7 Things Running an Airbnb Taught Me About Myself and Others

What I, The Bed Making Wizard, learned from our first "Holiday Season".

Apr 28, 2023

When we decided to move from Canberra to the NSW South Coast, we wanted to buy a house with enough room for people to come and visit. Our first child was due a little over a month after I was to start work on the coast, and while moving away from family at such a time could seem a little reckless, that’s what we had to do for me to take up my new role at work.

So we thought that if we could, it would be good to get something with enough space so that family could come and stay, visit the young fella, maybe help out a little, yet still give us the space we needed as a young family.

The South Coast is a beautiful spot. Where we live is essentially a holiday town, so in the summer months, it’s not hard to convince people to come for a visit and, in turn, maybe give us a bit of help with the young fella.

So we started to look for places with self-contained units underneath them, granny flats in the backyard, or whatever else could work. We were running out of time to make a purchase. We needed to settle on something soon as I had a start date with my new job. We also wanted to be nice, settled, and unpacked before the baby arrived.

Given our circumstances, we had narrowed our own windows in terms of what we could look at buying. This is a good thing for me. As someone with ADHD, I struggle with decision paralysis. Too many options are a bad thing.

Anyway, we found something that met our needs, made an offer and moved in. For some reference, click here to see the Airbnb ad or here to see the booking.com ad, or here to follow our Instagram.

A family member paid for 20% of the property, and the agreement was that they can come and stay whenever they wished, and when they weren’t there, we could rent it out for short-term holiday stays. A risky endeavour, but hey, we were already taking a bunch of risks, so who cares, right?

We didn’t want to have to rent the space out straight away, but after the universe gifted us with incredible growth on our first home in Canberra, it was time for us to pay it back in a sense. The first month of my partner’s maternity leave, where she would be on half pay, was also the first month of eight consecutive interest rate rises. So, with a baby less than a month old, we had to rally together, get everything sorted and get it up and open to start recouping some funds.

This was last September. With the ending of the easter holidays and people planning trips to the snowfields for the next school holidays, I figured what better time than now to reflect a little on what the last six or seven months have taught me.

People Don’t Read Your Ad

We spent a lot of time trying to get our ad written perfectly. The right amount of words. The right length of paragraphs. We wanted it to read easily and give people all the information they needed in as few words as possible. We even used AI to help us rewrite what we had to try to make the words as impactful as possible.

We’ve had over 50 groups stay with us through this period. Only two have left negative reviews. Both of these were because they didn’t read our ad properly. They complained that they didn’t realise the apartment was on the lower level of a double-storey house and that they thought they had the house to themselves.

Of course, in the description of the space, it’s there for all to see, which made it very easy for us to defend ourselves against their public review, but it’s still frustrating all the same.

Booking.com doesn’t let you write your description in the top section of your ad. They do it for you, and then you fill out the featured sections below. So while I sympathise with these people as it’s a simple mistake to make, they should probably have read the whole ad before publically writing a negative review, essentially telling everyone who bothered to look that they didn’t read the ad properly.

Lesson? If you’re trying to sell something, don’t waste too much time on the words in your ad. Short, simple, dot points, pictures!

Always Give Yourself More Time

We set our check-out time for 11 am and check-in time for 1 pm. Initially, this was fine because most people just booked for the weekend, so we would have all week to change the sheets and clean up. In the first week of the Christmas holidays, we had people checking out at 11 am and another group checking in at 1 pm on the same day, every second day.

So we had two hours to change the sheets on five beds, get all surfaces cleaned, rubbish removed, towels swapped over and anything else that needed to be done. It was fucking hectic, especially with a four-month-old, but we got it down to fine art. Like a well-oiled machine.

More often than not, we would get back upstairs at 12.59 pm, sweating and panting like morons, and the next guests wouldn’t end up checking in for hours, but you can’t afford to rely on that. We’ve even had people tell us they’ll arrive at a later time than rock up bang on 1 pm. Never assume anything!

Moving forward, we are going to make some changes to the times to allow us more wiggle room. Although she will be working from home, my partner returning to work in August will make it harder to get these changeovers done. So learn from our mistakes.

However much time you think you will need to do anything, give yourself more than that. Plenty more.

Don’t Drink The Poison

When you offer a service like the one we do, you expose yourself to a certain element of risk. Sure, you have insurance and the like, but that’s not going to help you when you only have two hours to get everything cleaned and set back up for the next guests.

For the most part, people are clean and tidy, but we all have that one mate who you can never see the foot mat in their car through all the takeaway wrappers or always has random shit all through their house or bedroom.

Both Airbnb and Booking.com work off a rating system a lot like Uber, so you can see someone’s reviews when they book, and they can see yours. For the most part, this works pretty well. People are protective of their reputation. But some people just are the way they are, and they can’t change that, I guess?

Maybe different people were raised to accept different standards of living and think that their normal is acceptable for everyone else.

This is why, as mentioned above, you must give yourself more time than you think you need to get the work done because you never ever know what you’re about to walk into.

For example, we recently had a group come through who left the space dirtier than anyone had ever left it before. It was as though they thought it was a serviced apartment. No message saying that they had to leave in a hurry and were sorry they didn’t get a chance to clean or anything. Just left it as if to say, “Yeah, what?”

The guest had no previous reviews, and I could speculate as to why, but what’s the point? They left it filthy, we have to clean it and move on. I am torn, though. I want to leave a review for them that warns other people in our positions of the state these people might leave their property in, but I don’t know their circumstances, and I like to see the good in people. I find it hard to be critical of people without feeling guilty, even where warranted.

Rubbish was left everywhere, shampoo spilled all through the shower floor, blood-stained bedsheets, (not pictured) half a packet of biscuits left under a bed, white towels with cheezels crushed into them, they even locked themselves out and tried to pull the flyscreen off a window to get back in. They let us know about none of it. No explanation.

But as I say, this is the risk you run. Some people are just like this. Being mad about it is like drinking poison and hoping they get sick. It’s not worth the energy.

Lesson? Don’t hold onto being mad at shit you can’t change. There is no benefit. Maybe take a swig of the poison, be mad for a while, but don’t drink it. Move on.

You Are Capable of More Than You Think You Are

I am the number fucking one bedmaker in my household. My mum would find that difficult to believe. I hated making my bed when I was a kid. I still do. I still hate making the beds in the apartment too. I’m just real fuckin’ good at it. I never ever sleep with a top sheet, they make me feel claustrophobic, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t deserve the option.

When we floated the idea of running an Airbnb, I never ever thought I would become a bed-making wizard. I told myself I would be no good at it because I hated it. Now I don’t even mind it because it’s become much easier.

The same goes for painting. I always assumed I would hate painting. When we moved in, half the apartment still had timber walls, the other half had painted timber walls. I always assumed I would hate painting. I’m too clumsy and messy. I know I am. If there was a paint tin somewhere, I’d find a way to kick the bastard.

My best mate is a painter, and we had a gap of no booking after the Christmas holidays. February is traditionally quiet down here as people get back into the swing of things for the new year.

I planned to help my mate do most of the painting in any way I could. What I didn’t bank on was my mate being flat out and my own terrible lack of patience. I ended up doing probably 90% of the painting on my own. Something I never thought I could do because I had just convinced myself I couldn’t.

I actually found it quite cathartic. Headphones in, podcast or book on, and paint away. It made a fucking incredible difference too!

The lesson? Don’t be afraid to try shit that people do all the time just because you assume you won’t be able to do it. If others can do it, why can’t you? Maybe not like backyard brain surgery but learn how to service an old car or something. You’re capable of so much more than you realise, and often it’s our own limiting beliefs holding us back!

Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover

I don’t want to be a negative bastard here. Particularly because, in reality, we’ve been really lucky, and most of our guests have been amazing. Of the guests who have been the… least amazing, they have been ordinary, young families. They are not the kind of groups that would raise red flags when they book.

One group that raised a red flag was eight 18-year-olds who said they “just wanted to come down and unwind for a week after completing year 12”. Mate, we know what schoolies are.

I didn't realise this when we moved here, but the coastal area we live in became a haven for schoolies in early December. Having a four-month-old at the time, I was a little concerned, but being the empath I am, I wanted to believe that they could come down, enjoy themselves, respect the rules and switch their brains off after the hardest year of their lives so far.

I sent them a message prior to their arrival saying some shit about, “We have a baby. You guys can enjoy yourself here, but we live in a suburban neighbourhood. We need to respect the neighbours, but if you don’t believe you’re going to able to do that, the best thing for everyone would be for you to cancel now and find somewhere else, blah blah blah.”

They came, they stayed, and they were fuckin’ perfect, Hardly heard a noise out of them. A couple of friends came over, who were equally as respectful. They left the place clean and tidy, I couldn't have asked for more.

Another group I was concerned about was a group of eight middle-aged men from the country who were coming for a weekend of drinking and fishing. Drink and fish they did.

But I kid you not; to this day, they have been the best group we have ever had. They were polite, reasonably quiet and were the only group who had ever mopped the floor before leaving.

Look, maybe it was because it was the wife of one of them who made the booking and they were afraid of ruining her rating. Maybe it was because they spilt bourbon all over the floor. We’ll never know. But they left the apartment cleaner than anyone else ever has.

The lesson? Don’t generalise and make assumptions about people based on their demographic. The two groups I was most concerned about before their booking was two of the best groups. Give people a crack before writing them off!

All Criticism is Valuable

Criticism can be fucking hard to accept sometimes. Especially when you’ve put so much hard work into something. We made up a pack of all the local sights and amusements. We give people a small welcome gist when they arrive. Nothing crazy, usually a sweet snack and a savoury one. Do you know when you turn up somewhere after a long day in the car and just want to eat something quick and easy before figuring your shit out? That kind of thing.

So when you go to the effort to try to cater to every need only to be met with criticism, it can get you down… if you let it.

We had one guest who had some kind of superiority complex. When she arrived, she rang us immediately, asking how to use each cooking facility. We told her where she could find a plastic sleeve with instructions for each of them, but she still seemed annoyed.

Later, she complained that there was no plug for the ensuite sink. There are plugs for the other three sinks in the apartment, just not the ensuite one. We gave her one of the plugs from our house, but it turns out that sink was the only sink in the entire house that required a 32mm plug.

Given we have always tried to look after people and care about our reviews, I wanted to get her back on the side. So I raced to Bunnings at 6:30 pm to get her the all-important ensuite sink plug, to which she replied, “Oh, you didn’t have to do that”, even though clearly I did have to if she was to be satisfied!

To my surprise, the rest of her stay was fairly uneventful once she settled in. The night before she checked out, she sent my partner a text, almost warning her that she would be sending her an email with some suggestions. Some free, completely unsolicited feedback! This is what she said.

Initially, I was a little perplexed. I felt like she was working for booking.com as a mystery shopper. Who would go out of their way to write such a detailed email if they were happy?

A lot of the things that she suggested I already wanted to get done, like fixing the flyscreen. And, of course, I’d love to add a split system for some climate control down there, but who do you think I am, Twiggy Forrest? We’re not all retired boomers with cash to burn and apartments to criticise!

I hate having an overgrown lawn, and I wanted to mow it each and every day of her stay, but after the drama on her first day, I thought she’d complain about me mowing the lawn!

Anyway, she went on to basically just rewrite our own description in her public review. Just in case someone wanted to read it twice.

What it did do, though, was force my hand into doing a couple of things that I had either wanted to do or hadn’t thought of yet. I knew there was an electrical circuit for an oven. So I jumped on Gumtree and found a barely used, stand-alone over for $90. Bought it at home, plugged it in and off we went! I bought a fold-out clothesline from Bunnings for $70, mounted that, and even taught myself how to redo flyscreens!

The lesson? Criticism in any form is an opportunity. Once I stopped trying to figure out what this woman's deal was, I was able to focus my energy on actually considering what she had said. Obviously, some of her recommendations were unachievable in the short term. However, there were things right in front of my eyes that could be easily upgraded for minimum cost.

Just like I said above, I could have sat there drinking the poison, feeling all pissed off and attacked, or I could have looked for an opportunity to improve.

If it wasn’t for this lady and her booking, the apartment wouldn’t have had those cheap and easy improvements done that, to me, have made a significant difference to the appeal of the whole place.

For The Most Part, People Are Good

I’ve always tried to believe that people are inherently good by nature. I like to believe that if they are not, there is usually an underlying meaning as to why they are not. Something deeper that I don’t know about or need to know about.

Maybe I’m a bit soft, but I feel like this outlook has served me well throughout my life, and this experience so far has only served to reinforce those beliefs.

Almost all of our guests have been great. The ones who weren’t great taught us lessons. Some are more valuable than others.

I think the lesson here for me is that it’s good to believe that almost all people are good and want to do what’s right. They have self-respect and care about the impression they leave on others. Most people are perfectly kind in their communications and appreciate our extra efforts to provide a good service.

To me, it just reinforces the premise that we should do the right thing purely because it’s the right thing to do. Sure, they pay us for the service, but our goal is to provide people with value for their hard-earned, and we believe we provide that.

Our place isn’t fancy; we don’t want it to be. We don’t want to price ourselves out of appealing to the demographic that has helped us so much over the last seven months. In a way, these are people just like us, and there’s something nice about providing a cheap, practical option for people to enjoy the beautiful town we are lucky enough to live in.

So whilst we’ll forever be trying to make improvements to what we have, I don’t want to ever lose sight of what it is we are trying to provide. Almost every group has left us with glowing endorsements, and I believe that is because we just try our best to make it as nice a stay as possible.