Interview with DeAnne OFC

Jae Seok An21min

Delia

00:00

Welcome back to another episode of Into The Airbnb, where we talk with Airbnb hosts about their short-term rental experience. Today's guest is the en DeAnne Davidson based in the Washington Coast, who has been a short term rental owner since 2007. Today, DeAnne will share with us about her experience in the last 15 years, some useful tips and the secrets to become a successful and respected Airbnb host. This episode is sponsored by Airbtics, the only one analytics dashboard for short-term rental investors and managers, where you can find precise Airbnb data such as occupancy rate, revenue, average daily rate, and so on. So, without further ado, let's get into it! Can you please tell us how did you get started on Airbnb or on short-term rentals?

DeAnne Davidson

00:49

It was on accident. We had a vacation home ourselves on the Washington Coast but went for a drive and found this beautiful property up on a cliff that had a 180 degree ocean view and we decided to purchase that and build two townhomes, a duplex style townhomes on it. And basically the only way we could afford it is to do short-term rental. What we plan to do is on one side and have the other place for ours, but it became so popular that we ended up renting both sides short-term rental and doing very well. We were one of the first short-term rentals in our area. So there was a high demand when we started 15 years ago in 2007. From there, we bought other ones, in the mountains and more on the ocean over time. So kind of got started on accident and I didn't discover Airbnb until about 2009, but they were fairly new back then as well. So we had already formulated all our rules and how to stay at our place before we got to Airbnb, but love Airbnb because they have the systems down as well. So that's kind of how we got started.

Delia

02:24

Oh my God, that's a great history and tell me before you discover Airbnb, how were you doing these short-term rentals? Like how was the distribution of the news that you're doing short-term rentals? Where did your guests came from and all of that?

DeAnne Davidson

02:45

Okay. Before Airbnb we did our own website. So we'd have a website to refer to and we did, believe this or not, we did little colour brochures that we passed out in the little travel companies around our state. Most of our people come from Washington. They travel you know, from Eastern Washington or you know, a couple hour drive to come to the beautiful beach clam dig, horseback ride, to do fun stuff. So we found that was a good way. Then online, we got the people that travelled to Washington from other states coming to us. So summertime we get the travellers from all over the United States and in the fall, winter and spring we get the locals.

Delia

03:45

I see, I see. So when you first discovered Airbnb and started to use their platform, did your revenue significantly increase with that?

DeAnne Davidson

04:00

Well, I would say it did help, in the beginning, it did help to give us another avenue to get people from, but it helped us more I guess in the later years, more as we stayed on and became you know, the good hosts that we are and now known. So in the beginning, it was a little different because we had already had established our website and everything, but I like a Airbnb because they do screen and they do verify owners and I do like the way that they do the reviews. You know each one can honestly review and that just makes me more comfortable when people come and stay.

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