What I learned from running an AirBnB
Almost 10 years ago, the AirBnB craze hit PEI. Many downtown homes were quickly converted to short-term rentals as the price that you could ask per night easily made any extra work worth it.
When we bought our Little Yellow house on Gerald Street, we knew that we wanted to cash in on the AirBnB market. By pushing ourselves to be more flexible with our living arrangements, we were able to make the extra work worth it. At an average of $200+ per night, it was worth the investment. This extra cash afforded us the ability to make worth-while upgrades to the house, purchase some “nicer” furniture, and forced us to actually decorate the home.
Throughout the 2 seasons of operating our home as an AirBnB, we had some great guests and some okay guests. We didn’t have anyone come in and make a mess of the place - we were very lucky in that sense. And we also learned a couple of lessons that I thought I would pass along to you now.
Maximize beds - the more beds, the people can sleep there, the more you can charge per night. We converted the front room which was probably meant to be a library space or dining room maybe? But neither of those spaces are needed in an AirBnB, or our house, so we put some French doors on the wide opening, hung some curtains and did a built in bed. It looked great.
Keep as much of the linens the same as you can. We went with Ikea sheets (which I found to be very prone to being wrinkled, but no one complained about that). I would recommend ordering 3 sets of white sheets for every bed - that way you always have an extra set around and you don’t have to wait for the laundry to be done if you finish up cleaning during change over day.
The longer they stay, the deeper the clean required. In our market, there was no benefit to offering a discount for those who stayed a week or even a month. All that did was encourage people to stay longer, use the space more, which requires a more in depth cleaning when they leave. The longer stays used the kitchen more, did more excursions to the beach and other places and just use the space more. People who are only there for 3-4 days tend to eat out more and only come back to sleep.
Dollarama is KING for all the kitchen supplies. It doesn’t need to be fancy but if you have an almost fully stocked kitchen, it just looks great. No one needs to know that you bought everything for $2-$3.
It’s the extra touch that gets you the great reviews. We left a collection of local beer for our guests (and some non-alcoholic drinks if they had kids) from a brewery that was just Up[the]Street. Guests loved that we left this for them. I also left some Islander tips of off the beaten path places that I liked to go that might not necessarily show up in the regular guide book.
It’s about the money. If you are thinking of operating an AirBnB, it helps to look at a property not as a home, but as a transaction. You can’t make the purchase emotional - it has to be all about how it looks in a spreadsheet. Extra costs include: commercial insurance, becoming licensed by the province, and some potential modifications to the property to make it work. We put a latch lock on a small bedroom and kept it locked with our personal items we didn’t need for the summer months.
All in all, it was a lot of work for a good amount of money. We did all the cleaning and changeovers ourselves, with a newborn then toddler in tow but it was worth it.