Hello and welcome to the Airbnb Superhost Podcast. I'm Neil Harvey, your personal superhost, and whether you're new here or a regular listener, thank you for tuning in. This show is all about sharing the highs, lows, and lessons from my 10 years of Airbnb hosting. And whether you live in or are an absent host, I'm here to help you stay 5-star rated, earn those superhost and guest favourite badges, and maybe even ditch the day job like I did. And of course I'll be sharing another super host secret, my tried and tested takeaway to help you build a smoother, smarter hosting business. And to put this episode into my success triangle, which consists of you, your property, and Airbnb, this episode's all about you. Because as hosts, we all take things for granted from time to time. And those little assumptions can often lead to frustration for our guests, for ourselves, and sometimes even lead to consequences we'd never even imagined. So in this episode, I'm going to share a few real life scenarios, moments of frustration from both sides of the host-guest relationship, and suggest a few simple ways that we can all avoid them. This topic was actually inspired by a recent trip my partner and I took to a lovely little cottage near Felixstow. And in this case, I was in the role of the frustrated guest, and here's why. I'd made a homemade pie and wanted to cook it in the oven. Now, at home I have a gas oven. The controls are simple. Big flame means hot, small flame means not so hot, and the numbers in between tell you the gas mark. Easy. But in this cottage, there was an electric fan-assisted oven. And honestly, I can't remember the last time I've actually used one of these things. And the dials were covered in mysterious symbols. Crosses, circles, squiggly lines, boxes, but no words whatsoever. So did the cross mean that the fan was on or off? Did the line mean top heat or bottom heat? And we hunted around for a manual, nothing. We looked online, still no joy. And in the end, it was trial and error until the oven finally seemed to get hot, and thankfully, the pie turned out perfectly in the end. But it made me realise something. Even the simplest of tasks can be incredibly frustrating when you don't know how something works. How easy it would have been if the host had simply left a little crib sheet explaining what each setting meant. Just a few words would have saved a lot of time and confusion. But this experience also reminded me of a different Airbnb we'd gone to with a similar oven mystery. But that time we gave up entirely and went out to dinner instead. As a host myself, these moments have made me reflect on what my guests might find confusing in my own home. For instance, I know that some guests struggle to light my gas hop. They don't realize that you've got to keep the knob pressed in for a few seconds after it ignites. Others stare blankly at my microwave. It's a different model to the one they're used to. And it's very easy to overlook the little things we take for granted at home. But to a guest, those little things can make or break their experience. So, next time you're hosting, take a look around your space with a first-time guest mindset. Ask yourself, would someone unfamiliar with this know how it works? And a few minutes spent creating a written or video explanation or adding a few labels like a timer, cancel, and start next to the relevant buttons on the microwave can save both hosts and guests a lot of frustration later on. These examples are really simple, but sometimes what we take for granted can be unexpectedly alien to someone from a different part of the world. I'll give you an example. A couple of weeks ago, a guest arrived from Canada. He was planning to stay for a bit a month or two, and right from the start, he made it clear that he'd take care of his own laundry, including his bedding. Now, after his first week, he did a wash and asked for two fresh pillowcases and a fitted sheet. I didn't think much of it at the time, but I noticed that he hadn't asked for a new duvet cover. And the following week the same thing happened. He'd washed his mattress protector, sheet, and pillowcases, and asked for the replacements. This time I included a fresh duvet cover for him without him asking for it. But once again, no duvet cover came back down to be washed. And I must admit curiosity got the better of me. So I went up to his room to see what was going on. And when I spoke to him, it turned out that, despite the fact he was age twenty six, he had never encountered a duvet before. In Canada, he'd only experienced blankets and sheets. So he used the mattress protector as the bottom sheet, the fitted sheet as the top sheet, and the duvet as a blanket. So for me to give him the additional duvet cover was totally confusing. Where did that go on the layup of the bedding? And once I'd explained how the duvet system works, he was totally fine. A bit embarrassed perhaps, but honestly, I was the one who felt silly. It was a perfect reminder that what seems obvious to us isn't necessarily obvious to everyone else. Different countries, climates and cultures have their own norms, and they don't always translate when you travel. A quick break while I butt in on my own show, just to say if you're enjoying this, why keep it to yourself? Please do share this podcast with someone who needs a laugh and a bit of wisdom. Oh, and if you want to see the sorts of things I'm talking about, I'm all over TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Come and say hi, check out Superhost Neil. Right, that's enough shameless plugging, back on to the episode. And as hosts, it's easy to assume the basics are universal, but they're not. And taking a few moments to check, explain, or even include a short household guide can make the world of difference for guests from elsewhere. Last week I interviewed a lady called Julie Ford, who is the founder of her new company, Lettings Advice Service. And she's someone who's seen the property world from every possible angle, and I mean every angle. Julie has managed celebrity portfolios, served as a housing law specialist at the Citizens Advice Service, and worked as a property mediator resolving disputes. But I'm going to share with you a touching story that happened to her during her work with homelessness charities, as it all centred around this topic of assumptions. We were actually talking about youngsters suffering from the lack of being taught life skills these days. Over to Julie.
SPEAKER_02I remember when I was working for a homeless charity, you know, the method we use was street homeless to the night shelter, and then they spent two years in our HMOs with support. And I had one young lad, he was 18, and he kept paying his rent late every month and short. Then my manager was on my back, right, we need to evict him, we need to evict him. I'm like, come on, he's he's home, you know. If it weren't for us, he's homeless, that's why he's with us. Surely we're just creating a cycle, we're not breaking it if we then now evict him. So I managed to get hold of him, which is never easy, getting hold of any of these people, because their lives are so chaotic, they don't run on the same, you know, paths that we do. They don't stick to nine to five jobs, they're all over the place, sometimes they're self-medicating and all this, it's chaotic. So I managed to get hold of this lad and I said, right, I'm coming round and we're gonna have a chat. So we sat down at the kitchen and made sure nobody else was in the house, it was just us two. And I'm like, what's going on with the rent? I said, Do you owe someone money? Are you buying drugs? What's going on? If I know what the problem is, I can solve it. If I don't know what the problem is, I can't solve it. And he's just sitting there and he's sitting there, he's not giving me eye contact. I'm like, come on, if you can't tell me, then you're gonna be evicted because I can't solve the problem. And he just burst into tears. I was like, oh god, here we go. What do I do now? I'm not a cry person, I'm like, oh, okay. And he just looked at me and he went, I don't know how to use the washing machine. I went, what's that got to do with the price of fish? Well, it turned out he was taking his washing to the laundrette every week and paying the laundrette, which is why he couldn't afford to pay his rent, because he didn't know how to use the washing machine. And I was like, right, okay. So I gave him a washing machine lesson and some instructions, and I thought, right, we now need to do that as a business. So I then wrote a whole plan of teaching tenants how to be good tenants so they could then move on to their new settled accommodation. So we did everything. We did, you know, the basic how to use a microwave, how to make a cup of tea, but we did it for everybody, so he didn't feel that he was, you know, isolated or penalised in any way, and using the washing machine, and we then hooked up with a local church and did cooking classes and things like that. So it just kind of grew and grew and grew. And we ended up working with the local council who allowed if the tenants went through this training course, they would then got extra points to bid on the housing register. So it actually made sense for them to go through this training to be a good tenant, actually got them to the point where they could have extra points to bid and then move on to their own accommodation. But yeah, it all started with a young lad who wasn't paying his rent.
SPEAKER_00I love that story. It really highlights the whole dynamic of assumptions, and I feel that in a very real and human way. And whilst she was telling that story, I was thinking about other assumptions we as hosts make, particularly around the subject of knowing what to do in an emergency situation. The first thing you need to know is what number to dial, and the other thing is to be able to tell your rescuers exactly where you are so that they can find you. And I said to Julie, what number do you call for the emergency services? Well, it's not 999 in Alaska, is it?
SPEAKER_02Apparently, um a friend of mine is an ex-police officer, and apparently he was saying if you are in a foreign country but still ring your immediate emergency number. So if if over here somebody was from America and rang 911, it would still go through to 999? The system is set up to still go through to our emergency service.
SPEAKER_00That's a relief.
SPEAKER_02Yes, isn't it, just because you have to understand if there's an emergency in a blind panic, you're going to autopilot and just do your number because you know what country am I in, what number should I be ringing, but apparently they all automate and then go to the street. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I've learned something new. That's brilliant. Next question is where on earth are where on earth are you? Because I had an incident in the workshop. There was a guy working on his own. He was using a power tool. I had told him specifically not to use it in the way he did. He went, oh yes, okay. And then everyone was off site, and I get a phone call saying, I did what you said, and I'm in hospital. Basically, he fortunately he just lacerated the end of his finger, but there was blood up the wall and everything. And he was in shock, obviously. And he knew how to get to where he was. But he didn't know where he was. And so he couldn't call a taxi, he couldn't tell the ambulance where he was.
SPEAKER_01What three words? Smile for everything.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, exactly. Fortunately, we we were working on a farm. Fortunately, the the landlord's mother was in residence, and so she ruined one of her good teetels, wrapping up the wound and took him to the hospital. But as a result of that incident, in the workshop and in the main office now is uh where are we? which is the address, the what three words that defines the three meter squares at the front door, so any taxi driver, any ambulance service can get there, and the telephone numbers, um, the postal card, everything everything to determine where you are, so that if in a panic you just read that. Now, why don't people do that in their lettings? And my point is, how many of us as hosts take it for granted that everyone knows this stuff? So let's work on the premise that our guests don't. Personally, I put this information at the base of my house rules. These are in every room, but maybe I should actually make a separate notice and put it in somewhere really obvious, like on the guest fridge, so everyone knows exactly what to look for should there ever be an emergency. With all the tools that we have at our disposal today, with the ease of creating videos on our smartphones, editing suites at our fingertips, and QR codes to links on YouTube where we can post stuff, there's no reason why we can't go around our properties and ask ourselves, what do I take for granted that actually nobody else would know what to do if I didn't specifically tell them? For instance, how do you work the coffee expresso machine? Where do you turn the mains water off? What about where to find the isolation switch for the gas supply? Or a little video to explain how to top up the water in the heating system, or how the recycling works in your area, or how to operate the pull cords on the curtains that happen to be hidden from view. So here's my superhost secret for this episode. Walk through your property with the eyes of a new guest and ask yourself, do I know how that works? Then devise a simple way to assist your guests to understand how to make it work. When something happens that we don't expect, I can almost guarantee it is the result of assumption. We take something for granted, and we're wrong. So don't assume that your guests will know how anything works, and you'll most likely remove the frustrations for both yourself and them by providing a simple guide in some manner or another. And whether this is a QR code to be to an explanatory video, or simple labelling to highlight the relevant controls, or access to a simple guide. There are many ways to make the guest experience easier and to reduce your own frustrations too. Now, dear listener, one thing will definitely not go the way you think it should, if I didn't have a limerick rhyme about my superhost secret to end this episode. So here it is for this one. A host who ran his own letting habitually kept on forgetting, when things go awry, we really must try to give our guests context and setting. And that's what makes hosting easier. It's understanding how to be more deliberate in explaining how things work within our offering. If you know anyone who might be thinking about earning some money through hosting, then please do share this podcast series with them. Follow me on Instagram, etc. at Superhost Neil1Word for more tips, tricks, and a bit of laughter. Until next time, may your rooms be booked, your reviews five star, and your guests be able to make everything work effortlessly because of your deliberate guidance.