Interview with an Airbnb Host from West Palm Beach, Florida - S2 EP24
Welcome back to another episode of Into The Airbnb, where we talk with Airbnb hosts about their short-term rental experience.
Today’s guest is Daniel Tisdale, based in Austin, Texas, who owns and manages a luxury Airbnb unit in West Palm Beach, Florida. Today he’ll share with us about his journey on Airbnb from how he decided to investment market to his current achievements as an Airbnb host, along with some useful tips for hosts who are interested in remote hosting.
This episode is sponsored by Airbtics, the only one analytics dashboard for short-term rental investors and managers, where you can find the 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 24: $600 ADR during high season – Smart Investing in a Luxury Airbnb Unit in West Palm Beach, Florida
You can also listen to this Into The Airbnb Podcast Episode on Otter.
Delia:
So can you tell us how did you get started on Airbnb?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yeah, absolutely. So the real estate has always been something that has been, you know, of interest to me. I purchased my first house when I was 26 years old. I live in Austin, Texas and if you’re familiar with the Austin market at all, you’ve probably heard how it’s just exploded over the last few years. So I purchased my first house, you know, four years ago, as I saw the value of owning real estate and through that first purchase I, you know, turn that property into a long-term rental. Then with the increase in property value, I did a cash out refinance and with that, I went and purchased an Airbnb, my first Airbnb property in South Florida, in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Delia:
Great and how did you choose the market?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yeah, so I chose the market after doing quite a bit of research. I used tools like AirDNA, PriceLabs. For me, personally, I look at Airbnb as kind of lifestyle investing. So I love to play golf and so I wanted a place that I could, you know, use leverage and use it myself as as kind of, you know, a place to go do golf trips, have vacations and, you know, I decided on West Palm Beach because of the great value that you get for properties as well as the fact that it’s surrounded by, you know, arguably the best golf community in the world. So you’ve got Palm Beach, you’ve got Jupiter, Florida, where a good chunk of PGA Tour professionals live and you know, a lot of retired golfers live in the area as well, so there’s, you know, a big golf community down there. So one of my goals, you know, as part of my brand of building my business is kind of focused around, you know, a golf centric vacation offering and so that was kind of the main reason in conjunction with the numbers being great. But also, you know, it’s going to attract a lot of golfers to come and I can also leverage that property myself.
Delia:
So can you tell me about the most like visible advantages of having your listings near the Golf centres?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yeah, so I think you get kind of the best of both worlds when you’re in South Florida because you get a good chunk of people who are coming down for golf trips, I’ve had quite a few people who have booked my place and they’ve come solely to go play golf. And you know, I have a five bed three bath house can fit about 10 people. I’ve had college golf teams stay at my property. I’ve had, you know, just groups of friends who have come down to do a golf trip in the area. I’ve also had, you know, a good amount of families come for vacation and they’re coming to go to the beach. So you kind of get the best of both worlds because you’ve got amazing beaches and you also have amazing golf. So that was kind of my thinking, you know, in terms of how I wanted this property to play out and it’s been very successful so far.
Delia:
And according to your research, do you saw that over three bedroom houses works better for those areas?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yeah, great question. So one of the reasons that I wanted to target a larger property, like a five bedroom house, is due to the fact that I can hold, you know, up to 10, maybe even 12 people in my property and with that, you know, I’m not necessarily kind of competing directly with hotels because I can support a large amount of people. And, you know, larger groups of people that want to be together in a shared space are not going to have to go and purchase five or six hotel rooms, they can just book my house and, you know, it’s a pretty spacious area. So it definitely affords me the opportunity to be able to not have to compete directly with hotels, due to the property being a little bit larger.
Delia:
So if there was, for example, a two bedroom house out there available on Airbnb, would it compete or compare with hotels around there also?
Daniel Tisdale:
So I would say, it depends, you know, I think some people would prefer to stay in hotels if they had a group of four to six people, maybe they booked three hotel rooms, though, I think when you start to get into the larger sized properties, wherever they require four to five or six hotel rooms, you know, it just becomes quite a bit more economical and just easier to book a single property, which is one of the main reasons. I think, three bedrooms are kind of on the cost, they obviously can hold, you know, six to eight, potentially even more people, depending on the bed setup. But some of those three bedrooms can’t be smaller and so they would likely be competing with hotels.
Delia:
Yeah, I understand completely. Now, I’d like to make you some questions about the area you’re hosting. Oh, no, sorry. Actually, my next question is, you’re currently based in Texas, right?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yes, I’m in Austin, Texas.
Delia:
So are you doing remote hosting?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yes, I am the owner and operator of my short-term rental business. So I heavily rely on having a great cleaning crew. I heavily rely on, you know, technology and software tools to help me to be able to manage my property successfully remotely. I’ve done a very good job of managing it remotely. It’s somewhat of a newer property, it’s been active for about six months and I just got super host status on Airbnb in April. So it’s kind of confirmed that what I’m doing is working out pretty well for managing it remotely.
Delia:
Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with remote hosting, especially in your area, South Florida?
Daniel Tisdale:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you know, the main tools that I rely on to be successful with remote hosting are a couple different things. So of course like I mentioned, you have to have a great relationship with your cleaner because they’re really your eyes and ears and your boots on the ground, so they’ll let me know if I’m running low on supplies and I need to order more toilet paper or shampoo. They’ll let me know if a guest, you know, left anything. They’ll let me know if a towel was stained or really anything that’s that’s going on. I also leverage a cleaning management tool called Properly that allows me to set up an automated checklists for my cleaning crew to go through and they have to take verification photos of the property after and during each clean. So that allows me to remotely check to make sure that the property looks as it’s expected to and I can kind of verify, you know, from a distance that the property is set up and ready to go for the next guest. That’s the one tool that you know, from a cleaning perspective that I rely on and work with. From a management of the property itself, I leverage a platform called Gatsby for host, that’s my channel management tool and so this allows me to automate the process of listing my property on Airbnb, VRBO, booking.com, TripAdvisor and it’s a centralised tool that allows me to communicate with guests, regardless of what platform they’ve booked, as well as also, I can easily spin up a direct booking website. So I have a direct booking website, evenparproperties.com that I can easily set up so that people can book directly with me and not have to spend extra fees going through a platform like an Airbnb or VRBO. So that helps with listing management, guest communication, I set up a lot of automated messages to automate the process of guests check in, you know, checking in during the state to make sure things are going well check out instructions. I have messages that are set up so that if a day before check in is available or a day after check in is available, I will automatically send a message to the guest to let them know that they can either check in early or they could check in late. You know, this just kind of helps what kind of information around, you know, making sure that there is as much of the process automated as possible. Then the other tool that I, couple other things that I rely on, one is, I heavily rely on the automated lock setup that I have. So I have a Schlage on code lock and this allows me to remotely give access codes to guests. That access code process is automated through my channel management tool, so through guests ease for hosts that has a direct integrate integration with Schlage and that makes it really easy for guests to be able to check in and you know, not have to worry about giving out keys and anything like that. Then the last tool that I heavily rely on is PriceLabs for automated pricing, so I’ll use this to do dynamic pricing so my prices will change on a day to day basis you’re depending on occupancy in the area, demand in the area as well as you know if I’m getting close to the date and I don’t have a guest already booked my pricing tool will automatically reduce the price by a certain percentage to attract guests by giving them kind of a special offer lower than my base fee, you know, as it gets close to the check in date.
