Scaling Your Airbnb Business – MaidThis! Cleaning Interview with Scott Shatford

Scott Shatford, founder of RentingYourPlace.com and Airdna.co, is an early pioneer in the Airbnb space and is joining us today to provide some insight to help scale your Airbnb business. Scott started listing in Airbnb in 2012 and strategically built an Airbnb enterprise that generated over $100,000 in profit in its first year.

Scott now runs RentingYourPlace.com, a hub for Airbnb listing knowledge, and Airdna.co, an analytics tool that provides insights into the profitability of over 400,000 properties worldwide.

1. 1. What 3 things do you look at when deciding whether a potential new property is worth bringing on (to list on Airbnb)?Location, seasonal demand, & comparable property performance. Location is really the key and Airbnb is most successful in high-density urban areas. These places are great because they cater to vacation travelers and business travelers alike. The other important piece is really understanding how much a place can earn by looking at the performance of similar properties in the area. I developed Airdna.co to give Airbnb entrepreneurs greater insights into what kind of revenues, occupancy rates, and annual revenue new listings can expect to see across the world.

1. 2. Based on your experience, at what point should a host start looking to bring in another Airbnb rental property? Are there certain benchmarks they should hit before bringing on a new property?The biggest mistake I’ve seen is people trying to grow vacation rental businesses too fast. They sacrifice quality service for the pursuit of more real estate. I think the best benchmarks should be around obtaining 5 star reviews and reducing the time it takes to manage a property to under 2 hours per week. You want to fine tune the operation aspects of things first, the financial rewards will then follow.

1. 3. What was the biggest bottleneck for you as you scaled your Airbnb operation and what how did you solve it? i.e. managing check-ins, cleaning, getting enough clients, etc.Cleaning and automated guest check-ins were my biggest bottle necks for some time. Finding a trusted cleaner that is dependable and provides consistent service is crucial. Once you have that figured out the goal is to automate every aspect of check-ins and checkouts to create a truly passive income. It’s important to have back-up plans to your back-up plans so that every issue can be resolved remotely.

1. 4. What is your favorite software to use to help with your Airbnb listings?The dynamic pricing tools out there today are by far the coolest. Airbnb has recently released their own pricing tool, but it’s no good. Their motivation seems to be to keep rates low to entice more users to use their platform. Pricemethod.com and Everbooked.com seem to have the best algorithm now in the dynamic pricing space.

1. 5. What are your thoughts on the legislation changes in Los Angeles that is trying to ban Airbnb?I’ve been speaking to many reporters lately about this issue and was actually just on the front page of the LA times speaking out against the legislation recently passed in Santa Monica. I think any industry needs some form of regulation and taxation but LA seems to be going about it all wrong so far. An outright ban on short-term rentals is an unrealistic solution to the problem in Santa Monica. Hotels are at 100% occupancy rate in summer and are charging more per night than ever before. What are we going to say to millions of tourist that prop up our Southern California economy you’re not welcome here anymore? Things will change and a more reasonable compromise will eventually take place.