t save money on towels. That’s one of the make it or break it moments for your guests.

Additionally, when traveling with my family, I always feel embarrassed after a number two in the hotel, especially when the bathroom fan is not working well. That’s why we provide Unicorn Gold Toilet Spray.

Last but not least, we provide lots of items to make people closer to the water — two single kayaks, two paddle boards, shovels for digging clams, and a crab pot(guests will need to get shellfishing and crabbing license).

Of course, all the amenities need to relate to the uniqueness of your Airbnb. For locations closer to downtown, maybe provide a coupon book for all the tourist attractions. For budget travels, maybe provide a local grocery store membership card, so that when the guests shop, they can save money.

3. Cleaning — yes the simplest thing!

Without doubt, “Your place is not as clean as expected” is the number one complaint on Airbnb.

That’s why Airbnb also highlight people’s comment on cleaning on the front page of your listing.

Having a reliable cleaning crew is the most important thing. They are the eyes and ears after a guest check out. Is something damaged? Is something missing? We will need to rely on them to help us make the decision!

Treat your cleaning crew extremely well. Always, ALWAYS, pay immediately after every cleaning. Give them tips every other month or so. Give additional tips during holiday season.

Of course, that’s after you have found a great cleaning crew. Before you find one, you need to focus on building a check list and providing lots of photos for the cleaning crew.

Using the detail check list to set expectations. Let the cleaning crew know what needs to be cleaned and to what level.

Take lots of photos of items at your Airbnb. You want to let the cleaning crew know on which couch the whale pillow goes, where the turquoise chair sits, and where to put all the kids toy together.

The check list and photos will help you filter out bad cleaners from the ones that you want to keep. It is pretty much like running a company. After finding great employees, keep them!

4. Detail guestbook

Every house tells a story. It deserves to have a well crafted guestbook to provide guidelines and rules to your guests.

There are lots of guestbook templates online. A lot of experienced hosts provide theirs for free. We downloaded a free one and customized it to meet our needs below.

• Property overview
• Arrival info: how to check-in, arrival time, driving direction, parking information
• Departure information: to do list before checking out (dishes, garbage, room temperature control, etc.), check out time
• Neighborhood information: what to do if you arrive early? Where to eat? Where to relax?
• Appliance, washer, dryer, and hot tub instruction
• Rules for staying at the house
  * Garbage and recycle handling
  * Toilet paper requirement because the house is on septic
  * Pets
  * Quiet hour
  * No smoking
  * Hot tub rules
  * Beach rules
• Where is the nearest? (hospital, grocery, police station, gas station, etc.)

I am more than happy to share the Guestbook I have. It is from generous strangers on Internet anyway. Just reach out to me so that I can send you a copy.

5. Communication, communication, and communication

Just like property management, in short term rental, the most important thing is communication. If the guests need something, they may want to reach out to us immediately. We need to send them abundant information, without spamming them.

I set up my Service Level Agreement with myself to be 2 hours for questions from our guests. The notification on my phone helps a lot.

Additionally, I defined a cadence of sending information to our guests:

• Right After A Reservation: Send a welcome letter and share high level information about the stay
• The Day Before Check in: Send an email and message of detail check in information, guest handbook, and Youtube video of how to operate the hot tub
• The Day of Check out: Send a quick message to say thank you and ask for review on Airbnb

Review is super important, especially for new listings like ours. However, I don’t want fake reviews. Wall Street Journal posted an article right before the holiday season about a large amount of reviews on Amazon are fake.

I want people who love the stay to give me five star review, and people who don’t have a good experience to provide me feedback so that I can improve to provide a better service for the next guest.

That’s why in both the Guestbook and the Check out email, I have the following wordings.

“We thrive to have a five-star review. If you enjoy your stay, please kindly review us! If there is any feedback, please let me know so that we can improve!”

It worked! In 2019, we had 60 guests. 42 of them gave us reviews and they were all five star reviews. What’s more amazing is that the guests know that we wanted to do better and better, so that they shared ideas to improve, such as getting a toaster, decaf coffee, etc.

6. Free yourself with automation

We have three young daughters to take care of and our real estate business to work on. We did not want to spend too much time on the Airbnb management. That’s how we turned to automation services to improve our efficiency.

After a quick Google search, I found that there are lots of services available. The one we are using is Porter App. We chose it because of its affordable pricing, mobile first design, and the level of customization for the host.

Here are the scenarios that are automated.

When guests book the stay

• Porter will send an email to the guests with an overview of the stay
• Porter will send a task to the cleaning crew to let them know the check out day of the guests

The day before guests are checking in

• Porter will send an email to the guests with detail check in information, Guestbook, Youtube video on hot tub operation
• Porter will send a text message and email reminder to the cleaning crew on cleaning the next day

The day when guests are checking out

• Porter will send an email to the guests to thank their stay and also ask for review

One thing I found out not good about Porter is that the pricing plan starts from 2 listings. So I am double paying for the plan. However, even in this case, it is cheaper than some other solution out there.

Ready to implement the tips?

Here is a quick summary:

1. Uniqueness
2. Amenity
3. Cleaning
4. Guestbook
5. Communication
6. Automation

Last but not least, happy Airbnbing!