Good news, it’s a three day weekend!🌴
Vrbo is celebrating its 25th anniversary by giving out 25 stays for free at highly-rated vacation homes on their platform. They’re including houses, cabins, condos and wait for it...castles!🏰 “We wanted to recognize and show gratitude to our customers who have trusted Vrbo with their family vacations over the past 25 years. To celebrate this milestone, we are inviting families to look back through their old family photos to reminisce on their most precious memories together,” Lish Kennedy, Vrbo’s VP of Global Brand Marketing. If you’re feeling lucky, you can enter the contest by posting a family vacation photo with the hashtag #VrboTurns25 on either Facebook or Instagram. Each vacation will be worth 5k. So get posting!
Do you remember what Vrbo was like 25 years ago? No messaging, no platform transactions, no API integrations, no Expedia, not even HomeAway. For those of you that are new to vacation rentals, think of “Craiglist for vacation rentals”. Someone should put together a montage of all the Vrbo homepages over the years.
Airbnb has decided that all hosts must agree to their Enhanced Cleaning Protocol. This all starts in October and will be rolling out into 2021. The Enhanced Cleaning Protocol started as an opt-in measure back in June, but now Airbnb feels everyone needs to be squeaky clean (or at least claim to be).
So what does this mean for you?
- Step 1: Prepare for safer cleaning - Ventilate rooms before and while you clean. Gather the right cleaning supplies. Review the safety guidelines for your chemicals. Wash your hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and water. Wear protective equipment at all times. Take out all the garbage. Collect all dirty linens throughout the space. Unplug before cleaning.
- Step 2: Clean dust and debris - Wash all linens at the highest heat setting recommended by the manufacturer. Wash all dishes, and empty the dishwasher. Dust the space, and sweep or vacuum the floor. Clean all hard surfaces with soap and water. Clean all soft surfaces based on the manufacturer’s instructions.
- Step 3: Sanitize with disinfectant - Once a hard surface is clean, spray it with disinfectant. Let the disinfectant stay wet for the specified length of time. Allow to air-dry.
- Step 4: Check your room-by-room checklists - Double-check that all high-touch surfaces were sanitized. Note any maintenance issues or missing items.
- Step 5: Reset the room - Dispose of and wash your cleaning supplies. Empty and clean the vacuum after every cleaning. Safely remove any cleaning gear once you’re done cleaning. Wash your hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and water. Visually assess each room to ensure the stage is set for the next guest. Set out cleaning supplies for your guests. Restock your cleaning supplies.
If this all sounds like a lot, well it is...just in case you need to adjust your cleaning fee, check out our support doc on that.
Apparently the Airbnb board room has been hard at work. Starting December 7, 2020 Airbnb is shifting all software-connected hosts to a host-only fee structure called simplified pricing. We mentioned this about a month ago and speculated that it would be pushed to other markets soon. That didn’t take long.
Before you worry, this does not affect hosts with a majority of their listings in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Bahamas, Argentina, Taiwan and Uruguay. So most of you folks won’t be affected, but they’re clearly moving to a booking.com model. For those of you that do qualify, Airbnb will deduct a flat 15% host service fee from each payout and won’t charge a guest service fee. As always, you can adjust the Airbnb rate in the OwnerRez API settings to offset the host fee.😉
Airbnb has also banned one-night stays over Halloween weekend.🎃 Airbnb even went a step further and canceled any existing one-night stays for October 30 or October 31. Hosts with existing bookings that fall into that category would “still receive payment” according to Airbnb. This is all due to the problematic house parties that we posted about last week and a few weeks before that and earlier in the summer...
