What Do you do when a tree falls on your Airbnb
Running an Airbnb is just like any other business and sometimes problems come up that you could never predict. It’s not every day that you get a phone call from a guest telling you that a giant tree has fallen on your home. We were as lucky as one can be in this situation. Although it didn’t crush the house, it was big enough that there was damage and I could not rent the house – so we had to solve the problem!
In this video, we are going to talk about what steps to take when there’s surprise damage to your Airbnb.
Assess the Situation
The safety and security of your guests and property are the first and most important things. When the tree fell, our guests were getting ready to check out so there was nothing that was immediately affecting their reservation. Talk to your guests and assess what needs to be done next.
Make a plan
You have to start somewhere. When you get a surprise call, you might initially think the worst and want to pretend it didn’t happen. You need to see what is going on and make a plan of how to fix the issue. This is when having a great team in place it of the utmost importance to get things moving. After you reach out to your team, you need to figure out how long the repairs will take to manage incoming reservations.
Check Your Reservations
Look at your calendar and see what your guest reservation situation is. If your calendar is open for some time and you know the issue won’t be fixed in a day or two, block off the calendar!
Tip : Make a note to yourself in the Private Notes so that when you look back, you can remember why you needed to block off your calendar
If you have reservations on the books, you need to contact your future guests immediately. Remember when you are talking to guests, although the situation may have ruined your day, they don’t care about that they are concerned with their trip. Whatever reason they are traveling, it is important to them, so when you reach be sure to be honest and empathetic.
Now, rinse and repeat – be sure to do this with all reservations that you think will be affected. Don’t just cancel the reservation. Contact Airbnb and let them take care of the rebooking and rescheduling of the guest’s accommodations. If you have ideas on where they might be able to stay, propose them! Do what you can to help but leave it up to Airbnb to handle all of the logistics.
Get The Issue Fixed
Do this as quickly and efficiently as possible. Use those contacts for the team you put in place and let them know you are looking to fix the issue fast. Do what you can to help manage and move things forward in getting the cleanup started ASAP!
Unblock your Calendar
Once everything is resolved, open your calendar back up for guests to book. If there were guests you had to cancel due to the issue and it ended up getting fixed fast than you expected, reach back out to them. Let them know if they would like to rebook your Airbnb is now available.
If you do this, offer them something extra – give a discount, buy them dinner, etc. Motivate them to rebook and show them how well you handled the situation. Chances are they have already found another place to stay, but if they come back to your location, they might remember you in the future!
In Conclusion
We hope you don’t have a situation like a tree falling on your home, but if you do be sure to take these steps to fix it. It’s not ideal, but owning a rental property means you must be prepared for surprise issues to pop up when you least expect them. Take care of your guests to make sure it doesn’t hurt your hosting business in the long run.
