Interview with Rebecca n Arun reviewed - 1804

Jae Seok An21min

Delia

00:01

Welcome back to another episode of Into The Airbnb, where we talk with Airbnb hosts about their short-term rental experience. Our guests for today are Rebecca and Arun, based in British Columbia, Canada. They manage a multi dwelling unit remotely in London, Ontario and today they'll share with us about their journey, experience and success story with Airbnb and remote hosting since the very beginning. 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 tell me how did you get started with your first Airbnb listing?

Arun

00:55

Yep, absolutely. Um, so I was, well, it was actually my parents, they actually made a investment into a pre-construction home in London, Ontario, I think it was about like, four and a half years ago. So they make this investment into a pre-construction. Once a unit was built, they were looking for long-term tenants and my friend of mine who also had a property in London, Ontario, at the time was doing Airbnb. So he showed me his month to month earnings and you know, how he operates it and all of the details that I needed to know. He said to give it a shot and I convinced my parents to do that. We started like that and then from there, we kind of just built our portfolio.

Delia

01:54

I see! And how is the seasonality for example, in Ontario?

Rebecca

02:00

So kind of going back to our rental that we had four years ago, so that was actually our first rental and we ended up selling that rental. Since we only had it for like one year, so we really only got to see all the seasons one time, we found that in Ontario specifically in the summer months, it picked up a lot during I guess between like June and August, then I think in the fall it kind of slowed down a little more. And then after selling that property, we reinvested the money into our Airbnb house that we have now as we opened it in mid January. So now we're kind of going through our first time into each month and each season. But we're noticing it seems kind of similar to our last listing, which was also posted in London, Ontario. Surprisingly, in March, it was actually, I think less busy than January and February and now it's picked up a lot from April and our big bookings going into June have also increased.

Arun

03:05

So I feel like the type of listings that I have is kind of like a utilitarian listing, so it's more for like the day to day people, people who need to go to work or visiting family close by. It's not a vacational property, it's more for your day to day use. So with that being said, the fluctuation between the summer months to the winter months are not substantial. It's not significant in like $10,000 or something like that. It's just a few thousand dollar differences. But there is a peak in the summertime, obviously, because of the availability of time for people to travel and for people to see other family members. I think it's just more prominent in the summertime and for that reason it is a little bit higher in the summer months, but yeah, like our business models, like revolved around, you know, providing adequate hospitality for the people that need it on a day to day basis and not more so on the vacational side of things. So yeah.

Delia

04:10

I see and with the first listing you had, how was your first like Airbnb experience? I heard that you had like support from a friend who already did Airbnb?

Processing audio...