AirBnb/Short Term Rental Management Assistant

Hi, there. Please read the entire description before replying to this or submitting a resume.

I am looking for someone who can assist me with my short term rental (AirBnB) business. I have two luxury listings in Tennessee in the USA, as well as twenty long-term rental units in three different states. I plan on expanding the short term and the long-term rental business significantly in the next two years.

I plan on providing a long list of videos and articles for you to watch to assist with training. I will pay you for this time spent watching the YouTube videos. I’d like to start off with about 10 hours per week. As you get comfortable with your responsibilities, we can add tasks and there will be more work to do. I am hoping to increase your hours over the next year to 40 hours per week, as the workload and your skillset expands. If we find you have more than 10 hours of work per week and you can justify the time, I will be happy to pay you for the work provided.

As far as your pay scale goes, I will be happy to negotiate based on your prior experience and performance in the future. I plan on giving raises to the right person if they provide what I am looking for. I currently have two VAs who have been working with me for over five years in my long-term rental business. Trustworthiness, honesty and reliability are very important to me, and when I have someone I’m working with who is trustworthy, reliable, and honest, we tend to have a very long and positive working relationship. This is a great opportunity to grow and have long-term stability for the right person.

The work for this job involves supporting my day-to-day short term rental management.

For the rental management, I already have a lot of automation in place. I have a Click to view account, which automates a lot of the booking-related messaging. It also serves as a channel manager since I have listings on Airbnb, VRBO, Google Vacation Rentals, as well as on a direct booking site. I use Pricelabs to automate the nightly pricing. I use Google Drive to hold files. We have a system called StayFi to collect guest emails, and a variety of other automations to set up guest lock codes, manage thermostats and things like that.

Tasks include (but aren’t limited to):

**Short Term Rental Management**

1) Organizing maintenance and repairs, and coordinating with our service professionals – as needed
Managing turns (cleaners cleaning the property) at each check out. This is automated, but will just need monitoring within the systems I have in place. – This should be checked daily in case of instant bookings but should not be a lot of work.

2) Checking with cleaners after each turn to confirm if there was any damage or other issue that needs to be followed up with -either with the guest, or with a repair professional.

3) Respond to guest inquiry messages – a daily task – for initial inquiries, respond within the hour (or upon waking if the message was sent overnight) – This will involve answering any questions, checking availability, and sending quotes if the guest desires. Checking with me for whatever guest questions you may not know the answer to.

4) Developing a set of procedures and message templates- I do have quite a few procedures in place, but as you take over guest messaging, we will work together to document and template common questions, tasks and responses into a regularly-updated manual to make your job easier.

5) Sending welcome text messages to guests- confirming they got in alright and that everything is as it should be. Also, respond to existing guest messages- questions from upcoming guests about their stay, or to guests reaching out during their stay with issues.

6) Leaving and requesting reviews – a daily task – should be submitted 1 or 2 days after each check out. This will require confirming with the cleaners if there was any damage, and with me about whether to leave a 5 Star review or not.
Following up with guests with a friendly message requesting a review if they haven’t left one- after, confirming with me in case the guest was a problem.

7) Putting a list of areas of improvements together (based on guests’ reviews) and sending to relevant parties (usually to myself and the cleaners) with actionable suggestions – weekly

8) Pricelabs and Airbnb Pricing adjustments- Pricelabs is highly automated, but I do check it nearly daily and make small adjustments to try and maximize bookings and revenue. I also do special discounts directly in AirBnB.

9) Many applicants do not actually read the job description. To show that you actually have, If you decide to apply for this job, you’ll need to add something to the title of the email to make it past the first step. Please look up the rock band the Grateful Dead and add the name of the lead singer to the title of your application.

10) Help me create better systems. I am open to new ideas as it relates to systems. I plan on using Loom to record short training videos for you so you can see how I complete each task. If you have a better idea on how to relay information, I will be willing to try.

***Important Requirements:***
This business relationship must be built on trust. My goal is to prove to you that I am trustworthy. I expect the same. I’d like to provide an opportunity for you to earn enough income to live on and be home for your family, or pursue other goals if that is what you want. I’d also very much like to eventually be able to give you the autonomy to make decisions and be part of this team and take the lead on things, not simply an employee taking orders. That is how it has worked with my other VA employees. I do have high expectations of those I work with, and I will do my best to provide the support and training you will need to meet those expectations.

I require someone who has excellent reading, writing and speaking English skills and has experience and some knowledge regarding the short term rental business and AirBnB platform and business model.

You MUST have access to reliable internet and be available to address issues that may arise during the day.

You MUST be available to communicate with guests during the weekend. Most guests check in sometime between Thursday and Saturday nights US time, and so that is when we sometimes questions, and need to make sure guests are happy and settled in. We don’t get a lot of messages, but it is important that someone be on call to answer them when they come in. Beyond that, you can make your own schedule, as long as the required tasks are accomplished in a reasonable time-frame, and guests are getting timely responses.

In your application. Please confirm you are available at the times specified, Please describe any knowledge or experience you have with the short term rental business model, including past work experience. More specifically, please describe any knowledge or experience you have with any of the above mentioned systems. OwnerRez, Pricelabs, StayFi, Airbnb, Facebook, Instagram, Capcut, Canva. If you’d like to include a resume or summary that would be very helpful.

Thank you for looking!
David