We help to generate rental income for property owners, which offsets the cost of owning the property, helps pay for the mortgage, and may result in some profit. You can use the property as a vacation home and make money to pay for its upkeep when not using it. The program can be used to help you acquire wealth without all the work, via a mortgage, as we do the work to help pay the payments. We do the marketing to get nightly rental customers who want to stay in your property, and we take care of all the details like the managing the listings and other advertisements, inquiry process, booking process, inspections, coordinating housekeepers, maintenance and contractors, as well as licensing and remitting nightly rental sales taxes.
Some of the websites we advertise on include: NightlyResorts.com, Airbnb.com, Booking.com, Expedia.com, ExploreBranson.com, Facebook.com, FlipKey.com, Google AdWords, HomeAway.com, Hotels.com, TripAdvisor.com, VacationHomeRentals.com, VacationRentals.com, VisitMO.com, and VRBO.com.
We do the following:
If you are unable or unwilling to do all the work involved in property management and nightly rentals, we are here to help and are standing by for the emergencies and issues that arise day and night. Continue reading to learn more about what we do.
There is a lot of work involved in getting a property set up on each booking site and ensuring that it is properly configured on every site so you don't lose money, get bad bookings/guests that you do not want, etc. The booking sites rush you to get each property listed and booked by guests as soon as possible, which can easily lead to many mistakes that cost you not just in money, but also in your time and can be very frustrating to resolve. We work hard to make accurate listings so that guests don't complain about inaccuracies and say that your listing is a bait-n-switch and either demand a full refund or a partial refund. It is so important that your listings be accurate. Sometimes there are guests that are looking for anything wrong so they can get money back to cheapen their vacation, and they will often get the booking site involved to get their way.
It cannot be understated how important photos are to the success of a nightly rental. We are able to take photos of the property for no cost, or you can pay a professional photographer if you prefer.
We take care of getting the photos optimized to boost sales and we distribute them to all of the booking sites. We optimize the order of the photos for each booking site and swap photos multiple times per year to get more sales during holiday seasons.
There are no hidden fees, you just pay us our percentage of the rental revenue and we pay all transaction fees, service fees, and base commissions to the booking sites out of our percentage. Some other nightly rental companies advertise a lower percentage but then require you to pay an extra percentage to get listed on the most important booking sites. Not only are they misleading you, but they are making this more complicated than it has to be and can be preventing you from realizing maximum revenue in the process.
There are so many factors that go into determining what to charge for a nightly rental. You have to consider what day of the year it is, whether it is a weekday or weekend, how long the guest might stay, last-minute discounts, price-per-person, pet fees, cleaning fees, other fees, security deposits, traveler insurance options, downpayment requirements, fluctuations in demand, etc. We take care of all of this for you.
If you want to maximize revenue from your properties, you should stay on top of your rates and see what is working and what isn't. Adjustments often have to be made to correct for market changes. We micromanage the rates every week of the year to not miss out on sales.
Potential guests will often make an inquiry or booking request, even if you allow them to book on their own. You should respond to their inquiry as soon as possible or they will likely move on and book another property. They may make inquiries with numerous nightly rental companies on the same day, so securing the sale before somebody else does means getting back with them very quickly and being as helpful as you can. We have a very well-developed and thought-out system and are always putting more work into it for quickly and thoroughly answering their many questions they have.
It is easy to underestimate how detailed your records need to be to avoid problems. You need to keep track of every last detail so that you are prepared for random audits and preparing your income and sales tax returns every month, quarter, and year. You also need to keep good records regarding paying housekeepers and contractors. If you also provide the nightly rental service to other property owners, you will need to keep track of every last detail for paying owners and handling some of their expenses. To do all of this, we have worked very hard over the years to make a highly-organized records system through our in-house software development.
Communication, especially fast communication, is absolutely critical in this business. Customers tend to get very impatient waiting for a reply to their questions and concerns and expect instant responses, so it is important to do your best to respond to them within minutes of their messages and phone calls. Very often, we respond in just seconds. Responding too slowly brings your score down on the booking sites, which affects your sales performance and reputation. Guests will expect you to respond regardless of the time, day or night, often at inconvenient times, such as when you are sleeping, eating, doing other work, shopping, or recreational activities. Some guests will even keep calling or messaging you when you are trying to resolve their problem for them, not even giving you much of a chance to make things right! We have spent countless hours over the years making a system to help with the communication process, but it still can be very frustrating at times trying to appease difficult guests!
The booking sites push guests very hard to make a review, and they push the nightly rental companies very hard to make their own review of the guest as well as respond to the guests' reviews. If you do not make a review of them and respond to their reviews, your booking site score will go down, which reduces your sales performance since less potential guests will see your listings. And even if they do see your listing, they will be more hesitant to book your property if they feel you have too many bad reviews or don't care about your guests' concerns. Whenever guests make unfair criticisms and complaints, we do our best to address and refute them to show potential guests in the future that some reviews should be taken with a grain of salt.
From time to time it is necessary to respond on-site to issues that guests, neighbors, and the HOA have. Often they require you to show up ASAP and will spam your phone complaining about the problem until you resolve it. Not handling this well will almost certainly result in bad reviews and complaints, which affect your sales performance and reputation.
We don't charge a trip/service fee for our time and transportation costs to restock items, and we try to be good stewards with your money. You just pay for the products.
It is important to inspect the property thoroughly and frequently to prevent unnecessary costs to the owner and to help determine which guest is responsible for any damage, missing items, and/or messes. When it does occur, we put invoices together and take lots of photos to use as evidence to win our case against bad guests. We check the thermostat(s), windows, doors, appliances, furniture, linens, and more.
Part of the nightly rental business involves staying in constant communication with housekeepers, maintenance, and contractors to carry out the daily work involved in running a successful nightly rental company. You need to be sure to tell housekeepers about new cleaning jobs, date changes, property changes, cancellations, and other changes to reservations. You also need to coordinate which housekeeper/contractor does which job and who will take their place if they are unavailable to do the job. We have a very well developed in-house system for all of this that we have worked hard on over the years to help ensure everything goes smoothly. And, we talk to the housekeepers and contractors on a daily basis to take care of all of the many things that need to be taken care of to make it a good stay for our guests and to minimize the costs to the property owners. We have a great, reliable team of people, which helps to prevent a lot of the things that can go wrong in this business.
We get licensed to do nightly rentals for each governmental jurisdiction that the property is located in. And we renew our licenses as often as is required by each governmental entity and pay any fees associated with renewing our licenses. We keep our filings up-to-date to stay in goodstanding with the governments.
We have a good system developed in-house for calculating the sales revenues and sales taxes that we are responsible for collecting, reporting and remitting to each governmental entity.
Booking sites often get in the way of getting paid for claims made against customers that damage property, cause items to go missing, and/or make big messes requiring more cleaning than normal. For example, Airbnb tends to go easy on customers in these cases. If the customer does not respond to Airbnb on a claim, they let the customer off the hook and then you have to insist that Airbnb pay you through the Airbnb Host Guarantee. They often try to get out of paying it, and then if you push them hard enough, they will offer to give you only a portion of the money for you and your contractors' hard work and time. If you feel it is not worth your time to do this every time you have a bad guest that refuses to be responsible for what they have done and how it has eaten up your time, your housekeeper's time, and your contractor's time, then you may want to hire us.
It is the insurance company's job to try to get out of paying you for all or at least some of your claim so that they can make a bigger profit. We have experience in dealing with them and will work hard to get them to pay up on lost revenue claims. We keep very good and detailed records to help win your case.
We provide yearly property statements so owners can easily determine their income for tax reporting. We also provide detailed monthly billing statements showing each booking and expense for each month. We also put the receipts and invoices for products purchased and work performed on our website for owners to view and keep for records.
As soon as we get a new booking, we send you an email about it so you can stay in the loop without having to log in constantly. You are also able to turn notifications on or off for each type of notification for if you do not wish to be bothered.
Our Branson Area Nightly Rental Program is paid for via a percentage of the rental revenue. If any expenses are incurred for the month, we deduct them from your earnings, and then pay you the remainder. Typical expenses include: supplies, repairs, and yearly deep cleaning. We do not charge a trip fee for stocking supplies. We pay property owners at the beginning of each month by check.
Occupancy
This chart shows how booked up each month tends to be.
In order to join the program, owners are required to create an account on the website. By logging in to the website, owners are able to see their earnings, reservations, expenses, and other details at any time. Owners are also able to reserve their own stays at their property from the website. We also send notifications by email about new bookings.
If you would like to join the program, or want to discuss it further, fill out the inquiry form below.