Ep 55: A Day in the Life of an Airbnb Host… Once Your Vacation Rental is Live, What Does Life Look Like?

If you’re considering adding a vacation rental revenue stream to your income portfolio, I’m sure you’ve wondered, “What does daily life look like for an Airbnb host?”

If so, this episode was created specifically for you.

Bottom line? The day looks great.

Once you’ve done the work of finding, furnishing, and filling your space, the ongoing work is a delight.

If you’re on the fence about investing in a vacation rental, I hope this moves you over the line to a YES.

Also, if you do want to add a vacation rental to your income portfolio, you don’t have to go it alone! In just a bit, I’ll be announcing the creation of something I would have KILLED for when I first started my Airbnb host journey… stay tuned for that!

And if you’re curious about how much you could potentially earn with an Airbnb in your area, I can send you a free and pretty powerful tool to help you estimate…

Visit GinnyTownsend.com/rental to claim access to this powerful free tool!

Thanks for joining me, and until next time, continue to be up and to the right.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

What’s up, Podcast Nation! Ginny Townsend here. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode. So today I wanted to answer a question. I get quite often and that is what does the day a day in the life of a typical Airbnb host look like a great question. Now, even though there are a couple of different models of Airbnb hosts or vacation rentals hosts and by that, I mean, there’s the shorter term like the shortest term

Maybe you cater to guests that stay like one to three nights. So rapid turnaround in your guests, or maybe you cater to longer-term short-term guests like in the last episode. I talked about serving traveling nurses as an audience of guests and they typically have 13-week contracts with their hospital. So just over three months and sometimes they can even extend.

Six or nine months. So even though it’s technically short-term and it’s still a furnished rental, the workload for a traveling nurse type furnished rental versus the one to three-night turn. The work is actually the same. It’s just kind of the Velocity like how often you actually need to do the work and so like I mentioned in the previous episode longer

Short term tenants like traveling nurses. They do have a cap on the housing allowance that they’re given by the hospital. So it’s typically very reasonable and it’s not bad money at all. But there is a cap. So the shortest term one to three nights. Those are typically I said, typically when you’re fully booked they’re typically more profitable because there’s a higher per nitrate, right? Okay, but even between the two models the day in the life of

a typical Airbnb host is still the same. It’s just how frequently you actually have those days. Okay, so the days between bookings so you have guests they’re staying at your place, you know, you’re not transitioning between guests. You’re not doing a turnover between bookings your day as an Airbnb host looks like communicating with potential guests and answering questions and that I put down as 15 to 30 minutes.

And I even kind of questioned myself as I was writing for 30 minutes. I don’t think I ever had a day where I was communicating with guests potential guests rather for more than 15 minutes, but I just wanted to be really conservative. So yeah between bookings a day if you’re you know communicating with potential guests, I’d say maybe 15 minutes really is more realistic.

And the bulk of the work happens as guests transition. So when you do the turnover, that’s where a bulk of your involvement or if you want to hire someone their involvement in managing the Airbnb and so change-outs involve scheduling a cleaner. And so and you know taking talk taking stock of inventory like paper towels and toilet paper and things like that that you really should provide as an Airbnb host.

Any maintenance that needs to happen so like changing air filters or you know, sometimes things get broken, you know, whatever but that’s just a part of being an owner of a property right and maintenance. So all of those things we like to take place between guests. So we don’t affect a guest’s stay now. We actually had the first place we had we such a lovely cleaning lady.

Oh my gosh, I adore her. I still get texts from her and yeah, she wished me a happy birthday this fall amazing. It’s really cool. By the way, the relationships that you can build with your team. So we had her actually do all of this. So I would just text her dates upcoming dates of change-outs and then remind her a couple of days before. Okay. Do you know just a reminder? You know, our guests are moving out on X date confirming she could still come and clean and then

She arrived we would have her take pictures of it as she just walked in the door take pictures of every room and then take stock of inventory. Like I said of the paper goods and if it looked like anything needed to be fixed or repaired just from a maintenance perspective which was rarely the case, but it was always great to have eyes on our place between guests and then that because she was incredible and

take care of cleaning and she even would offer because we lived out of town. We lived a couple of hours away she offered to if we were running low on toilet paper paper towels would go get them. And so obviously we would pay her for that time and then we would reimburse her but absolutely incredible and then the other so there’s actually what needs to happen on the property. So like I said the cleaning taking stock inventory and any maintenance needed and then once the guest is in your place

Answering any questions they may have so they may wonder about getting on Wi-Fi which I promise is going to be your most common question. There will be questions maybe about your TV or cable or Apple TV, whatever the setup is, you know if you have a pool or a hot tub like we’ve had in the past definitely questions about the hot tub and those typically happened the first day and once the

They’re settled in and they know how things work. You really just don’t hear from them. And so I say between four change-outs between texting the cleaning person and answering questions of the new guests that could be anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours. And so I said two hours man that I don’t know that I ever had that but just being realistic that like, you know, that’s where the

The bulk of the time happens is the change-outs, right? So but these aren’t necessarily every day. Right? As I said, you have a guest that is there for 13 weeks at a time you put in like 2 hours of work a quarter.

I mean that’s amazing. Right, what other revenue streams what other income streams can pay you good money for like two hours every three months. That’s just insane and I love it. And I mean obviously, you can get more in-depth as far as the ongoing like so because think about it, you have a calendar right as a person so you can think about your home your place that’s on

Airbnb should also have a calendar. So like I said during change-outs the maintenance side. Yeah, like things like changing air filters, but if there are any other seasonal tasks, so if you live somewhere that’s cold. Perhaps faucets need to be covered or things need to be winterized whatever taking just making sure that those happen at the right season during the change-outs and you’re golden and then also I mean

No Landscaping. I would have absolutely recommended whether you live in a town nearby or whether you live far away having someone take care of whatever Landscaping may be necessary. It’s just it’s some of the like my favorite bills have been paying Great Lawn Service and great cleaning staff because I know it’s the first impression. It’s going to make such a great guest experience.

It’s so having to have your Landscaping team or whatever aware of your priorities each season that can happen whether or not you have guests in the house. But really that’s just like a 15 like well actually, yeah, so all of the teams all of the people that we’ve worked with to support our Airbnb’s have we just text each other which has been amazing. So it really is the littlest amount of effort. Oh my gosh once you have it

Set up. It’s ridiculous. So your day is like I said, they look rather similar whether you do change out or turn over every one to three nights or every three months. It’s like I said, it’s just the velocity of those days. How often does that how often do those change out days happen? So obviously, like I said the longer they stay the less work you or someone else, you know if you want to completely automate this and have someone else manage the property

not know they would be managing it for a couple of hours a day. Well, a week or a month. However, look, you know, however short-term your guests typically stay. It really is the workload Is Not Great once you have it up and running it’s incredible. So and actually like I just said once you have it set up so the bulk of the work in getting an Airbnb to be profitable is actually setting it up.

Now, I mean there’s obviously there’s a lot of resources and I’ll continue to share my best tips. What I’ve experienced are lessons that we’ve learned and things that have really worked for us in setting properties up because that’s actually where the work happens. Once you have it live. It works for you. Isn’t that incredible? Oh my gosh, so to answer the question that I get quite often, what does the day?

The life of a typical Airbnb host looks great. It’s rather simple and minimal.

It’s a couple of texts little bit of admin making sure you pay your people quickly like you’re cleaning team and your Landscaping team and whoever else if you have a pool team pay them quickly and it’s it’s simple and minimal and beautiful. So I hope if you are again on the fence thinking about doing a vacation rental short-term rental. I hope that this clarifies

Is what you’re actually getting into it is yeah, it’s I think one of my favorite revenue streams that I’ve ever been involved with. So thank you again for listening and I can’t wait for the next episode where I will share more of what I’ve learned from my own experience of becoming an accidental six-figure host and even what our plans are for expansion in the future. So until next time continue to be up and to the right.