Cleaning House

🧹 So fresh and so clean. Anyone else doing a deep cleaning before the weather warms up? We are. In addition to working on outdoor amenities, we're reevaluating some things inside as well. We are leaning towards switching all of our bed sets to duvets rather than comforters. They're easier to clean and dry faster, making turnovers easier. Anyone out there on the duvet train already with some tips or a specific brand you love?

🎧 Listen

This week's Listen comes from Ryan and Lucas on the Vacation Rental Insiders podcast, Airbnb / VRBO Event Policy. (16 minute podcast episode)

We recently had a request on the fringe of Airbnb's event policy. A family was going to stay at our house for the weekend while they were in town to attend a wedding. They planned to host a bridal brunch on Saturday morning. We told them we didn't have an issue with it, but they declined to book when we told them our 4 bedroom house that sleeps 9 didn't have space for 20 cars to park...we may have dodged a bullet.

In this episode, the hosts review Airbnb's former and current policies as well as how the pandemic drove the current policy.

Their insight on how to host an Airbnb that offers a collocated event space was helpful. Airbnb restricts occupancy of their spaces to 16 guests. Here's their "party ban" press release. To work through this as a host, Ryan and Lucas suggest simply having the guest book the event space directly through you after they confirm their Airbnb booking. Or, you can checkout VRBO or other platforms to book your space for event rentals.

📽 Watch

This week's Watch comes from Sean Rakidzich on YouTube. (11 minute video)

If you haven't checked out his channel yet, it's focused on hosting rather than owning short-term rentals. He has a ton of content in the library.

This video is all about bumping your listing up in the search results for free. He starts off by introducing the term TAPR, Total Amenities Prioritization Rank. This is apparently a metric used to rank listings.

The easiest way to make the TAPR gods happy seems to be through the Opportunities section of the Insights tab. Some of the key ways to check off these TAPR blocks are to:

• Complete your amenities information (details about whether you have TVs, wifi, A/C, etc);

• Apply promotions to certain dates since Airbnb pushes listings with discounts; and

• Review your pricing to see if it makes sense to increase your base pricing with the plan to discount your listing in a bunch of different ways.

What exciting way did we update our listing for the Opportunities section? An iron. We bought an iron.

📖 Read

This week's Read comes from Thibault Masson at Rental Scale-Up. (10 minute read)We started our short-term rental journey using only Airbnb and are now branching out to other booking funnels. This article provides the details on how VRBO is making that easier.

One of the biggest hurdles to dipping your toe in another platform is the pain of starting from scratch - no reviews, no listing information, nothing.

Through the VRBO Fast Start program, Airbnb Superhosts can get an intro call as well as some other perks to jumpstart their VRBO listing. The most enticing one for us is getting to using our Airbnb ratings for our VRBO listing when we first start on the platform. Others include a "New to VRBO" badge and special support offerings.

We're expecting our intro call from VRBO today and will report back on how it goes.

☘ Potluck

@#$%&!). - Anyone trying to fold a fitted sheet

Folding fitted sheets is really the worst. If you have different sized beds at your short-term rental, sorting your sheets can compound that frustration. This technique from Andrea Jean Cleaning on YouTube can ease both of those pain points. (11 minute video)

Here are the basic steps to going from a bunch of clean laundry on the bed to a neat bundle of all the pillowcases and sheets for a bed:

1. Fold the flat sheet into a long rectangle with a length about the width of the sheet.

2. Do a rough fold on the fitted sheet using the techniques in the video to get a tight, small rectangle.

3. Place the fitted sheet on top of the long folded flat sheet.

4. Fold and place your pillowcases, reserving one, on top of the fitted sheet.

5. Fold the flat sheet over the stack like you're wrapping a present, compressing everything once folded.

6. Place the bundle in your final pillowcase, fold and compress as you like.

How do you know you're getting old? When you get excited about reorganizing the linen closet this weekend.

That's it. Whether this is hitting your inbox on the original publication date or you stumbled upon it days, months, or years later, you're now part of STR Recap history.

Thank you for letting us share the STR journey with you. Please let us know if there is anything you would like to learn more about from this edition or anything you would like to see in the next edition. Until then, keep moving forward.

p.s. If you have someone in your life that has a short-term rental, is interested in short-term rentals, or you think could just use some extra homework, please forward this email their way. That is the best thank you we can ask for.