Welcome back to another episode of Into The Airbnb, where we talk with Airbnb hosts about their short-term rental experience. Our guest for today is Jennifer O'Riley from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, who remotely manages an Airbnb unit in Louisiana, Florida. Today, she'll share with us her unique themed cabin and how her special amenities give her guests an unforgettable stay. This episode is sponsored by Airbtics, the only one only 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 tell me how did you get started on Airbnb?
Well, my husband and I had about almost a dozen long-term rentals and we actually bought one five years ago, a house that we were going to renovate and we wanted to do an Airbnb with it, but we just weren't sure, we hadn't gotten into it yet and we weren't sure if it was the right area. So although we got it all ready to go, we decided to just do a long-term rental with that as well. But about a year and a half ago, my husband's father, my father-in-law, built a log cabin at Lake Cana in Virginia and he started building in 85. He built it log by log himself and he finished and then he sold in 2007. We ended up contacting the owner and we just said, you know, if he ever want to sell it back, sell it. So it turned out he was looking to sell it and we were blessed with the opportunity to purchase it back into the family. But we weren't going to be able to, we wanted to do it as a rental opportunity and get into the Airbnb market. So we decided to just go ahead and do it. So we spent about two three months getting ready to go and you know, it has worked out really well. We're looking to do additional ones now.
According to your experience, would you rather do short-term rentals or long-term rentals?
Short-term rentals are awesome and they're really exciting. It gives you depend on the area. Long-term rentals have their advantages as well. But I think short-term rentals are definitely more lucrative and I would love to do it full time and even maybe manage some, but certainly I'm on more short-term rentals.
Okay, great! Currently in the area you're hosting, which you told me was Louisa Virginia, right?
Yes.
How is the seasonality like there?
So we were really sure, I mean, we vacation down there a lot, so we weren't sure how the winter was. So it's a spring, summer high season, meaning most people go for the lakes. We weren't really sure how the winter would do, but we had pretty much every weekend, it was booked more so just weekends in the winter. But we had people that just wanted to go to the cabin in the woods, you know, we offer a fireplace indoors and an outdoor fireplace. So we were really pleasantly surprised at how much interest there was through the winter months, which is typically the slower months there.
Oh, so it's a cabin in the woods?
Yeah, I mean, it's on an acre. So there are neighbours, but it's very wooded. It's about a block from the lake. There's not a lot of things like winter activities, like skiing stuff close by, but we did definitely have a lot of people that just kind of wanted to retreat to get away to in the winter. Towards the fall and early spring, we've had some people who do a lot of fishing. So that has sort of been an additional market that we really hadn't thought about, but we did sort of make some additions to the Airbnb to accommodate and market to those types of renters.
Oh, and can I ask which changes do you made for them?
Yeah, so we took one of the bedrooms, you know, they just had pretty simple decor. We focused that one on fishing, we got a lot of antique fishing lures and then also some additional fishing lures and we have a whole wall of them. And we love to sign for people that if they want to swap out for a fishing lure and maybe leave a note about why that's a interesting fishing lure or there's a some people have left sentimental fishing lures, they've just sort of swapped out what we have for something if there is and it's kind of been this neat little quirk and we also we've got kayaks, one of them was a fishing kayak, so you can take the kayak out and go fishing. Then our community has local boat ramps, so people can bring their boats by, we've left a small fishing boat as well, that we haven't left for our guests yet, but we're considering maybe even adding that in, we're just not sure about insurance and liability yet, but that's something else we're considering.
Oh, that's great. As a cabin, what experiences do you offer?
So the main experience that most people who come down to our lake for is really just the lake, the water, the summer, boating. Most people have really been interested in the summer, some people have asked for boat rental places, which we do have in our online guest book. But we also had people that brought their own boats. But we have a four person golf cart with seat belts, that people can use to get down to the lake. Our community has a beach on the lake, so people have you know, with smaller kids have come down for a week to just take their kids to the beach and also there's a state park down the street, so that's something that's very interesting for people. We're very close to a pretty large amusement park that people will go to and stay at our place. We have an outdoor firepit, with six adirondack chairs that people love. We also have a hibachi grill and a grill on the back, the hibachi grill has been somewhat interesting, people will definitely like to use that. Then inside we have a wide array probably 40 different games, old games, new games, games from home when I was a kid that are fun to play. And we have little reading now for people with some old books, again, we've got a note there that says take a book, leave a book. So if somebody's in the middle of reading a new book that we have, we encourage them to take it with them and maybe leave a book that they're interested in and someone else could use. So we just have things like that throughout the cabin that are kind of interesting and unique, I think to our Airbnb.
Yeah, I agree. Those are really unique, this is actually my first time hearing about many of them. And how has been your experience? I heard you mention a fireplace, right?
Yeah, we have an indoor fireplace, it's a two storey fireplace, you know. So it's pretty open and big. We do leave firewood for our guests to use, both outdoors, we have some outdoors, we lost a few trees this winter, so we cut those up and we have left them out for the guests to use. We also have plenty of stocks firewood right by the doors, so people can have a fire inside that, you know, they don't have to worry about going and buying firewood or figuring out who sells it and things like that.
And how has been your experience with that with the fireplace and also the grill? Because I know these are like two main things hosts are really afraid about having and relying on the guest with those fire related things.
So we did have a outdoor fire morning where you are not allowed to have fires outdoors before four o'clock just because they wanted to keep, the you know, risk down for people having big fires during the day. And on windy days, you know, occasionally, they'll put in a no fire warning and we communicate with our guests to let them know that. We've had no problems with the fireplace. We did have one guest say that the flue was dirty, so we had our chimney company come out and take a look that afternoon. But we've had many guests and most all of them have used the fire, we had one group of, I think there were six or eight lawyers, from Washington DC that came down and they had never had a fire before. So we walked them through it over the phone and what to do. Then we have good neighbours that if there was ever an issue, you know, they're there next door and we were always in contact with them. But we did have that one group that got a little nervous about how to put the fire out before they went to bed, do they did use the fire extinguisher. We have fire extinguisher by the fire just for safety purposes right there. Then we also have one on each level, one in the kitchen and then one upstairs just for, you know, add safety for our guests. But we're pretty quick to respond and make sure that if they have any issues or they're not sure how to do something, we will walk them through it. Then I do have instructions on how to work the fireplace, you know, how to open the flue and check to see if that's open. So I have those instructions in our guestbook just for our guests added safety and put the guestbook right in front of the fireplace.
That's a great strategy! And you told me there was an amusement parks near you, right? Near your listing location?
Yes, Kings Dominion is about 20 minutes away from us, I think. But we've only had one guest that actually came to stay with us to go there. But you know, she wanted to take her daughter on a little retreat and take her to the amusement park and so she, you know, really thought our cabin gives that fun experience of a place to stay.
Is it a popular area for Airbnb or short-term rentals in general?
Yeah, I mean, when I started doing a research on, you know, looking at comparable places and stuff, there's definitely two markets. There's the on the water experience, you know, which is going to be very high price and then there's the, you know, standard house to rent and then we were kind of in the middle. We started out renting at the lower end of the houses around our area because we didn't, you know, we wanted to build up our reputation. But we have found that, because we offer this, you know, log cabin, you can see the whole entire, you know, the logs throughout the whole cabin, there's no drywall or anything. Then we have pictures throughout the cabin of when it was being built. So we kind of found that we're sort of in this niche market where we're not obviously going to be charging the same as you would pay to go stay on the water, but we also have sort of a unique themed cabin that sort of offers itself to more amenities and a little bit higher than the other Airbnbs.
And now that you mentioned about price, throughout the year, how is your pricing strategy like?
So when we first started out, like I said, we were a little bit lower, just trying to get some reviews up and to get a good reputation and we were just filling the market out. But after, because we did it at the end of a summer, we ended up buying it sort of in the middle of the summer, so through the winter, we sort of tested out different theories, you know, going up a little bit above the price range that we had been at and that seemed to work really well. So we, you know, move that price point up a little bit more when just sort of found a good niche where we were getting bookings, but we weren't kind of getting that younger partying crowd. So we've kind of just sort of played with it a little bit. Throughout our first summer, we did four days minimum. But now that we've got sort of a base and we've got a lot of views, we've sort of moved that to a five day, we're even considering going to a week for the summers.
Oh because summer is low season, right?
No, summer is the high season, winter is low season. The winter, we were booked every weekend, most our average rental was about four or five days-
I see. And now in the high season, how is your occupancy rate like?
Yeah, we're pretty much booked every week. We do have sort of in the beginning of the summer end of May, early June, some five day weekend rentals and then we're booked pretty much through the summer was some party and fall dates filling up now.
And is this five day minimum because of convenience? Or is there any reason why you don't do single night or two nights minimun?
Yeah, so just through our research we found that one night and two nights minimum is, you know, the people that come to our area are going to want to be there for a little bit right? Our cabin sort of offers this really relaxing kind of homey, it's just an experience and we really worked hard to work with find a good cleaning company and our cleaning company is phenomenal. So we didn't want to do back to back bookings, that was something we knew we wanted that one day in between for them to get in there and do, you know, the right kind of turnover, but we didn't want to end up where we had Fridays or Saturdays that weren't booked or even Sundays. So we've just found that, you know, we get that niche is usually couples or families with older kids. We've had a few families with their own kids, but so far we haven't had any weekends really that don't get booked for the five days. But when we did do the three days minimum little pretty blockages we sort of ended up with that Friday, Saturday, Sunday group and you lost the people that wanted a week because if, you know, somebody doesn't want to come on a Monday, so you know, we found that just that longer booking really got us more higher, the less party in crowd.
Yes, I understand completely. And I forgot to ask you, in the low season, how is your average occupancy rate like?
So in the low season, we do allow three nights, so we do three night bookings. We really don't have too many weekends that we're not booked. The weekends that we aren't booked, like we'll have like one every couple of months and we'll run down there and do some maintenance, especially in the winter. We had a couple of weekends where we had a huge snowstorm, so we actually ironically didn't have someone that weekend and we were concerned we would have a lot of snow the following weekend. But it turned out we were communicating with our guests that were coming in then, just so that they knew, you know, if the roads weren't clear and stuff, but they came down and they had a great time even though we had a lot of snow. So we do 3-day bookings in the winter and then most of those people just are looking for a getaway weekend. So most of the winter is pretty much weekend, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday for the high nights.
And what about the activities to do in the winter? Is there any particular thing around, any attraction around your area?
There are, you know, there's a lot of antique there's, I mean, the wineries and breweries are plentiful around there. It's certainly becoming more and more the case in the last year we I think we've had three new breweries open up within a 10 mile radius and about four or five wineries, so that there. But for the most part, what I've sort of noticed, you know, based on the questions that the guests asked us, they really are just looking for a place to get away the couple hours from Washington DC most of them live in the DC area and they work in the DC area. So most of our guests in the winter tend to be people that kind of want to come just get away from everything but not have to go too far and they don't want to fly, so they're just looking for some place to kind of unplug.
I understand that's nice. I think your listing is pretty nice for that.
Yes it is.
And can you tell me in all these years being an Airbnb host, what have been your top challenges while running Airbnb?
We live two hours away so we have a contactless, you know, they just stop checking. We have a keypad on the front door and when they get the code is usually the last four of their phone number. So I think that has been a challenge just not being able to like greet the guests. And then, you know, we've had a couple of guests that have six guests they marked down with ended with 10 people and our occupancy is seven, that's pretty much the the maximum we want to have. So that's been a challenge, you know, just how do you handle that. And some of the other things that we've had to kind of learn on the fly, you know, we added a Wi Fi hot water gauge, so we could turn it off when people aren't there, and we're not heating the water. So that's been a nice kind of helpful way to save money, you're not heating water for four days, we don't have a guest. And then we do leave a gift basket when they come and we leave a little basket for this thing with dishwashing stuff, soap sponge, things like that hand sanitizer, we added when we leave a basket for each bathroom and the laundry laundry area, we leave, you know, sort of starter staff, if you're gonna stay for more than a week, you know, we'll leave a little bit more. So we we've kind of worked with our cleaning company to sort of implement those. So it's quick for them. Some of the other things that we've sort of had a challenge with, and we've worked through, but you know, the, we have seven beds, so we have five or six full beds and one queen bed. And so when we have those beds, you know, we have to turn them over, that's a lot of washing the comforters and blankets and even will rewash the blankets that are in the drawers, you know, for extra warmth, more wash all of those as well. So that's been a little challenge, you know, to have our cleaning company have to wait for the laundry. So we bought duplicates of everything, and we pay the cleaning company to bring them home and wash that she washes them at home when we did look into getting a laundry service. But it just seemed to be kind of hard and cumbersome to coordinate that with our cleaning company that we just pay her to bring them home and and wash them especially with COVID. You know, we've been a little bit more aware of things that our guests might want to be reassured about that the blankets and the towels have all been rewashed. So So we've made extra steps to make sure that they know that they're clean and rewashed. And then also that, you know, there's plenty of them for them as well. So we have extra sheets in the basement near the laundry room on top of it all so that if they do need to wash their sheets while they're there, you know, they have new fresh sheets to put on the bed. So I think those are really the biggest challenges have just been trying to work out those you know how to do those extra things for people and not have a huge investment in the cleaning fees. We actually pay I think probably on the higher end of most people our area because it's right outside of Washington, you see it, you know, you're paying between 102 $100 for each cleaning fee. So in the beginning, we charged our guests about 100 of that, and then we paid the other 100. But as we went through, you know, every few months, we'd raise it $20 And just kind of feel it out. See if we noticed a drop in reservations. And now we're recharged the $200 that we pay her as we found that our guests really they do appreciate the extra mile that we go and they're willing to pay that fee for to have those conference you know, we leave in the basement, we have a huge basket of different things that our guests may forget from toothpaste to cough drops to you know, Tums just things they may have forgotten. You know, our area has one grocery store at a 20 minute radius. So they've realised they've forgotten something, they're not going to be able to just run to the store at midnight and find a second letter. So we try to leave all that for them. And we leave spices for them. So that you know we've had a little bit of some games, we had one guest take probably all 25 spices with them. So that was that was a little bit of a shock. You know, our cleaning company ran out and got new spices for us because we couldn't get there in time. Same thing with the gift basket the forget basket down in the basement, we had a guest take the entire basket, including the basket we have signed saying you know, please take what you need leave the rest that that won't guess I guess took it all. So our cleaning company again, she jumped in and restocked in and now we have a good turnover service. So she has a stock in the back where she can go replenish it if she needs to. And she doesn't have to go out and do that.
Oh, that's great. I'd like to ask you about your cleaning company or cleaning persona, how did you manage to get a good one? Because many couples struggle with that.
Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing for me was it honestly my husband and I disagreed about this. He thought 200 was ridiculous, but But I kind of feel like you know, the cleaning company is one of the most important aspects, right? Like I can decorate it, I can do all those things. But if somebody walks in and dishes are dirty or there's knives that aren't clean, you know, that's gonna leave the impression for our guests that we are not you know, doing everything we can to make their stay top notch. So I interviewed probably 30 different cleaning companies wanting to find someone who was going to be flexible, but I also wanted to find someone that was going to treat it like it was their it was their Airbnb, you know, I didn't want someone that was going to sort of act like well, you know, they're not going to see the work. So it's going to be the guests that taking shortcuts. I mean, our cleaning company has been phenomenal. And the one that we ended up choosing stay came out we I interviewed them over the phone and then we had a few people come out no we met with and her husband came out you know, they were both sort of that instant, like you could tell that they had a very high integrity and they really did value their work and they I think appreciated the fact that we valued them as well. So you know, they dropped off you know A whole quarter of firewood and stacked it for us, they used a blower to clean off the driveway from all the leaves, they clean off the deck, they've repaired our chair when it broke. So I mean, for us it was we really wanted a company that was going to be above and beyond the cleaning company that was kind of going to take that extra step. And then we had toilet seats broke, they fixed it. I mean, we paid them for it. But they fixed it. We had a chair that broke, her husband came and he fixed it. So it's sort of that partnership that is really important to me, and making sure that you know, they knew that they were the face of our company, right? They're the face of our Airbnb. They're the last person that shuts the door before I guess walking. So they have to have that integrity, where they know that that is a huge importance, right? They're not trying to like do a fast one, right? So I mean, I've had some cleaning company issues with my own house where if I'm at work, you know, I don't see something. And like my cleaning company has taken shortcuts and stuff. So that was really important to us was to make sure that it was a relationship between us. And it wasn't just that I didn't value their work. And I think I read a lot of people that think 60 bucks, a turnover is too much. And I mean, I've had to do a turnover myself, I did one same day turnover because our cleaning company was out of town. And I mean, it was exhausting. It wasn't even I don't even know if you could pay me $200 to do it. I mean, I was for an hour and 45 minutes or maybe was two hours and 45 minutes, I was nonstop running up and down stairs cleaning for you know, like these people were going to drive into the driveway any minute and it was it was a lot of work.
Yeah. Cleanliness, like is one of the most important things when it comes to Airbnb because there's no place for mistakes or errors when it comes to guests, they can come in and look at their knife like you say and they're going to leave a bad review.
Absolutely. And you know, when they walk into the Airbnb, you want them to have this like, oh my god, it's better than it was in the pictures, right? I mean, I know, I see a lot of people taking professional pictures, which is great. But if your pictures are gonna look better than your place, when they walk in, that's gonna stick with them, they're gonna be like, Oh, I mean, it's cool. But it's not better than I expected. Like you want them to walk in and be like, wow, like, I want to move into this house. And then I also want them to feel like I want them to feel like their home, right? I don't want it to be so cold that they don't feel like home. And I think over the last few months, even some of that we have we have a guest book for our guests to write about their favourite memory. And then also just a note to other guests. And every single one of them has said that we that our cabin, flew them away from their expectations. You know, this has been the best Airbnb experience they've had. And that's sort of I think, one of the things we strive for in partnership with our cleaning company is we want to give our guests that experience. We want them to have an experience where when they think about their vacation last summer, they remember our cabin, you know, we actually were Airbnb guests for many years before we owned our first Airbnb. And so those were kind of the things that stuck with me is like, you know, the location, the things that they did that sort of made me like wow, that they took away all the stress. Like we have Tupperware we have paper plates, plastic silverware, we have we have all the you know, nice silverware and stuff too. But we offer spices we offer Ziploc bags, those kinds of things that like, you know, people don't want to have to run out and buy one of everything and they don't want to buy Tupperware when they're out. They just want to have a place to put their leftovers. So we try to just do all that best. So when they come come to our place, they don't have to think about anything but relaxing.
Yeah, I agree with that, the things you offer are we like cherry on top of every booking you have, right?
Absolutely.
So lastly, I'd like to ask you, are there any tips that you'd like to share for other Airbnb hosts?
Yeah, I guess I would say one thing that I've found that really, people have commented on and I think I didn't think about this at first, but we named our cabin knotty pines and you know, my kids and my husband kind of like doesn't really need name, but we named knotty pines because obviously, there's, you know, it's all it's a pine cabin. But we sort of incorporated that into every aspect. So we had signs with a logo, and the name we made the guests kind of almost feel like it was their cabin. So I guess one of the things too is I spent a lot of time doing the guest book, which I think I could have just use what Airbnb has, you know, the the places you can fill out, because I don't think a tonne of people actually look at it these days. They basically, you know, Google Lake and what to do, one of the things I'm working on now is instead of the guest book, and I spent a lot of time on my guest book, but instead of that having QR code that pops up, you know, places to eat, and then they can just scan the QR code for it'll come up on their phone, you know, like restaurants do nowadays. So I spent a lot of time making a really nice desk book. And then when COVID happened, people don't want to thumb through a book that other people were kind of thumbing through so that would be one thing is I wouldn't spend too much time on that but I would make sure to incorporate your personality your your homeless personality into all the different aspects from like the checkout list with your logo on it kind of making it warm and inviting. We have a QR code little cute we made a bit Vistaprint and they weren't very much money but a $50 off and next visit if they take a card and scan the card. They also have $100 off any referral So little things like that. I wasn't sure if they'd really work but people take them they we've had some Have a return visit. And we've had, I think one or two referrals, so those little things and then also just the extra things, you know, having baskets of things for people, if they forget them, giving them a quick you know, little basket for when they when they first get there, it's a quick win for them to get a welcome basket, you know, we have two towels and they're folded nicely. some snacks, some chapstick, bath salt, because we have a really nice clawfoot tub to them. And guests always comment on how much they appreciated that and nine times out of 10 they leave the things in the basket anyway. So you know, we'll redo kits and things like that. But just little little kits for their first night for coffee. So they have sugar or Splenda or creamer so that if they get there late, they don't have to go out and buy those things. So I think spending more time and energy on those things. I've seen a lot of people over decorate, and I would say simplicity. But still having things people would like like a closet full of games. You know, for us, seafood is big in the summer. So we have a bowl in a cabinet full of hammers, so those little crab hammers, so people can have crabs there. So just kind of, I think thinking about the things that people would do, and providing those extra accommodations for them, it really makes them kind of go, wow, they thought of everything and nine times out of 10 they don't actually use them. But them knowing that you went out of your way to think about that stuff just makes it all about, you know, even the cost of the guests we've had that have had trouble that our place one guest actually last locked themselves out. And we didn't have to be there, we did have a key there. So they did both have the lock. And they didn't have a key. So we had to drive down and like 10 o'clock at night and bring them the key. But because we had done and they had eight people, I had to sell their cars and wait because we had no way for them to get in. Now we've since left to cue the neighbour, but we had so many things that they made in their mind made them think Wow, this place went above and beyond that they didn't even mind they had to sit in the car for two hours like did you know you would have we would have thought for sure that we were going to get a bad review there. But we got a stellar review from them. Because they just felt like we really took it that extra step that I think that the last piece of advice I'd have for people is there's a fine line between it's a business and your host. And I think people get lost in that, you know, they think oh, no, it's a cancellation policy, I'm going to stick to it. And nobody knows what what guests what you accommodated for other guests, they don't know what you did. And there's no reason to necessarily go and be you know, think everybody's lying about why they had to cancel or guests who say I don't know, the hot water wasn't hot enough. And so you give him 100 hours off, you don't have to do those things. But I really believe that those things are what kind of sets the successful renters from the ones that always end up having a headache or a hard time with Airbnb, because you end up sort of getting the kind of clientele that they complain about a lot of stuff, if a guest is thinking, wow, this was a phenomenal experience, and I want to come back are not likely to complain. So that would be my advice for people is just that I see a lot of this in the Airbnb in the Airbnb Chat, where people are just so on one side of being a host that they forget their hosting of family or people and this is maybe they're only vacation in a year. And even though that's your job, you know, you still want it to be a good experience. You want people to leave there and think like that place I remembered four years ago because I loved it so much.
Yeah, that's right, I agree with that. Those were great tips and that will be for today. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your tips.
Great. Thank you!
Thanks for listening to Into The Airbnb. We're looking for hosts and other people in the short-term rental industry to interview. If you have what we need and would like to share your experience in this podcast, please send us an email. All the info is at the end of the description.
