Welcome back to another episode of Into The Airbnb, where we chat with Airbnb hosts about their short-term rental experience.
Today’s guest is Courtney Morris, a super host who owns and manages a 30 day minimum pet-friendly listing in Atwater Village, Los Angeles, California since 2018. Even though her listing is not available all year round, she gets around 4500 on revenue per month and around 40,000 revenue a year, and stays more booked than the other listings in this area that don’t allow pets. Join us today to learn more about Courtney’s journey and experience and also gets super interesting insights and tips from her.
This episode is sponsored by Airbtics, short-term rental analytics for high return investment, comprehensive data for insights, ideas and inspiration. Go to app.airbtics.com to find precise Airbnb data such as occupancy rate, revenue, average daily rate and so on. So, without further ado, let’s get into it!
Into The Airbnb Podcast S2 EP 41: $40K/ year & 30% more booked: Increase your annual revenue by being a Pet friendly Airbnb listing in Los Angeles, CA
You can also listen to this Into The Airbnb Podcast Episode on Otter.
Delia:
Can you first start by telling us how you got started on Airbnb?
Courtney Morris:
Well, I used to occupy the unit full-time myself, I purchased a triplex in 2011. So I rented two of the units out to long-term tenants and I occupied the third. When we decided to move out to a larger home, we put the property up on Airbnb for short-term rentals, but that was in September of 2018 and shortly after that, the city of Los Angeles actually stopped allowing short-term rentals. So we’ve transitioned the property to +30 night rentals and we occupy it about 50% of the time with our own family at this point, so we rent the other 50% of the year, we rent to people who are staying for at least a month at a time.
Delia:
Oh, and did you not thought of getting the short-term rental permit? Or is it really hard to get it there?
Courtney Morris:
You know, I don’t have to, you have to do the short-term rental permit if you want to rent. So in order to comply with the city and also not have to pay for the permit, you know, I just rent to guests who are staying 30 nights or longer.
Delia:
And is the permit really expensive?
Courtney Morris:
I don’t think it’s particularly expensive, but I haven’t looked into it too much, though, I think it was somewhere around the $200 a year mark. The issue with the permit, of course, it’s for properties that are your primary residence and this is no longer considered our primary residence anymore. Even though we do occupy it 50% of the time, we’re not depending on the year, and especially with COVID, we haven’t been occupying it as often. So I think it’s relatively easy to get, but again, I think you can only rent like 180 days per year, even if you do get the permit. So like I said, it’s just been easier for us to and we’ve had great success with just booking people who want more than a month at a time. So I would say our average guests stay anywhere between two months and four months.
Delia:
Now we have two things, the fact that you only rent over 30 days, right?
Courtney Morris:
Yeah.
Delia:
And the fact that you are pet-friendly listing?
Courtney Morris:
Yes.
Delia:
Yes. Okay, so I like to make you some questions about the pet-friendly thing, so are most of your guests bring their pets to your listing?
Courtney Morris:
I would say about 75% of our guests bring a pet and it’s always a dog. We’ve never had anybody bring a cat or anything else.
Delia:
Okay, so 75%, is a lot of guests in this. All of them stay over 30 days with the dog there, right?
Courtney Morris:
Yep, that’s correct.
Delia:
Okay, so over 30 days with the dog. That’s, I haven’t heard about that before because people out there really complain about bringing dogs into the listing, right? And they only do short-term rentals, so I’ll like to know about your personal experience, like in general, with people staying with their pets there for over 30 days.
Courtney Morris:
Sure. So our experience hosting people with pets has been fantastic. We often cater to guests who are local to Los Angeles and either remodeling their home or moving into a home that they’re remodeling and need to get out of their house for a period of time. And of course, because we rent for 30 days plus those kinds of guests often have pets because they’re used to living in their own home. The other type of guests that we often have is grandparents who are traveling from out of town to come to Los Angeles to either meet a new grandchild or stay and spend the summer with their grandkids, so those are also people who are going to be leaving their home for an extended period of time and they don’t necessarily want to leave their dog with a pet sitter for an entire month. So we have absolutely no problem hosting pets at our house and we have had very minimal damage to any of the property. I think if you go into the Airbnb host groups, there’s a lot of irrational fear from hosts about having pets at their property. You’ll see comment after comment of people saying “just say you have allergies to get out of it” and while I think that that’s fine to do if you are actually hosting a Home share and Airbnb affirms that by having it in their terms of service, that if you’re hosting a Home share, you’re allowed to decline pets, but you even see people going above and beyond to like decline emotional support animals or service animals just by saying they have allergies and unless we’re just the whole host population is full of people that have allergies, I tend to think most of those folks are just trying to not host pets because they are irrationally afraid of damage. You would think hosting pets long-term like we do opens ourselves up to greater pet damage, you know, we’re pretty particular about going above and beyond at our property to make sure that we’re providing things for people who have pets that encourage them to take better care of the property. For example, if you don’t provide a dog bed and you don’t provide dog bowls and you don’t provide dog waste bags for picking up pet waste in your yard, then you’re more likely to come at the end of their stay and find a yard full of pet waste or that they’ve been using your cereal bowls for food bowls and that the pets been sleeping on your couch. So there’s a minimal upfront expense of paying for a couple pet related necessities that make the owner stay more comfortable that you know, 9 times out of 10 somebody traveling across the country is not going to bring heavy pet bowls, they’re not going to bring a bed, so providing those things just makes their stay more comfortable, but it also ensures that they’re going to use those things rather than other things in your house in order to like, you know, meet the needs of their pet. And then you know, we really also go above and beyond in cleaning. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of having pet hair around my house either, so I have no problem going above and beyond in the cleaning, you know. We’ve actually had people message us saying “I noticed that your house is pet-friendly, we actually have a child who has severe pet allergies. What is it that you do in your cleaning to make sure that we won’t have an allergy issue?” and I have never had a complaint of pet hair and I have never had a complaint of pet allergy or pet smell in my house. You know, I’d say the things that we do that I would encourage other owners to do especially if they’re considering opening their property to pets. You know we put extra allergy covers on all of our bedding. There’s actually pillow covers that zip around the pillow, they’re actually, I believe meant for protecting, you know, folks who have allergies to down comforters and down pillows from getting the allergens of the down in their face but it also provides another layer that I can strip off at the end of a stay, I can wash that and it just protects the inside of the pillow from any buddies, you know, pet dander or hair. I know that this is controversial amongst the Airbnb host community. We have comforters on our beds and we wash our comforters between every guest and as weird as it sounds, I have definitely seen some hosts that they wash the sheets, they don’t wash the comforters. Even if we didn’t host pets that would be something we did every single time because it’s very gross. We also have air purifiers that we run inside the house in between guests. So whether we have a vacancy of two days or we have a vacancy of seven, we leave that air purifier on in between every single guest. We also provide ruggable rugs in our house, those are great because you can actually strip the top of the rug off, throw it in the washing machine and wash it, so we never have any pet hair or pet dander left on any of our rugs. We don’t have carpet anywhere in our house. Wood Floors upstairs and epoxy flooring downstairs and both of those floorings are extremely pet-friendly and we watch almost every single piece of fabric in between every guest, so even throw pillows and things on our couch, we stripped the covers off of them. If there’s a guest that’s only staying in one of our bedrooms, we still wash all the bedding from all of the bedrooms. We kind of just go above and beyond to make sure that in between every single guest you’re not smelling or seeing remnants of a prior guests pet because of that I’ve had zero complaints, we have five star reviews. So I think that there’s a little bit of irrational fear out there that somebody’s going to have a pet just urinate all over their house, and leave pet waste everywhere. I’m certain that has happened to a handful of people, I know it very well could happen to me one day, but I would say, we’ve been doing this since 2018, we haven’t had any scenario like that happen before. And you know, I kind of chalk it up to the cost of doing business, if we ended up with a situation like that, we will deal with it, you know, we will replace the rugs, we will do those things, but we build that stuff into the cost of our nightly rate, so that if something like that happens, we’re prepared.
Delia:
The fact that you have good reviews makes sense because that is one of the best services I’ve ever heard of. The fact that you clean all the fabrics in the house, I’ve never heard that even if the owner doesn’t allow pets there. That’s really, really good.
Courtney Morris:
You know, I stay in Airbnbs myself. When we travel as a family, we like to stay at Airbnbs and I’ve gone into somewhere, it’s pretty obvious that some of those things are not getting attention often enough. I don’t want to be that host. And typically the way it works because I know, obviously, there’s a cost associated with that sort of cleaning, we do have a housekeeper who comes in and she does sort of the standard turnover between guests. And then my husband and I actually go over there ourselves and we’re the ones that take the rugs out of the house, we invested in a steam cleaner, we steam clean all of the rugs that can’t be thrown in the washing machine, we do the ruggable, we put the air purifier and we do all this stuff.
Delia:
That’s great, but it must require a lot of your time as well sometimes, like in between the guests, right?
Courtney Morris:
I actually don’t think it takes a whole lot of time, you know, because my guests stay for over 30 days, oftentimes, they will kind of get things started for me, you know, we usually do ask that our guests start at least their first load of laundry and towels, they’ve used the dog bowls or anything like that, that they put them in the dishwasher to get them going. And then you know, I’ll usually go over there, maybe two or three times to kind of keep the laundry going because that’s probably the biggest thing for us. Especially because we do wash all the bedding, regardless of whether somebody slept in the bedroom or not. That part just takes time because the washing machine only goes as fast as the washing machine goes. So it’s not a lot of time I’m spending over there, I’m just making a handful of trips to keep the washing machine going. And then you know, our housekeeper is usually there for four hours, five hours or so depending on what’s needed. It’s actually it’s not that labor intensive, you know, I think it obviously is time, but you know, I’m a full time employed person myself, Airbnb is not our only source of income. So my husband and I both work full time, we have a toddler, we both do a relatively excessive amount of volunteer work and like I said, I do animal rescue as well. So I would say like anybody can make the time, you know if this is something that they’re interested in, and they’re absolutely terrified of the idea that they might one day have a negative review about like, you know, cleaning or pet hair or something like that, I kind of fully believe that if you do that you can make the time if this is something that you’re actually interested in pursuing.
Delia:
Yeah, I agree with that, as well. Do you also send cleaning or do any type of cleaning?
Courtney Morris:
I do a cleaning service at the end of first month. So if they’ve extended, I tried to offer a cleaning, just to keep up with things, I try to offer a cleaning service every single month. So if I have a guest that staying for four months, they get more cleanings. Because of COVID some of our guests have declined that just because they haven’t wanted an additional person in the house while they’re staying there and we’ve been respectful of that. We’ve only run into a couple issues where folks weren’t kind of cleaning as they go, but even still, it’s not really difficult to do a little bit extra between those folks stay. But turnovers really are not particularly difficult for us, even though it sounds like I’m doing a lot I really, you know, just doesn’t feel like a lot. So.
Delia:
Yeah, I understand. So you previously talk about some things that I’d like to question you about. So the first thing was, you provide things for the dogs like plate, beds, bags for the dog waste, right?
Courtney Morris:
I do. Yep.
Delia:
How much did you initially spend with them? And how much do you spend changing them? If you do change them regularly.
Courtney Morris:
We get most of our pet related items from either like a home goods or a TJ Maxx. People don’t tend to care kind of what these items look like exactly, just that they’re clean, you know. Nobody wants to bring their dog to a house and then put it in a dirty dog bed. So I would say for pet bowls, honestly, we probably spent about $15 on those initially, and we never had them broken knock on wood, but it’s not a huge investment to replace them if we if that did happen, but we are still using exactly the same ceramic pet bowls since 2018 and they clean just fine. And then we provide a pet bed, that’s like a medium size, it the cover actually zips off of that and can be washed. So it we’re also we have exactly the same pet bed, it’s in a brand new looking condition every single time we have a new guest and again, we would be happy to replace that if we needed to. That probably also cost us about $15. It does only probably fit about a 40 pound dog, though and we have had some guests lately that have larger pets than that. So most of those travel with their own beds and things if they have a bigger dog. And then we do we provide pet waste bags. Just like I provide like countertops spray and toilet paper and things that I want people to have to make their state comfortable and certainly the absolute last thing is, we don’t want people to feel like they’re not going to clean the house up in a month long stay because we didn’t provide them any of the things. So we do exactly the same stuff, dog things, you know, if we don’t provide the pet waste bags, they could potentially just leave it in the yard. So why not? I mean, it’s like 25 cents per roll and one role will last me through a guest. So that’s a 25 cent thing that’s, I have absolutely no problem providing, we do also provide a leash because Los Angeles requires that anybody walk their dog on a leash, you know, we have leash laws around here, no dogs are allowed to be off leash. Our guests sometimes come from out of state and they’re not familiar with the local leash laws and we want them to not, you know, get in trouble, should they be walking down the street without a leash. So we provide one of those as well and we require that they, you know, sign off that they, we do have a list of dog related requirements that we ask them to sign off on as well, which I can go into in more detail, but we do make sure that they acknowledge that if they leave the gate that the dog has to be on a leash. So we don’t provide anything that would be like, you know, something specific to each pet, but the things that every dog needs, we provide those.
Delia:
Okay, it’s not a big of funds investment. It’s really cheap considering, right?
Courtney Morris:
It’s less than $100 worth of things that I’ve not had to replace even yet. So.
Delia:
Yeah, so I guess if people are considering get pet friendly, they should also consider to get these items because it’s not a big of funds investment and I think it’s worth it.
Courtney Morris:
I agree, we used to provide like a little toy each time, like a little stuffed monkey or a little stuffed rabbit or something like that every single time we had a guest come. And those things are the things that ended up getting a little too gross for us to leave them for the next guests pet. And some dogs just, you know, frankly don’t like certain kinds of toys, so we don’t offer those anymore.
Delia:
I’ll like to talk about some numbers related to being pet-friendly. Do you see that your revenue, either monthly or yearly, can dramatically increase or increase at least just a little bit with allowing pets in your house? Does it bring more guests? How much is your pet fee? Things related to that.
Courtney Morris:
Sure. So I guess I can’t say for sure that it increases my revenue. I mean, I think that we do pretty well for the area, to be honest with you. The house is only a two bedroom, one bathroom house and it rents, you know, for what I would consider very decent price per night. But what I will say is that I think it dramatically increases our bookings. A lot of the hosts sentiment in the area and certainly I think just across the country really is that folks do not want to host people’s pets and so that puts us in a very small amount of, it just makes our market a little bit smaller being one of the only pet friendly rentals in the area means that anybody who does want to travel with our pets is obviously looking at our listing and not all of the ones that don’t allow pets. So you know, right now, I would say between now and the end of November because we don’t have a booking for December yet. But now through the end of November, we will have had less than 30 days vacant all year long.
Delia:
Wow, that’s really good. And you told me for the you do not charge pet fee. So I assume that if there would be any cost is already included in the booking fee. Would you say that?
Courtney Morris:
That’s correct. We try not to nickel and dime our guests. So we don’t charge any sort of pet deposit or pet fee. You know, we feel like the nightly rate encompasses sort of the potential for any additional cleaning or anything that might be needed. And you know, unless it’s like, extreme and above and beyond, and that’s what the Airbnb Resolution Center is for, we don’t charge any additional fees.
Delia:
Okay, that sounds great. And have your listing been pet-friendly since the very beginning?
Courtney Morris:
It has, like I said, we’re big animal lovers. So we’ve always had when we lived in the unit full time ourselves, we always had pets there. We took, you know, all the measures possible when we were living there to make the home pet-friendly, so that it was, you know, as much as can be indestructible. So we haven’t had any time where we were not allowing pets.
Delia:
And would you say, between a listing in your area that is not pet-friendly and yours, is there any significant difference when it comes to revenue?
Courtney Morris:
I’m not entirely sure there is a revenue difference. You know, there are other two bedroom, one bathroom homes that are not pet-friendly that are in our exact same area at our exact same price point. But we are booked more than they are. In terms of my annual revenue, I’m probably making more money because I am consistently booked and the guests that could not go stay in their place because they had a dog comes to me. But we’re renting for about the same amount per night.
Delia:
And would you mind sharing about those numbers with us? How much revenue are you getting per stay? And how much would be your estimated per year?
Courtney Morris:
Sure, that’s a good question. Because we do, Airbnb is not our only booking method and we do offer discounts to people who are local and who find us through other means than Airbnb. But we rent on average for $4,600 a month.
Delia:
And what about the yearly revenue so far?
Courtney Morris:
All right, 4.600 times 12 is 55,200, I’d say on average, we probably have, you know, of the time that we have available because again, we do occupied this unit partially with our own family. So I’d say probably, you know, when we’re at our quote unquote max capacity, which is not year round, for us, we’re probably about $40,000 or so.
Delia:
40,000 is still a good number, it’s still like a number even though, do you have to occupy it because of some larger or is just because you want to occupy it?
Courtney Morris:
My husband and I are actually both from out of state originally. So we used to occupy this unit full time ourselves when we moved and we live very close to it now. But when we moved, the idea was, rather than taking a long-term tenant on, we actually wanted to leave this unit available so that when our own parents or siblings came to visit that they had somewhere to stay because I know that we all understand the stress of having like house guests and so we can eliminate that by having them stay at our Airbnb property. So we do leave certain parts of the year available for our own family to use it and that’s really what’s great about it, to be honest with you is we can make a little bit of money when it is available. And we’re making $40,000 a year on it when just because sometimes it happens to be vacant. But the rest of the year our family can come in and not have the added expense of having to pay for a hotel and we don’t have the stress of having to have family stay with us. So it’s worked out really great for us.
Delia:
Okay, that’s great to hear. I know you’re not year round, right? But in terms of seasonality, would you say there are some months that book more than others?
Courtney Morris:
I don’t think so. I think that’s probably just because we’re in Los Angeles. We have the luxury of the 70 and sunny weather almost year round here. So we don’t have any high seasons or low seasons.
Delia:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And lastly I’d like to ask you, is there any number you think about when you think of what extra expenses do you have as a pet-friendly host?
Courtney Morris:
We’re probably spending about $500 a year on replacing items from quote unquote pet damage. Now again, I think when potential hosts get worried that they’re going to incur a lot of pet damage, you know, that might be a lot for some people, like I said, we’ve kind of raised our nightly rate to reflect that. But we do, obviously, things still wear out and they do kind of wear out a little bit faster when you’re talking about pets. So, where possible, we have the ruggable rugs on the ground, but there are other places in the house where that’s not possible. So we probably replace our floor rugs about once a year, we don’t spend a ton of money on those rugs because we know that we’re going to replace them. So we just try to, you know, put a new, like a front door rug out every single year. And then also, like, you know, people who are staying for a month, they will bathe their pets at the house, most often. I mean, some of them, send them to the groomer, I’m sure, but you know, our towels occasionally will come back looking like they’ve washed a dog, we don’t want our next guest to have to use a towel like that, so we have a bunch of extra towels that we have for, you know, getting rid of a towel like that. And then you know, there’s the dog waste bags and things like that. And of course, because we do run the air purifier in between every guest, we also are replacing the HEPA filters in those all the time. So in general, it’s probably costing us about $500 a year. And like I said, we have had some pet damage, you know, I did at one point, I had a dog, you know, destroy a pillow. And I have had another dog, you know, dig a little hole in the carpet and not in like floor carpet, but in a rug, but again, we replace those every single year. Those things to me feel like normal wear and tear. I know if you’re not a pet friendly host, you’re thinking about it, like, “oh, man, I can’t imagine replacing those things”. Those are few and far between, you know, four years of hosting and I’ve had, I can count on one hand the amount of times that I’ve looked at something and been like, “oh, that’s damage from their pet”. The rest the time, it’s just general wear and tear and these things have to be replaced anyways. Nobody wants to use a five year old bath towel. So it’s totally fine.
Delia:
Yeah, the expenses seem reasonable and also the amount is not that much. I would have think of something much higher giving on what the hosts usually say, the damage in their listings, but you have been lucky with the pet damage seems like.
Courtney Morris:
I don’t think that’s true. I actually don’t think it’s a situation of being luck related. I actually think it’s just because we are pet owners ourselves because we built the unit for ourselves at one point to be very pet-friendly, that we’ve prepared the unit. You know, we don’t have things in there that are easily destroyed. They are nice things, we have very nice things, but they were put in there in mind that, you know, a dog could be on these things or a dog might be, you know, how do we pick the items that are going to be best suited for being around pets? So I don’t think it’s luck, I think we’re just prepared. I had mentioned to you earlier, we do have a list of rules that we go through with each of our guests and I think that that sort of helps us weed out people that we can tell pretty easily if they’re, you know, not a responsible pet owner. So we don’t allow pets that are not spayed and neutered at our house, you know, those are the ones that typically have marking issues where they’ll pee on furniture. And it’s actually a law in Los Angeles that if your pet is over the age of six months old, it has to be spayed or neutered, so we do not allow guests to bring animals that are not spayed or neutered. Big animal rescuers over here, so we don’t deal with people who didn’t fix their dog. And we also require that anybody bringing their pets sign off saying that their animal is up to date on vaccines. Los Angeles also requires that pets have their annual rabies vaccine or their three year rabies vaccine depending on which one they got. So, you know, we make people affirm that their pet is up to date on vaccines, we go over the rules about not leaving pet waste in the yard and taking their pets out on leashes and a lot of time and we even provide a pet crate in case people you know want to crate their dog at night or when they leave the house. So it’s pretty easy to tell when if somebody comes to me and they’re like, “oh, man, I don’t vaccinate my dog and I’ve never, you know, I haven’t gotten it neutered yet” like that’s red flag number one like I’m sorry, you can’t stay at the house. But, you know, generally speaking, we can tell if somebody’s responsible. So.
Delia:
Yeah, that’s right and aside of that, you have a very big advantage on your city, expecting dog owners to vaccinate their dogs. I don’t think in other countries or I’m not sure if in other states, but in other countries, like mine for example, you cannot ask for the vaccines just to allow them into a place, right? So it’s a big advantage.
Courtney Morris:
Yeah, there’s definitely, for sure there’s some advantages to being in Los Angeles because I can require that stuff of my guests. You know, once you’re in Los Angeles for 30 days, you’ve got some residency rule rights over here. So I can require that my guests have those things for sure and if you live in an area where you can’t, it obviously gets a little bit trickier to enforce that stuff. And my guess quite frankly, I don’t go over there and like, check dogs to see if they’re vaccinated or neutered or anything like that. I don’t really, you know, I try to give my guests their space, so I’m not, you know, up close and personal with them. But oftentimes, like people will volunteer that information if I’m asking and we do, you know, the one thing that I will say also is we do unfortunately have some breed restrictions. Our homeowners insurance does not allow six different dog breeds. So I do have to ask people, if they’re bringing any dogs of those six breeds. I actually haven’t run across that in the past where I’ve had to say no to a dog. But if I did, there would be some that I unfortunately have to say no to unless it was a service animal.
Delia:
Now that you’ve mentioned about service animals, I’ve heard before that some hosts are, you know, reluctant on allowing pets because some people fake service animals and I’m not sure of how does that work. I thought, if you had a pet, like a service animal, you had to have papers for that. So can you tell us a little bit about that? If you have any knowledge of that.
Courtney Morris:
Sure. I have a little bit of knowledge of it just because I actually do have two emotional support animals myself. And, you know, I would be one of those guests that if I said, “I would like to bring my two emotional support animals” that I would have a slew of hosts telling me that I’m, you know, a liar and a faker and all of that. So I’m sympathetic to those people, for sure. Do people take advantage of that? Absolutely. Have you seen the peacock on a plane, I’m certain that there are people that take advantage of emotional support rules. But I also really try to believe people when they are saying that they need reasonable accommodation. And again, like it’s not an issue for us because we’re pet friendly anyways, so we wouldn’t be asking for that paperwork because it doesn’t matter. But I don’t see the need for a bunch of hosts to kind of come up with reasons why they shouldn’t allow emotional support animals or service animals and claim, you know, apparently, every host is anaphylactic to dogs, nobody has friends with dogs because that’s, you know, the excuse that’s given often about why they can’t host a service animal. Now, for me, so I’ll speak personally, I have a letter from my doctor. Now, this is not an online certification that my dogs have gotten. This is not a letter from a doctor I’ve never met that I found through the internet who was willing to write a letter. This is a letter from my actual primary care family physician that says that I need these two dogs. So I have that letter and I’m required to provide, you know, if I fly on an airplane with my dogs, I’m required to provide that documentation and they’re allowed to ask me two questions, you know, one is what function does this dog provide? You know, as vague as I want to be all I have to say is emotional support because that’s what it is. And then basically, like, what is your documentation for it? which is the letter that I have. You know, usually, it’s a red flag to me if somebody provide some sort of letter that, you know, is some online certification that they found because generally speaking, those things are often offered up in groups by people saying, you know, if you want to just call it an emotional support animal, you can go and get this online certification or this online doctor’s note, those things tend to be a red flag. But you know what, like, that also just might be a person who doesn’t have insurance who couldn’t go to their doctor or that could just be a person who doesn’t, you know, they read online that they might need the certification and that’s what it is, but they genuinely might have a need for that pet. I honestly just think the Airbnb host community can be a little ableist. To be honest with you, I think we need to be a little bit more inclusive and a little bit more accepting. And I really, it bothers me a whole whole lot when I see people call folks who are asking for accommodation, you know, liars and it’s fake, and they’re just trying to sneak a dog in and all of that stuff really does not sit well with me. So.
Delia:
Yeah, I understand completely and thank you for talking about this, I think is going to be very important information for hosts or future hosts to hear about. Lastly, are there any tips that you like to give for hosts who are probably thinking on getting their listing to be pet-friendly or who already are pet-friendly?
Courtney Morris:
You know, I think my tips are just to kind of relax about it a little bit. And just to think through like if this were a dog in your own house and we all know dogs are dogs, pets are pets, like they are not immune to having accidents, especially when they are in a new environment. My own dogs if I take them out of my house, like God knows what will happen and I would be horrified if they did something in somebody else’s house, so that’s kind of the framework that I’m working with when I choose rugs, when I choose furniture, you know, and then the stuff that I provide, you know, like, if I were traveling somewhere, would I want to haul a dog bed? Would I want to haul big heavy ceramic dishes with me? No. I think it’s worth spending a little bit of money to make sure that you’re thinking, that you’re getting the things that you need that are going to protect your property, that are going to make their stay more pleasant. And then you bake that stuff into your nightly rate, you add $5 a night if you need to and in a month, that kind of stuff will pay for itself. I mean, we’re talking about $100 worth of dog bowls, dog poop bags and a bed, you know. So I just tend to think like, people will pay a little bit more money to know that they’re taking their pet somewhere and that they don’t have to haul that stuff with them. So if it’s a cost thing that’s holding you back, just add a little bit to your nightly rate, I do think it will pay off. And then you know, make sure that you’re, you know, going over your house rules with the person, I don’t ever think that, I’d never assumed that my guests are reading my house rules on my listing, listings can be so long and by the time somebody has booked your property, they’ve probably looked at a dozen other listings and your rules are blending with everybody else’s rules. So it’s better just to send them a friendly reminder, like, “hey, you know, I just wanted to remind you like, at the end of your stay, please pick up all of the dog waste from the yard”. If there’s furniture that you don’t allow the pets on, make sure you list what that furniture is. And then make sure that they reply to that stuff and acknowledge it and that will really go a long way because our guests have been incredibly respectful of our rules and I think a lot of that is just because we’re just having a normal conversation with them about like, here’s what the expectations are and we’re not coming down hard on them or living in fear that we’re going to have a rug ruined. So.
Delia:
That sounds great. And I’m sure because you’re friendly approaching, that’s the reason why they respect your listing a lot because I agree that there are some hosts that might be a little bit harsh on the guests when they’re talking about their specific rules. So the friendly approaching is like 10 out of 10 of you.
Courtney Morris:
Well, have you seen the hosts that are like “if you leave the house, your dog has to stay in a crate 24/7”.
Delia:
Yes, I’ve seen that.
Courtney Morris:
Why would you ever go stay at somebody’s house, unless you’re the kind of person that creates your dog 24/7 at home and they’re used to that, your dog is going to lose its mind at sitting in a crate all day long. You would never want to stay in that person’s house like just, it’s just not that hard to be reasonable.
Delia:
Yeah, I agree with that. So that would be it for today. Thank you a lot for your time and your tips. This has been a really interesting experience to hear about.
Courtney Morris:
Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me!
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