STRA Episode 18: How to Manage the Holidays With Your Short-Term Rental

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[00:00:05] Hey everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. We are John and Wendy Williams with the Short-Term Rental Authority, your authority on all things short-term rental related to help make you the best operator. Ever. And it's the holiday season.

[00:00:22] The holiday season. Mm-hmm. , I dunno, the lyrics after that. . . Why do you think I'm wearing this fancy hat? , right? So if you're listening on audio again Last time Wendy had her beautiful Christmas ugly llama sweater on, who You call it ugly. Well, they're they're called that, aren't they like ugly Christmas sweaters?

[00:00:43] You have on your ugly Christmas sweater this year? I do. It's, it's, so if you're listed the audio, you'll have to come to the YouTube channel and see the. Wonderful Christmas sweatshirt actually that I have on. It's doth Bader. It says your lack of cheer is disturbing. I find your lack of cheer. I find your lack of cheer disturbing.

[00:01:03] Yes. So it's fabulous. Yes. And then if I put my hat up like this and then pull it down. . You look like a g Nome. I look like a gnome, a Nome for some reason. Wendy's into Nome. I really, they're everywhere. Oh, really? There's all these Christmas noms here. I'm a, I'm a big fan. Our Christmas tree topper is, is a Nome as well.

[00:01:23] Well, no kidding. Everything's a freaking Nome down here. , but, okay. Either way. And they have names. I would, I'd like to tell you that , she's named. Oh, but that aside it's a holiday. Fun. This is our holiday holiday. The holiday episode. Holiday episode. So we are going to be talking about the, oh my god, there's a cat in a box.

[00:01:44] Okay. Yes. We also are wrapping presents. . Right. The boxes. And there's boxes. So every time a box gets delivered, a cat gets in the new box. Right. And on the wrapping paper. Yes. It's ridiculous. It's a zoo around here. Yes. So we're going to be talking. The holiday [00:02:00] season in your short-term rental. So we're going to be talking about the questions that we usually get asked around this time of year, such as should I put up decorations in my unit?

[00:02:14] Is there special pricing that I should do availability. How to make it so that guests can't check out on a holiday, for example Christmas Day. Because you don't want your cleaners to have to work on Christmas Day, right? Since we always clean on checkouts and those are the typical questions that we usually get asked this time of year.

[00:02:39] So let's start with. Hmm. What should we start with? Let's start with decorations. Got it. So, yeah. So there's, in the past, and actually this question comes not only from operators, but it comes from guests too. Yes. Mm-hmm. , because sometimes they will ask, Hey, we've had that. Either do you have a Christmas tree up, for example?

[00:03:05] Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. Or can we put one up? Can, can we decorate ourselves? Yes. Can we decorate ourselves? Mm-hmm. . Yep. And typically just as a general baseline, we don't decorate correct our places for the holidays, right? Because not everybody celebrates. Christmas. Right, right. Not everybody celebrates that holiday.

[00:03:23] Correct. So there's, there's that. So we don't, we don't decorate, but we will allow people to decorate if, if they would like to, as long as they take it down and they, if they're using a, a live Christmas tree, then. They have to use a stand . Well, they have, that's cleanup, right? Yes. Yeah. So there's a little more to it there, but we do often have, especially in the the houses that we have, a lot of times it's either right, someone coming to visit family, right.

[00:03:52] Or what, and having their celebration at the home, right? Yeah. They'll actually do it there because maybe they live in a smaller space, like a one bedroom apartment or [00:04:00] something. Right. And they want to have family, and so, house them there and then actually go there for mm-hmm. , like Christmas day and stuff.

[00:04:08] Yeah. Stuff like that, which is really neat. It's really neat. I, I really enjoy. hosting that and being able to provide that service for people. Right. That makes me happy. Yeah. And we've actually talked about providing that as a service like this. Maybe, maybe this is something you could sell Uhhuh as an extra add-on, as an upsell, Hey, here's the holiday package.

[00:04:28] Mm-hmm. , or here's the Christmas package. Mm-hmm. , or here's the New Year's package. Right. Cause we got New Year's coming up too. Yes. That. Thanksgiving not as much, but you could do some things there. But yeah, generally on decorations. I wanna say our general advice is don't provide 'em for one thing. Are you gonna have pictures of them and are they gonna be professional photos or are you gonna put the Christmas tree up and take it with your cell phone and say it's there?

[00:04:52] Right? So there's that aspect of it. Just do it as an add-on upsell package. Yeah. If you want to do something, sell it. Yeah, sell it. I think that's a really great idea. I do too. Because I think there are people that would pay for that. I think so. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Especially in, in the homes. Mm-hmm. if you're doing houses.

[00:05:08] But I can see it happening in apartments too. So Yeah. Any, any type of, any, anywhere. Yeah. Rental. Yeah. Yep. I agree. So generally we don't but if somebody asks, we'll let them do it. Mm. and hey, maybe it's an idea. Sell that as a, as a thing. I think that's a great idea. I think that's a really great idea.

[00:05:24] Yeah. So, so we, we also want to be considerate of the people that work for us as well, such as our cleaners and our customer experience specialists. And our operations specialists which we also call the runner because they're the ones. Do all the running around for us. You know, we don't want them to have to work on, on the holiday as, as well.

[00:05:52] So we try to make it so that people, so that guests cannot [00:06:00] check out on, say, for example, Christmas or Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve or New Year's Eve or New Year's Day or Thanksgiving Day. Yeah. So one of the things I've discovered or we've discovered that we should be doing is when we bring on a new cleaner, for example, ask them what are, what are the holidays that you guys don't work during the year?

[00:06:22] Right? And one of those holidays can't be every Sunday, right? , right. So that's actually one of our filtering questions. But as far as, you know, national Holidays go, or, or it could be 4th of July, it could be, you know, whatever Thanksgiving, you know, do they take off Thanksgiving? Do they take off Christmas?

[00:06:38] Is it Christmas? . I mean, is it Christmas Eve or Christmas Day that you guys don't do? Or is it both? Is it New Year's Day or New Year's Eve? Cuz I always get confused like which one's the actual holiday. Right. Because everybody celebrates on New Year's Eve, right? Sure. . Right. But you're getting year's day off.

[00:06:54] So I don't know. But e either way, that having that conversation up front will tell you, okay, these are the days that we don't want checkouts on. Yes. Because I'm not cleaning it . Right. And you definitely don't want me to clean it. Right. So it's, it's not only a courtesy thing, but it's also a, just a practicality thing.

[00:07:12] Mm-hmm. of when do they work? Right. And you may have somebody that doesn't bother 'em at all because they don't celebrate Christmas. Right. Right. So maybe it's not a big deal. The, the technical, how do you do that is different than you might think because a lot of people, the first thing they think is okay, I'll make Christmas day a three day minimum.

[00:07:31] And that's not actually doing what you think it's doing. It just means if, hey, if they book Christmas Day, they have to book three other days. , and then those days could be the two, the two days, days before, right? Mm-hmm. or the five days before uh, even or whatever. Right. So it doesn't actually prevent the checkout on that day.

[00:07:48] Correct. So to do that, the, the only way I know of doing it right now is to go to the actual platform like Airbnb or vrbo, Airbnb or vrbo. Mm-hmm. . And actually you can set up what are called [00:08:00] rule sets that essentially won't allow a checkout on that day. So at the beginning of the every. We go through all of those holidays.

[00:08:08] I know we're talking about Christmas and things, right, but there are other days during the year that we don't want that too, right? And so at the beginning of every year we'll go through and for the year set those rule sets up so that we don't have to remember to do it later. Cuz you never know how far in advance somebody's gonna buck.

[00:08:25] So we set that up for the whole year and then we don't have to worry about it. And then next year we readjust because some days are always like December. 25th is always Christmas. Right, but it's on New Year's Eve is always January or December 31st, but it's on a different day of the week, right? Yes.

[00:08:44] Whereas Thanksgiving's always on a Thursday, whereas Thanksgiving's always on a 30 Thursday. And that's important because when you're setting up those rule sets, it's not like you're saying you can't check out on the 25th, right? You're really saying you can't check out on a Thursday and Well this, this year, Christmas is on Sunday.

[00:08:59] It's on Sunday. It happens to be that Christmas is on Sunday. And New Year's is on Sunday, I think. Isn't it always that way? No. Cuz it could be Monday. No, I mean they're always on the same day of the week. Cuz I don't know if that's true or not. It seems like it would be, but maybe, maybe not. I don't remember.

[00:09:16] But either way. We want to set up those rule sets so that it applies for that year. Mm-hmm. , where Thanksgiving, for example, is always on a Thursday. Right? Right. So that one you probably don't have to, and, and we can show you how to do that and, and we would be glad to, to help you out with that if you'd like to message us and Yeah.

[00:09:34] And, and get on a call. And we would, we would be happy to show you how to do. Yeah. And when Wendy says Message us, she means you can find us on Instagram, short-term rental authority. You can find us on Facebook, short-term rental authority, any of those places, message us and and we'll get back to you.

[00:09:50] Yeah. So there's that. It's, yeah. Don't allow people to check out on holidays, right? Is is the general rule, right? And then there's a, a way of doing that that's typically on the [00:10:00] platform, but it's not your minimum stays that do it, however, , when we are talking about availability, we usually do set minimum stays for those holidays, right?

[00:10:10] Because those tend to be the most expensive days of that month. So like for example, in December, it's kind of a slow month for us. Mm-hmm. normally, but. If you can get someone that books, you know, those three or four days around Christmas, those dates are, are elevated because we're using a pricing tool, dynamic pricing tool, which you should be using, and it will capture those higher days than what it does is it offsets for the lower occupancy and lower prices that generally occur earlier in the month.

[00:10:42] Mm-hmm. . Right. So it's, it's important for us at least to set, you know, 2, 3, 4 day minimums perhaps. Christmas, new Year's, those types of days, so that you're not just selling Christmas Day. So you're also capturing Christmas Eve the day after and you know, maybe even the day before Christmas Eve. Right. And, and it helps with, I'm, I'm assuming that it helps also with people who actually do want to stay those longer stays, makes it available for those people.

[00:11:12] That's true. And we, and we all always do that anyway. It's part of our pricing and availability. Strateg. is that we simply don't allow short stays beyond a certain window for us that's 10 days, but at the same time, I wanna make sure that that extends out for those days. Mm-hmm. anyway. And you can do that with Price Labs.

[00:11:33] It's something that you know, we can show you how to do jump on a coaching call messages. But that, that is a way of. actually enhancing your revenue. Mm-hmm. during this time as well. Mm-hmm. , because at least for us, it tends to be, yeah, we get the holiday bookings, but what do we do with the rest of the month?

[00:11:48] Right. Right. And so there's that. Right. That's all I have to say about available. , what was the next thing? Pricing. Pricing. . Well, pricing. I kind of just mentioned that a little bit, [00:12:00] but you want to take that. Pricing. Mm-hmm. . Well, you're usually the one that does that. . Okay. Cause I don't . See, I have my lane.

[00:12:11] I will do the decorations. I stay in my lane and I do not deviate from my lane . Right. Okay. So I do the, you know, I, I'll do the, the personnel aspect of the business and I, I go get. . I make them look pretty and then I give them to you and say, here you go. Here's a new unit. Fill them. Are you, fill them up for me.

[00:12:36] Fill them up, please. , right? And you are fantastic. About that. That is, that is your lane. You, you're the master. Yeah. So if you want pricing and availability and booking help, you are the master. Give us a coaching call as well. You are, or give us a shout. We have people more social are, are, we have coaching clients all the time that, that say, you know, I, the changes that we, that you made on our pricing, we got booked.

[00:13:05] People say that all the time. You're 10 out of film. Right? Right. So generally when I'm talking about pricing, the, the pricing tool's gonna do a lot of it. So your dynamic pricing tools, again, it's a tool, but when we use Price Labs, there's others out there. Price Labs is wheelhouse we prefer or whatever, but there's wheelhouse.

[00:13:24] There's beyond pricing, there's there, but the principal's the same, correct. What they're doing is they're raising and lowering your prices dynamically on a per day basis based on demand. And those holiday days are always high. . So the price is always above your medium or your median, your average, right?

[00:13:43] So the pricing tool is going to capture that. If you're gonna do anything at all, you might add an additional percentage to that, at least further out because you've got time. Mm-hmm. , you've got time to get it booked. So you might as well book it at a premium and then you can always pull that back [00:14:00] as the date get clo gets closer.

[00:14:02] But keep in mind as the date gets closer, your quote competition, which I don't like that word, but the other things, other units that are available in your area are, well, they're booked. Mm-hmm. . So you become more and more in demand because there's less and less supply, and that allows you to actually capture that.

[00:14:19] So that is one of the strategies is kind of a last man standing type strategy. However, you kind of have to be careful about that because longer stays are a thing. and they tend to be booked further out. Mm-hmm. . That's true. So it's kind of a balancing act. You can be, you can price yourself out of those longer stays mm-hmm.

[00:14:39] That you might've gotten, that would've been overall more profitable. Mm-hmm. , however, you can get a premium for those, you know, a few days around the holiday. . So it's, it's kind of a, there's a little bit of an art, there's a little bit of a science to it, and I bet experience has something to do with it too.

[00:14:55] And experience knowing your market and, and ha when, when you start to operate year after year, you know, you'll, you'll tend to see those, there, there will be trends too, right? And there's certain metrics and KPIs that you want. , basically tracking, like on average, how many days in advance do people book in December, for example.

[00:15:16] That's a great kpi. You know, how, what is your average length of stay in a December, right? What, what is you know, how, how many views to bookings? What's that ratio look like, right? And all of these kind of things. So you can start measuring that and seeing where you need to be and what you're actually trying to target.

[00:15:37] with your pricing and with your strategy and with your availability, and it's probably a good idea to track that per month. You want to track it, it could be as granular as you want, right, but it, you're right, because each month is a little different, right? Because the, our, the industry seems to be very seasonal, not seasonal by [00:16:00] like winter, spring, summer, and fall.

[00:16:02] or seasonal by month. Yeah. December's not the same as November. Right. And November's not the same as October. Right. And January and February are totally different, and every month is a little different. So as you operate throughout a year, now you have that data to go back and look at because it's always, you know, you, you can't come to me and say, Hey, is this a good number?

[00:16:25] Because as one of my mentors, Jay Massey says all the time compared to what? . Right. You know, have to know what am I comparing it to, to know if it's a good number or not. Right. So if you have that past data, then the, the longer you operate, the better you get at it because you know what to expect.

[00:16:41] Mm-hmm. and you know, what's abnormal and what's normal. Right. And, you know, post covid, it's, well, the data change, all the, yeah. All the data changed. So if you had data pre covid, well, during Covid, that wasn't relevant. Yeah. Totally. At all. And now we're, the world is in the, what we call the new normal.

[00:17:00] Mm-hmm. coming into the new normal and now it's all different. Yeah. So your data is not as, you know, even if you've been operating for five years. Right. , well, you can discount the last three , right? . Right. And, and say, okay, we're kind of start over with our metrics and great. The data collection and see what's, what's happening in today's world.

[00:17:20] Mm-hmm. , right? Mm-hmm. as far as that goes. Yep. So that, that's my pricing and availability. Long-winded answer to how you deal with that. Okay. And it really applies across the board. It's just a little more targeted when you get a, you know, a holiday. And I would say that applies even more to what we call a tent.

[00:17:39] which is kind of like a holiday. Uhhuh. . Yeah. I was gonna, oh, that's, that's interesting. So a temp pole event, if you don't know, it's, it's like a, it's almost like a one time event that comes to your area. Like for example, we had the NBA All Star game here in Charlotte one time. Right, right. That that's something that they don't come to the same city every year.

[00:17:57] Or if you're the city that has the Super Bowl this year, [00:18:00] Uhhuh. Yeah. Right. Or if there's, you know, whatever it is, it could be one of the political party conventions. Mm-hmm. . We have the DNC convention here in Charlotte. And that was a, what you call a tentpole event, right? So for those events, it's very similar.

[00:18:13] We tend to do the same thing. So not only holidays with this strategy, but also those tent pole events that you have coming in. Mm-hmm. . Oh, that's really good. I, I hadn't, I hadn't thought about making that. Yeah. And, and another reason you should be using a dining up pricing tool, because it'll do that for you.

[00:18:29] It'll catch it. Because you may not know. Right. You know, it may be the International Spatula Convention coming to your area and you're not that into spatula, so you don't know. Yes. But the pricing tool is gonna notice that, oh, the demand is cre increasing, there must be a reason, let's raise prices. Right, right, right.

[00:18:48] That is i'll it to it really cool about, about the tool. But you know, it's, it's a, it's a tool. It's not a set it and forget it. Type thing. And it's something that you have to learn like, like Jay Massey says, it's an expert tool that you have to learn how to use Expert. Lee Lee, right? Yeah. And it, and, and we can help you with that too, right?

[00:19:13] So learning how to use those dynamic pricing tools and. is, is a skill, and, and we can, it is okay. I I'm not gonna say we . John can help you with that. . Wendy can help you too. I can to a certain extent. That's true. That's true. You act like all you do is design places. And that's true. I that's not true.

[00:19:35] That's not true at all. That's not true. I can help with a, to a certain extent, yes, but the, there is a strategy. to it, to, to using those tools. So if you want help with that, you'd let us know. Yeah. Dms, dms, social media. Mm-hmm. , we are all in this one from Facebook. Anywhere. You can find us all over. Yes.

[00:19:57] The short-term rental authority. That is us. [00:20:00] You got anything else in your words of wisdom in your, say it in your doth Vader.

[00:20:12] your lack of pricing is disturbing. . Your lack of dynamic pricing is disturbing. . That's funny. , the student becomes the master.

[00:20:27] Okay. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not James or Jones. Sorry. . I don't know. It was pretty good. Yeah. You do have the Santa beard going on. Yeah. Well, if you wanna see my Santa beard, , maybe you should be wearing the hat. Oh, I'm already wearing a sweater. I just need my, I have the bowl full of jelly. Oh. Oh. It's perfect. If you made me a gnome, I can't tell.

[00:20:46] No, but I. Oh, let me see. . Okay, now I'm a jolly nom . So again, if you wanna see the jolly Nom , head over to the YouTube channel and you can check it out. . Well, I hope you found some value and entertainment in today's podcast. Be sure to like and subscribe. We are John and Wendy Williams. This is Darth Vader.

[00:21:12] And we will see you next. On to the next. Ho, ho, ho.

[00:21:23]

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