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    The Newbie's Non-PC Lowdown on Hosting a Private Airbnb Room
    The Newbie's Non-PC Lowdown on Hosting a Private Airbnb Room
    The Newbie's Non-PC Lowdown on Hosting a Private Airbnb Room
    Ebook173 pages3 hours

    The Newbie's Non-PC Lowdown on Hosting a Private Airbnb Room

    By Dave Sanchez

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A concise, no-nonsense, really quite rude guide to setting up and running a private Airbnb room. Lots of advice about averting potential disasters and getting guests to behave.

     

    Updated July 2024.

     

     

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBlack Velvet Stallion Press
    Release dateFeb 4, 2019
    ISBN9781386983156
    The Newbie's Non-PC Lowdown on Hosting a Private Airbnb Room

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      Book preview

      The Newbie's Non-PC Lowdown on Hosting a Private Airbnb Room - Dave Sanchez

      Disclaimer: While I’ve tried hard to give accurate advice and information, please bear in mind Airbnb’s platform and policies are continually evolving so it’s always best to double-check everything you read below.

      Prices are in Australian dollars. At the time of writing $100 AUD is about $70 US or £53.

      Introduction

      Right, so you’ve got a spare room and fancy making a bit of easy Airbnb cash.

      You fool.

      This is your home, your sanctuary from the world’s madness, and yet you’re OK with the prospect of getting trampled underfoot by disease-ridden hordes of Mongols for forty-odd bucks a night. Why not try something a bit less risky, such as drug smuggling or selling your tight little toosh on the street? Surely that’s gotta be better than having some dude who looks suspiciously like Jeffrey Dahmer pottering around your spare room?

      And yes, I thought pretty much the same thing back in May 2017 while nervously awaiting my first guest. He turned out to be a young, curly-haired Israeli guy who spoke bugger all English. To be honest, the two-day experience was a little flat but at least he didn’t leave my severed genitalia in the freezer. In fact, a few minutes after cheerily waving goodbye, I realised I not only had his cash burning a hole in my pocket but my house was in exactly the same shape as before he arrived.

      Amazing.

      Perhaps it would be possible to keep those Mongol hordes under control after all.

      OK, so you’ve picked up on my somewhat flippant tone. Fair enough, but hang in there as I do believe I have at least one or two pearls of wisdom to offer amid all the salty bluster.

      Well, I have to say that, don’t I?

      Anyway, I’m firstly going to tell you a bit about me while outlining my less than stellar pad so you can compare and contrast with where you’re at and what you’ve got. Hopefully, you’ll come to see it’s possible to milk quite a lot out of even the smallest of spaces if you’ve got half a brain, some common-sense and the teensiest bit of patience.

      Before reaching the giddy heights of an Airbnb Superhost, I was a lion-taming gigolo (and yes, I could simultaneously perform both acts) but now I’m just a sad, broken-down retiree in his sixth decade. It’s been clear for a while that I’ve tamed my last woman and fucked my last lion.

      Sigh.

      However, I do own a two-bedroom suburban house in a northern Australian town of about 80,000 semi-inbred yokels. I live a couple of miles from the town centre and host full time. I’m not quite over the rainbow yet, but the gig provides enough cash to believe I’ll never have to work again, especially as I lack expensive habits and have no mortgage. (Frankly, if you’re in a rural or semi-rural area I wouldn’t expect a lot of Airbnb action unless people have a bloody good reason to pass through). Starving backpackers turn up here year round to pick fruit and snorkel the Great Barrier Reef, although I also get working Aussies on short-term jobs, people grudgingly catching up with drooling, piss-stained family members, and lots of motorists breaking their long journey along the coast before heading off to somewhere more interesting.

      Anyhow, my newly painted private room (with a tiny shared bathroom) is two and a half metres square with a built-in cupboard that’s big enough to store luggage, a folding wooden chair, a plastic bag-lined wastepaper basket and some extra blankets. Also featuring a double bed, reverse cycle air conditioner, and one picture of a wistful-looking Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, I initially took guests in for about twenty-five bucks ($18 US/13 quid) before shoving them back out in the morning on an empty stomach.

      I’ve since lobbed a nice brekky into the mix, along with a couple of bits of cheap cube furniture, a carriage clock, a fake plant, a bedside reading lamp that sits on the carpet, an eight-plug power-board with USB ports, a wall-mounted TV (for which I had to pay to reroute the aerial cable thingy), a wall-mounted mirror, some block-out curtains and a roller blind, a box of tissues, a tube of hand cream, five coat hangers, two cheap extra pillows, a wedge pillow and a laptop table, a sheepskin rug, restaurant menus, some movie books, a handful of tourist centre brochures, and thirteen framed movie pix.

      The room is ninety-nine percent done, enabling me to now charge forty-eight a night for singles and fifty-eight for couples (and a bit more on the weekend). In other words I doubled my price in two years. The price crept up a dollar or two at a time as I improved not only the guest room, but the rest of the house and garden.

      As you can tell, it’s definitely not necessary to have everything in place when you start (and Lordy, the rest of the house and garden is nowhere near finished). Don’t try to run before you can walk. Instead look to steadily tart things up while increasing the price, especially as you build upon good reviews and start slipping on your big boy pants by establishing – gulp – a reputation.

      So where to begin?

      Well, it’s a good idea to check out the ‘competition’ in your neck of the woods to get a feel for how other hosts successfully con all those poor, gullible guests. Airbnb’s website is pretty user-friendly (although it occasionally shits the bed with algorithm changes and upgrades) and you can filter by private room, price, amenities etc. Find a few places like yours, jot down some notes about their amenities, and see what they’re charging, but don’t get too downhearted if you’re up against one hundred others. All you can do is chuck your hat in the ring, pray to Satan and start plodding toward that elusive pot of gold.

      In my case, there were (and still are) surprisingly few hosts offering a private room – about seven within a three-mile radius and they often fade in and out of the picture. Of course, I’m always leery twenty will spring up overnight followed by another ten or so the week after with all the bastards undercutting me in a bid to get a toehold. This share economy stuff definitely looks like it’s here to stay, but so far my number of competitors has stayed very stable.

      However, I’ve noticed it’s not unusual for people to host for a few weeks/months and then permanently drop out. Who knows why, although perhaps it’s got something to do with me popping round and threatening them with a lump hammer.

      A few hundred people have now passed through my doors (and surprisingly none have died), leaving me with a 4.81 rating from more than 160 reviews. I’m a long way from being Oz’s most experienced host, but I’m doing just fine, even though my cynical mindset, jaded outlook and vaguely anti-social personality are the exact opposite of some super-dooper, buzzword-spouting Tony Robbins type. As you’ve probably worked out, there won’t be much jargon and positive thinking here. Instead I’ll give you the low-down on renting out your spare room while encouraging you to believe in the power of plodding.

      And best of all, you won’t have to attend a single $400 seminar to find out how. Promise.

      The Guest Room

      Take a good look at it. Does it need some TLC?

      If it’s a bit shabby, I thoroughly recommend a lick of water-based paint. It really does make a difference, isn’t too expensive and is well worth the hassle. If you’ve never painted before, don’t worry coz there’s not much to learn. Just some stuff about keying the existing paint and cutting in. All I did was jot down some basic instruction from the paint shop guy and off I went. Oh, and choose matt (or anything low sheen) over gloss for the doors because it takes great skill not to leave brush/roller marks.

      The main hurdle is simply coming to terms with painting being a finicky, mind-numbingly dull slog. And make sure you remove everything in the room beforehand, slap down a floor covering and start when the temperature’s reasonable. Don’t paint straight from the tin and never underestimate your ability to drip the stuff all over the place. Lots of music and a dozen cups of tea a day might help disguise the tedium of preparing surfaces, but it still took me three weeks to paint my home’s interior. By the end of what felt like a war of attrition, I was firmly convinced that when I die and go to hell the Prince of Darkness is going to greet me with a paintbrush and tell me with a twinkle in his red eye to get busy. An undercoat and two top coats on all seven circles.

      But one of the big plusses of painting your room (apart from psychologically investing in it) is that it enables you to hang onto surplus paint. This makes it a piece of piss to touch up scuff marks and the inevitable sort of shit that comes with accommodating Mongol hordes. A glaringly obvious scratch can be taken care of in a couple of minutes. Hence, it’s important you don’t contaminate the paint both during and after your little bout of DIY because you should be able to keep the room looking pristine for years to come. (Also remember to be careful with putting metal lids back on – don’t ever bang ’em with a hammer in a bid to get an airtight seal. It’s much better to place the tin on a stable flat surface and simply stand on the lid).

      Once you’ve finished painting, an important mental factor immediately comes into play. If the room looks good, the guest is much more likely to be super respectful because any scrapes or damage will be utterly bloody obvious. Conversely, if it’s all a bit shabby, it sends a subtle message that they’re in a down-market place and less care is necessary.

      In short, paint the bloody room.

      I also went to the local tourist information centre and picked up a load of free leaflets about stuff to do, along with restaurant/takeaway menus and the odd map (It’s a nice touch if you can put a laminated map(s) on the wall or have them stowed away in a cupboard – remember, some guests may very well have little idea of where they are and/or will want to plan the next leg of their trip). After all, you don’t want them lying around your place using up precious electricity and getting under your feet. The easiest guests to manage are always the ones who aren’t there (with my favourite ones being those who never show up in the first place). I also include a pen and pad, as well as some easy to read movie books e.g. 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

      If the guestroom is too small to fit in a chair or two, you will need to make use of the bed. It’s fine to offer extra pillows to enable guests to prop themselves up against the headboard, but it’s much better to go for one of those large firm wedge pillows. They cost about $55 AUD and are far more comfortable. Remember to try to chuck in a foldable laptop table as well. These things can cost a lot with their extendable legs, little drawers and tilt functions but you only need to spend fifty to sixty bucks on a simple bamboo one with lockable legs. Oh, and make sure it doesn’t have a cup holder as you don’t want to encourage guests to have coffee and the like anywhere near the bed linen.

      Before you start hosting, it isn’t a bad idea to kip in the room to appreciate first-hand any problems.

      Is it quiet?

      What’s the mattress like?

      Does the Wi-Fi work properly or is it weak as shit?

      Is there any kind of smell?

      My guest room is east facing, a mighty problem in Oz. Without proper block-out curtains and a roller blind, my guests would be frazzled by the sun from 4.30am in summer (I’ll shortly be adding some external metal Louvre awnings, too). I’ve also just fenced the garden which should enable me to plant a hedge to further block the sun. The fence also keeps the neighbour’s four small children at bay, a highly curious bunch of ragamuffins who’d been known to giggly peek through the guest’s ground floor window. Always do your best to protect your guest’s privacy.

      The Bed

      A crucial aspect of your guest’s stay – do not offer some saggy, moth-eaten mattress that’s the equivalent of trying to kip on top of that loveable old cloth cat, Bagpuss (That’s a British joke). In fact,

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