Sometimes like Grand Central Station

So what is it like coordinating guest stays?

There are periods of time when you get no inquiries and you almost forget that you are running a business and then there are some periods where inquiries begin to pickup and conflict with each other requiring some management skills to make your way through them.

Does the numbers of views on you website tend to correlate with bookings? Yes and no. I’ve found that even when the views are decreasing (and the number of tire kickers on your listing lags the actual activity by a bit), the real trip planners are still looking to book.

The economy is not dead – people still need to travel to conduct business and others still need to take care of their health.

Some days are a little anxious because you can have multiple guest requests overlapping for various reasons.

Here’s an example, a real day:

We allow same day check out (11:00) and check in (15:00) and, as can be expected, eventually your current guest will ask to stay longer and your oncoming guest will request to arrive earlier.

I worked out a deal where we could come in to begin cleaning the bedrooms at the normal checkout time and let the departing guest hang out for the extra hour until 12:00. The problem was, the arriving guest wanted to arrive at 12:00 to at least drop off bags and perhaps relax a bit.

In both cases, the guests were very understanding and were ready to accommodate my need to get the house cleaned up ready. Things worked out. It’s good, by the way to make sure one bathroom is totally cleaned for the oncoming guests so they can experience the pristine “clean” right away, and, furthermore, they don’t need to experience the previous guests’ temporary landmarks and dirty towels.

It turns out, in this same circumstance, the same few hour period, the oncoming guest didn’t know whether they needed to book for 4 days or 7, so they first booked for 4 with 7 pending a meeting with doctors at Stanford. THEN, I get another guest request to book over what would be the 7^thnight.

This is a case where instant booking needed to be turned off, and I did turn it off.

It gave my guest time to speak to the doctors.

What was necessary on my part as a host was to warn the new inquiry of my situation and I went further advising that in their best interest, they might want to seek another listing because I was giving my new guests a priority if they needed to book.

Well… As it turned out, the new guest booked one day shorter (probably with respect to the new inquiry) and the new inquiry took my advice and booked another listing (but they forgot to cancel their inquiry, which led to another little impromptu problem when I accepted her request to book).

So I lost two days in the aggregate, however, though money is important, it’s always good to try to do the right thing.