Shownotes
Here's a question for you. When did you last actually stay in your own short-term rental?
If the answer is "never" or it's been a very long time, this episode is going to make you uncomfortable. In the best possible way.
I'm talking today about why staying in your own property is one of the most important things you can do as a host, and why relying on your best friends or family to test it first is a terrible idea. (They love you too much to tell you the truth. You need someone who will actually say the mattress is awful after you spent a small fortune on it!).
Because here's what the research tells us, guest satisfaction in hospitality is disproportionately affected by tiny inconveniences, not by big standout features. The low pressure shower. The WiFi code that took ten minutes to find. The annoying bin in the wrong place. The curtains that don't quite block out the 5am sunrise. Those are the things that end up in reviews.
I'm also sharing why staying in other people's properties - competitors, boutique hotels, glamping businesses - is genuinely the smartest market research you'll ever do. And yes, it is tax-deductible too.
This isn't just about fixing snagging issues. It's about understanding what your space actually feels like from the guest's point of view because until you've lived it, you're guessing. And you can't market a feeling you've never experienced yourself.
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Key Takeaways:
- Trial guests are non-negotiable before you open your doors, but choose carefully
- Guest satisfaction is disproportionately impacted by small inconveniences, not big features
- Staying in your own property properly reveals the micro irritations you simply cannot spot during a changeover, from a humming fridge to a bin in the wrong place
- Staying in other people's properties two or three times a year, not just competitors but boutique hotels and other glamping businesses, consistently throws up ideas to elevate your own guest experience
- Once you've genuinely experienced your own space as a guest, your marketing becomes easier and more confident
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Connect with Sarah:
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Transcripts
You're listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard. Are you ready to master your marketing so you can ditch your reliance on the online agents and grow your direct bookings?
I'll be sharing with you exactly what it takes to grow your direct bookings and the simple marketing steps to get more profit in your pocket. Hi there. Welcome to the Get Fully Booked podcast and I'm your host, Sarah Orchard.
So today we're talking about something that sounds, well, I guess pretty obvious, but most hosts don't seem to do this and that is sleeping in your own short term rental.
And I mean, yes, actually packing a bag, checking in and actually staying the night. Not popping in to change a light bulb, not cleaning or making beds and not, I was there all afternoon doing admin, I mean fully properly guest mode activated and staying.
I even recall one client saying to me it wasn't really her sort of thing, which really worried me because we can create businesses that maybe isn't the type of accommodation that we would choose to stay in, but I do think it's really important to actually experience it from the guest point of view. And I'm going to explain today why I think it's absolutely vital if you want to run a high quality, high performing short term rental.
I'll be looking at why trial guests are really, in my book, non negotiable.
So even if you don't want to do it, you need to find other people that will come and stay and why we can miss the most obvious things and also why staying elsewhere is the smartest market research you'll ever do. So let's get started because I think this is a really juicy topic.
So before you even stay yourself in your own short term rental, and like I said, it's not for everyone, sometimes people, you just really don't want to stay in your own space. I get that.
But you do need to have trial guests and by that I mean do not get your best friends or family to stay or even your best hosting buddy because the reality is they will not want to hurt your feelings because you've probably been building this thing for like, our project took eight months, it actually took us about five years to get to the point where we were actually building it.
So you've maybe spent months, years, toils of time, heaps of cash to get to this point and they are just not going to tell you that it's not quite perfect because they don't want to hurt your feelings. You're going to need the kind of person that's going to say, well, the shower kept running cold, or that the pressure was weak.
You know, the bedroom was actually a bit too cold, a bit too hot. I couldn't find the corkscrew. The WIFI code took me 10 minutes to locate. The mattress is really not very comfy. Sorry.
I know it cost you a fortune because the truth is that, like I said, when you create this space, you're so emotionally attached to it. You know, you've created the vision, you've created that, toiled over that Pinterest board. You know how much the sofa cost.
Your trial guests, they just want to find the light switches, they want to be warm, they want to sleep well and they don't want to have to read a 30 page guest information manual and try and locate the corkscrew. If they feel any of those things in a negative way, it kills the experience.
But trial guests will reveal the friction points, the layout or the kitchen setup that doesn't work.
Even things like you've placed the bin in the wrong place, they'll identify if you've got missed instructions and they couldn't work out how to do something.
They will tell you if your welcome folder has become War and Peace and it's totally over complicated or over the top or like I said, has things missing, they will tell you that things that look nice but actually don't function very well. Because I've been guilty of this, I've picked some things for the hideout and put them in there.
And then as we've gone through time, we've actually worked out that they didn't work very well, they just weren't robust enough or they didn't work well enough for the guests. But we had trial guests and that definitely helped us to identify some snagging things that we needed to sort out.
And it's interesting that when they've done studies, they found that guest satisfaction in hospitality is disproportionately impacted by the very small inconveniences rather than the big standout features. So we spend a lot of time thinking about sort of our highlights and our big standout features.
So maybe things like your £8,000 hot tub, but that won't compensate for a lumpy mattress when they get a bad night's sleep or if they are cold because your heating system is not sufficient for the space that you've built. It's a bit of an ouch moment, but it really is critically important.
Trial guests help you fix the invisible problems before your real paying guests experience them and leave that negative review.
And if you can head off those friction points and those little inconveniences that do have an impact on guest satisfaction, your reviews will be fantastic from the get go.
Your repeat bookings will naturally happen and your pricing confidence will grow as well, because you'll feel confident putting your price up because you know, you offer a great guest experience. And I think there's something that we forget actually. In the hotel industry there are what they call mystery stays.
And luxury hotel brands conduct these stays on a regular basis. I actually was a mystery diner for a small independent pub group for about three years.
They had about three or four of us that were tasked with going round and dining. I think I had to eat out two or three times a month. It wasn't very good for my waistline, but it gave, I had to fill in a report after every dining experience, and they used those insights to go back to the team in the actual pub and to tell them where they needed to sort of pull their socks up and the things that they were getting right.
So a lot of other industries, so both the restaurant trade and luxury hotels within hospitality do do this where, a senior manager or maybe even an independent third party person. I was actually recruited to be a mystery diner. It's a dream job.
And these people, either dine or check in anonymously and they stay the night and they test the room service. You know, they're going to be looking at everything in the bathroom to check that, you know, it all works.
So these multimillion pound hotel brands are testing their experience, they're pressure testing it, they're making sure that it's fit for purpose and that their guests are going to have a great experience. So why on earth wouldn't we do it? And we can't maybe afford to employ a third party company.
I've actually been asked to stay in a lot of glamping businesses and give them honest feedback reports and I take that as an honour.
But I'm also very honest because there's no point me sugar coating what feedback I give them because otherwise they're not going to have the guest experience to be the best it possibly can be. So this brings me on to my second point that I wanted to make about missing the obvious things. I said I would share that with you.
And this, this can be a bit of a humbling one really, because I think when we're building our short term rentals, and I know when we were building the treehouse, we were in build mode and that was really stressful you know, we were thinking about, you know, the styling. Well, we were thinking about just getting it finished, but then we were thinking about sort of the styling.
And I did a marketing partnership with Made who are an interior design retailer. You're thinking about the Instagram worthy shots. You're thinking about your marketing launch and your messaging.
You're thinking about maybe your pricing decisions.
Maybe you're thinking about your overdraft and how much money you've got left, but you're not thinking about the practical things like where does the guest put their electric toothbrush and will that make a mess all over the side or will it fall down a gap and get covered in fluff in the bathroom, Is there a hook for the towel when they use the outside bath?
Otherwise what they'll do is they'll put your towels over the wooden rails and they'll get covered in algae and your lovely white bath towels will now be green or they'll just drop them on the floor and they'll get filthy.
Is there an outside light that is shining in the wrong direction at night and, you know, or shining through the the blinds or the curtains? Can they reach the bedside lamp when they get out of bed? One of the things that we realised in the Hideout was our mezzanine bedroom.
We were worried about people getting up in the night and going to the downstairs bathroom. So we have, there's a light switch that they can reach in the middle of the bed, but there's also a little torch by the bed as well, because the light switch for downstairs is a little walk across the landing in the bedroom area. So it's just thinking about all those little things.
But when you actually sleep there, and we did sleep in our space after having our trial guests, you do notice.
And actually we got a slightly longer, more enforced sleeping in our hideout because of COVID So obviously when we launched, it was all a bit of a rush and we did stay in it for one night, but then within five weeks, we got shut down for about the first six months. So we actually spent several very long weekends, including the Easter holidays, staying in the Hideout.
We actually didn't want to go back to our own house, but it was really enlightening and I think that gave us some really clear insights into the things that we'd missed.
So maybe you'll notice when you sleep in a space, the fact that the fridge is humming or something is creating light in the bedroom, like the hallway light is shining under the bedroom door or there's a light switch or something, or an electrical device that's creating light, that the curtains don't quite block out the blinding sunrise. Or that the sofa, although it looks beautiful, it isn't really very comfy if you have a full movie night.
And I have to confess that our sofa is beautiful in the Hideout, but it's probably not one for lounging. It's not the most comfortable and we realised that when we sat on it for long periods of time rather than just having a quick sit on it.
So, as I said earlier, the reality is that the guests are not going to probably complain about the big things, they're going to complain about the basics. You know, it's not those Instagrammable worthy shop bits that you've created.
They're going to complain about temperature, noise, comfort, ease, how it makes them feel, hopefully not stressed. That's what we're aiming for.
And I actually worked with one of my host clients who was launching a glamping offering and I went and stayed in her lovely, gorgeous yurt. And I immediately gave her some feedback on some just simple layout issues. I mean, she really had thought of everything.
She's been in hospitality for a long time, but when it came to making a cup of tea and eating your meal, the bin was too far from the kettle and the area where you were making the tea and there was nowhere really to sit unless you sat with your plate on your lap to eat your meal if you couldn't sit outside, because there was a beautiful outside table, but it was in Scotland and if the weather is bad, you're going to be inside. And then there was nowhere really to sit and eat a meal. So it's rarely massive things that annoy people.
It's what we could call micro irritations, but ultimately those stack up and they do create that general feeling in the end that people want to complain about it. So the last thing I said I would share with you is the power of staying in other places. And I think this is really powerful.
So not just staying in your own property. One of the things we did when we were planning the Hideout is we did go and stay in a lot of glamping businesses. And it's something that we still do.
We go and stay two to three times a year we will go and stay in, and it's not just other tree houses, we'll go and stay in, for example, boutique hotels that maybe have a tree house, mainly because we want to see how do they elevate the guest experience and what do they do that we could learn from and implement in The Hideout. And without fail, whenever we go and do it, we get two or three ideas or more.
And we also see things that we're doing better than them, but we also see ideas of things that we can improve. And I hear you saying, oh, that's a really nice jolly. It is tax deductible and you can put it through your business, but that's not the point.
It is about constantly learning and ultimately hospitality moves on. The basics are probably the same and they always have been, but people are creative and inventive and companies will come up with ideas.
Why reinvent the wheel? And this market research is not about sitting at your computer and doing spreadsheets.
And I think, you could say, well, you can go and look at their website, and you can go and look at their website, but you don't get the full guest experience and some of the nuances and the subtleties like you do if you actually go and go through the complete guest experience, all the way from visiting their website, booking all the way through to post stay. So when you stay somewhere, you know you're going to be asking yourself, was the check in easy?
What felt premium, what felt cheap, what annoyed me, what delighted me?
It's like you get all this list of things and like I say, sometimes it reassures you that you're doing a great job and actually you're doing better than some of the big boys. But as I said, the key thing is that you, your guests will rarely remember those standout features. They'll remember how your space made them feel.
Did it make them feel calm, thoughtful, or did it actually make them feel chaotic and stressed?
Did it feel generous or did it feel, and this is one of my bugbears, when there's lots of signs everywhere telling you not to do things, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. That can make you feel quite tense, unwelcome and stressed.
So sometimes I think we have to scale back on stuff like that and we have to trust that people aren't going to steal everything and they're not going to break everything.
Although it does happen, I think we, we have to always remember to design our businesses for the 95% of people who don't do that, rather than for the 5% of people who do, because otherwise the entire guest experience becomes quite negative. So when you stay in these other places, you'll start noticing, you know, patterns. The best places, they simplify everything.
They make the experience feel calm and easy.
The best hosts remove decisions so that you're not feeling like you have to make 10 million decisions or go through sort of technical hoops to work out how to do something. We stayed somewhere once that had really sophisticated lighting. Actually, we stayed in a couple of places.
One was a hotel in Europe and one was a tree house. And it had really fancy lighting system. And it just stressed me out because just to try and put the lights on was like, you know, press 5 million buttons and then you'd end up with colours that you didn't want and effects that you didn't want. And I was just thinking, just give me a damn light switch.
Because it actually, I know it was probably put in there to try and make the experience like the ambiance, really, really good, but all it did was irritate me for the whole time we stayed there and just ended up putting the wrong lights on at the wrong time in the wrong places. And it just became really annoying. So it definitely didn't feel effortless. It just grated.
And, I think sometimes we can get carried away with creating those fancy things, but actually it just creates a load of stress for our guests. So when you go and stay in these places, you're going to bring back insights to your own property.
It might make you change a few things, or it might make you try and elevate things that are going really well. But you're trying. You're not copying necessarily.
You're actually just absorbing it as a guest and learning about what feels good and what you can implement in your business. So you will end up upgrading the guest experience.
It will allow you potentially to create more perceived value and command a higher price point and charge more confidently. Okay, I'm going to bring this back a little bit to marketing because you might be thinking, what's this got to do with marketing?
Going like you're thinking, Sarah, going on jollies, staying in places. But let's tie it back to marketing and to bookings, because ultimately that's what we're trying to get.
So when you've tested your space and you've sort of fixed all those friction points and you've gone out and done some mystery stays and in other places and you've experienced some competitors places and you've refined your own guest journey, your marketing will definitely become easier because you will actually confidently be able to say that this is what it feels like to stay in your own place. You're not guessing anymore. I don't see how you can describe the feeling of being in your short term rental and how it makes a guest feel.
If you've never done it yourself, you've actually lived it. And that confidence will make the marketing easier. And that confidence definitely will, will create more sales for you and get you more bookings.
So I'm going to set you a bit of a challenge. If you haven't stayed in your own short term rental in the last 12 months, find a gap in your calendar. Book yourself in.
I mean properly, not just I'll pop home if I need to. Pack your bag. Arrive like a guest. Follow your own instructions. Use your own welcome guide, whether it's digital or paper. Take notes, lots of notes.
Because the difference between an average stay and a five star rave review rebook again, immediately stay is usually hiding in the smallest of details. But those details will only reveal themselves when you slow down and experience it.
If you're constantly rushing in there, I know when we do a changeover it's always so manic that you just, you're checking the checklist off and you're making in your head maybe, or even on paper and you're making sure that the changeover is perfect. But actually it gives you very little time to notice those details and how those details are going to make your guest feel.
I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I'd love to know if you have stayed in your own place in your short term rental. Message me over on Instagram or drop me a DM. I'd love to know.
And if you haven't, I'd like to know when you're going to do it. Go on, tell me. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you know what I'd love you to do? I would love you to leave me a review.
Because you know how much us hosts love those five star reviews.
Next week I'm back with the final episode of season five of the podcast and I have an absolute cracking host who's sharing their marketing journey with us. You'll want to tune in for that one. Bye for now. I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.
If you want to see if you are ready to ditch the likes of Airbnb and grow your direct bookings. Put your business to the test with my free direct booking roadmap quiz.
Head to my website www.get-fullly-booked.com/quiz and let's get you more direct bookings and more profit in your pocket.
