Welcome to another Ask Me Anything (Ask Us Anything?) episode! Each week we’ll answer your questions on STR, real estate, OTAs, and everything in between.

Michelle (from @BirdHausFarms) asks:

We have a large swimming hole on our vacation rental’s property, and are considering renting this out to the public (non-guests) to earn extra revenue. What’s the best way to do this to not interfere with the guest’s experience?

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[00:00:05] You're listening to the Thanks for Visiting podcast. We believe hosting with heart is at the core of every short-term rental. With Annette's background in business operation--

[00:00:15] And Sarah's extensive hospitality management and interior design experience, we have welcomed thousands of guests from over 30 countries, earning us over a million dollars and garnering us thousands of five-star reviews.

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[00:01:01] Hello, listeners. Welcome back for another great week. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

[00:01:05] I am Annette Grant, and together we are--

[00:01:07] Thanks for Visiting.

[00:1:08] And we're coming out to you with an AMA episode, Ask Me Anything. This is where you, the listener, can head to thanksforvisiting.me, in the upper right-hand corner, you'll see a red button that says Ask TFV and go ahead ask us your question related to short-term rentals, to business, to how to balance this with life, your current job, whatever you want to be as long as it revolves around the short-term rental industry. We are here for you. We will answer your questions on the show. And this week we've got a question from Michelle. Let's do it.

[00:01:38] Hi, Annette and Sarah. This is Michelle, and I own Bird Haus Farms in the Texas Hill Country. We have 20 acres and four rentals on our property. And then we recently added a beautiful swimming hole. It's really deep and rather large. And so we allow guests to use it. And we also advertise for this in our listings. But we are considering posting this on other sites four days to the public. And we don't want that to interfere with current guests' experience. So I'm just curious what you guys would say about how to message that to the guest. Thanks so much for all you guys do. I love listening to your podcast.

[00:02:18] We love having you as well, Michelle.

[00:02:19] Yes.

[00:02:20] And, Michelle, congrats. It sounds like an amazing property. This is what we want to start with. And this is for all of the listeners-- for all of you. Number one-- and Sarah and I are guilty of this. We get bright shiny object syndrome, and we want to do all the things. So we want to bring it back to what is your why with opening these up to the public. And is this for revenue? And we completely understand that.

So we want to get an idea of do you think this is going to be additional revenue for your whole entire property and really look at those options. Do that math ahead of time. What are you planning on charging there and start to do that math because there probably are going to be some interesting things with your guest and potentially open to the public.

[00:03:10] And I think to do that math, you need a number, which is the cost of no longer making it exclusive to your current short-term rentals. So she said--

[00:03:22] Well, would that be opportunity cost? I don't know if that's the correct usage of that.

[00:03:22] Because right now I know she said she has four properties. She has 20 acres, and they just added this large swimming hole. So right now, it sounds like the four short-term rentals understand they will share with the other guests, the other short-term rentals. That's a lot less people than quote-unquote, "the public." Obviously, we don't have a lot of information from Michelle that we would need to have so we can certainly talk about all the angles, but I'm thinking if it's open to more than the four rentals in the property, now it's not exclusive anymore.

[00:03:52] Right. And that can be a huge advantage to the guests that are staying there. The other thing Sarah and I will always bring this up first is have you talked to your insurance provider? What does that do to your policy there? And then when you're saying you're going to book on these other sites, what is the liability there?

[00:04:12] What's the cost of that too?

[00:04:12] Exactly. And so there's a lot of questions about what does it take to get that up and running? What is the liability? Let's say you do want to do this. We are also open to always trying new things and testing them out. So could you do a small beta test with a certain amount of dates? And we would advise you, Michelle, to be there, to be present the first couple of times that you test this out. See what it looks like. Do you have designated spaces?

So again, we don't know how large the swimming hole is. Maybe people can spread around the whole lake or swimming hole and not even interact with each other. Maybe you have assigned spaces, and part of that space they get some amenities there if they're renting it. Again, we don't want to cut you off from that. We know there's a lot of hotels now that offer day passes for their pools.

So obviously, we do always take the lead from hotels. And that's a very common thing that hotels are doing now. So, Michelle, we are down for you to try this. But again, we like the beta testing of it. Is it something like a Swimply? How are you going to regulate how many people come with the day pass holders? I'm wondering how you can make sure who's coming on your property, and the guests that they're bringing for the day, the day passes. And maybe you are planning on being there. Maybe you live on the property.

[00:05:33] And I feel like there's also some of the whole trial and error situation. What we don't know about Michelle either is how far in advance does she make bookings. And so if you've already promised guests who have already booked, this is going to be exclusive to the guests and the other guests on the property, then that's something taken into consideration. Because I think anything's worth trying, you won't try for a quarter, three months, 90 days. Anything that you want to try to really get some good data from it, I think should you try it for that amount of time. And so I don't know if that's something Michelle can do because of her future bookings.

And then Michelle asked us, how would we communicate this with potential renters. And I think, Michelle, the more you can lay it out as very clear as possible, especially if you have a picture of the swimming hole, which I'm sure you do, in the caption of the picture, say, this pool is open up to a limit amount of public day pass holders Monday through Friday, or just the weekends, or seven days a week from this time to this time. Another thing too, Michelle is, does that change the need to have a lifeguard on duty? And that's going to cutting to her math if she wanted this revenue to be worth it to her or not. Is she to have someone there to monitor the behavior of public?

[00:06:46] Does it get to a certain amount of people? And I know also, let's again, look at hotels. I know after they become open to public, there's different levels of let's say, ADA compliancy that need to come in also if it becomes more public. If there's any listener out there that has experience with this, if you can please email us or even call-- and we would love it because Sarah and I don't have actual experience with this Michelle's question, but it's a great question. I know there's probably a lot of people out there that want to know about this.

[00:07:22] Michelle, I have a response. Another thing too for Michelle and for anyone else out there is remember when you have a special amenity like this, obviously, make sure your insurance provider is covering you in some way, shape or form. They know exactly how you're going to be using it, exactly who is going to be using it. But above that, have a waiver in place. And do your best to get-- and obviously, ask your counsel too, but it's my understanding, especially with special things like this, do your best to have everyone in the party sign a waiver. At least talk to your lawyer about that, especially if you open up to the public. I'm sure that just opens up so many other-- and again, when you add up all that math and all those expenses, does it make it worth it opening up to the public a certain amount of time, and day or week.

[00:08:05] And, Michelle, I do love what you're thinking though because there could be specific events that you could have, or maybe specific parties that you could make more just renting out during the day all through to all of your guests. So I absolutely love the way that you're thinking. I just think we need to do a lot of research, run the numbers, see what the opportunity is out there for you to rent this. But I love the way you're thinking. And I know Sarah and I are talking a lot about waivers and compliance and safety.

But we also know that when you think bigger, these things are bigger, but you can earn more. So we don't want to deter you from thinking big and really researching all the ways because you really could have this amazing experience on your hands that a lot of people want to participate in. So we're excited for you. We love that you're thinking bigger. Please follow up. Let us know if any listeners out there are renting their swimming hole. We haven't had anybody on it. If anybody has rented their place-- I think it's called Swimply-- let us know. I'm very interested in anybody that's taking action on renting out a swimming area to the public by day.

[00:09:16] Before we wrap up this episode, everyone, we do want to again invite you to join us live in Vegas, October 22 and 23. Annette and I are holding our very first live in-person event. It's going to be so exciting.

[00:09:28] Oh my gosh, it'll be like nonstop AMA. But it's not just going to be Sarah and I. We are going to have a ton of experts in the short-term rental space that are coming in to participate in our event.

[00:09:42] Let's list a couple of them right now. Why not? So we're going to have Tony J. Robinson. He is the host of the BiggerPockets Rookie podcast. He is going to be doing deal analysis. So we'll deal analysis. We have Kenny Bedwell from STR Insights.

[00:09:56] And just Kenny is Jada of the next level. And by the way, if you think AirDNA is good, Kenny's product is next level. We also are going to have Julie George, Million Dollar host.

[00:10:08] A celebrity herself.

[00:10:09] Yes, she was on our show before. We cannot wait for her to come visit us from Australia. That is just a few right now. We'll keep the other ones for our next AMA, Sarah.

[00:10:20] All right. Any questions about Vegas, head to our website thanksforvisiting.me/vegas. You can always DM us on Instagram, or email us at thanksforvisiting.me. We appreciate you tuning into us each and every week. And with that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

[00:10:35] I am Annette Grant, and together we are--

[00:10:37] Thanks for Visiting.