Hello. Welcome back to another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

I'm Annette Grant, and together we are for Thanks for Visiting, and this is the hosting hotline.

If you wanna get your hosting question answered here on the hosting hotline, go to hosting hotline.com, ask your question, and we're gonna answer it on every Tuesday episode. These are so fun to do today. We're gonna help Michael.

Hi, my name's Mike, my wife Bridget, and I host three cabins in Hocking Hills, Ohio. Our Instagram is @hillsideamble. One of the cabins, um, that we host we just built a pretty amazing escape room in the basement of it, and it's just an amenity for the people who stay at our cabin. But we've wondered with Airbnb doing their big push, uh, to host experiences if we could on our orphan days or like our near out timeframe, open up the, uh, the ex an experience, an Airbnb experience, and, um, allow people to just come through and just do the escape room. So our question is, do you know if it's possible to sync an Airbnb experience calendar with a listing calendar? We'd love to hear any insight you have. Thanks so much.

Like with most of these, we're gonna give you more than you asked for Mike.

I wanna say two things real quick before we get into it.

Yeah.

I love me a couple that hosts together.

I just love that.

I think that's amazing. And I also wanna give a huge, like praise for Michael for just putting right in the beginning of his question, doing the marketing. He put his Instagram handle right there. That is how I want you all to be thinking as host, as professional hosts at all times, always be marketing. And so Michael knows there are thousands of listeners to our show and if a, like any sort of marketing efforts, if a percentage of those listeners go and look at the Instagram and then another percentage will actually follow their Instagram, and then at the end of the day, hopefully there is still a percentage of all of the people that heard this episode that could potentially book the property. So I just want to say that is amazing work, Michael, because we as business owners have to be marketing all of the time. Even in the ways you, you will never really know how all of your efforts are gonna come back to you. But I just wanna say that mindset right there is exactly where you need to be, um, for making sure that people know where to find you.

Also, since we're giving Mike praise, let's, let's give him more praise, building something into your short term rental that not a lot of people offer, and that is memorable and fun, like an escape room. Also, well done. If you don't know the Hocking Hills area of Ohio, it is incredibly special. It is very competitive. There are a lot of really incredible hosts who have built amazing stays and Mike thinking, how can we differentiate ourselves from the other people in Hocking Hills? Escape Room is such a cool, I didn't even, we haven't even seen, you know, all of his properties yet, but to know there's an escape room there is very special.

Yeah, I actually checked, I checked it out on the Instagram, so if you wanna see what his escape room looks like, please. Check him out on the gram.

All right, Michael, to answer your very simple question, it is, the answer is no. You cannot sync your two calendars. You cannot sync an Airbnb property listing and an Airbnb experience. They are separate products they treat. Treat it as such, and there's actually no direct calendar sync between an experience and a listing. Even with the ICAL sync feature, Airbnb offers for listings, where you can create a sync up between two listings, you cannot do it. With an experience, but we want to give you kudos for thinking outside the box with your calendar gaps. You know, you've got gaps and you know, there's ways to optimize them. And using your unique feature, like an escape route to generate revenue during off nights is very creative. But let's dive into some different scenarios for Mike and for the rest of you thinking about how you can optimize your calendar gaps to make more revenue what we believe to be worth it and not worth it. And what we believe to be good mindset shifts for all of us as business owners. And the one thing we're very concerned about is Michael wanting to build his property on not only Airbnb's land with the listing, but then also with the experiences, it's a lot of, it's a lot of Airbnb going on, and Michael, you have too special of a property not to be thinking about how you can maximize your, your revenue with your rental. Yeah, sure. Airbnb as a tool, but how can we be thinking about ways to build it on stuff that you do own and control.

Absolutely. And we, with your escape room, um, we wanna dig into, again, thinking really big with it. Um, you may not even need, I'm just gonna say you do not need Airbnb experiences to sell that. I want you to get creative on other ways that you could market. Your escape room to larger amounts of people that could book direct with you. You could only open it up. You know, you could start a wait list for the escape room just on those open days, and you can control the calendar. You control the bookings. You control all of it. So it might be, um, a slower uptick, but I don't think so. Not if you do it the right way. I think there are tons of places, Facebook groups that you could reach out to a, a escape room enthusiasts, uh, pay attention to where other escape rooms are advertising, how they're advertising what their pricing is, and, and one of the things that we thought about is you doing a full week event where it's just the escape room and you're booking that out. Maybe it's corporate stuff. It's like a whole event where maybe you have a food truck or something, you know, something there where yes, they're coming for the escape room, but you're showing them that you have three properties that they could stay at. So I would think that is almost, um. People might call it like a self-liquidating offer or a loss leader of like, how could the escape room be marketing for your properties? So that's kind of the thing that I wanna like flip, flip, um, your mindset on, it's like, wait, how could the escape room itself be marketing for all of the properties? So maybe there is a full week that you take, you have a slow week, you see that in your calendar. You just do the escape room only. Maybe you invite families, you know, maybe, um, like we said, some corporate events, maybe just some local folks. Maybe you even, maybe you even do it as a philanthropic. Uh, adventure. Like you could make, take donations and give that back to like the Hocking Hills area, but then everybody there is seeing your property and know that they could book the, the full property or, or one of the cabins. So I also just want you to think about how could you use that marketing so you're not having any holes in your calendar. So maybe we do a few events that are planned and then your, your calendar's booked up the next year and you don't have to worry about just doing the escape rooms on those days that aren't booked. And I know Sarah has some other ones about some other ideas about what is that anticipated revenue and it, or could we maybe just do some, uh, work on the actual three cabins to make up that revenue?

Well, I just, I just wondered, you know, how much can you actually earn from an escape room experience? Is it 50 bucks, a hundred bucks, even 200 bucks? Now compare that to what you could bring in from just one well priced overnight stay. So this isn't discouraging the, the escape room, it's about making sure you're not missing easier, more profitable wins. Thus compounding two over all three of Mike's properties when you start thinking like this. And so it's actually at a perfect time. Uh. To share with all of you that we are going to be having our, uh, booked and profitable bootcamp happening. The wait list is open, so if you go to, thanksforvisiting.com/bootcamp. You can be the first to know and be the first to get all of your bootcamp goodies to learn how to optimize your listing and your calendar so that we it so we are not overcomplicating things.

Right.

And that we really are maximizing revenue from smart pricing, smart calendar management, and smart marketing techniques. Because we're wondering, Mike, could you bump your nightly rate by five to 9% and earn more? We see it. Over and over and over again as recently as last week hosts under earning because they just don't really understand what they're looking at when they do look at data, if they are even looking at data. And so Mike, I wonder if it's as simple as just bumping your current nightly rate right now, and you could more than make up for those. Those, uh, vacancies at your property. Could you tighten up your seasonal pricing and maximize revenue? Could you turn that escape room concept like Annette said, into a local promo, and make sure that you are not getting too dependent on Airbnb.

The, uh, one other thing I wanna mention is that if you have guests. That have specifically called out their love for your escape room. This is where we want to be collecting in a very upfront, honest, ethical way, information from our guests that we get from OTAs, from online travel agencies that. Mike, you could remarket to people that have already stayed and you don't even need Airbnb experiences. Like, Hey, we have an opening. Would you like to A, come, just come back and stay. Or B, you know, give them some sort of, extra, either you could offer a discount or you could offer like a welcome gift. But I'm just thinking anybody that had a great stay, love the escape room. Like, Hey, do you wanna come back? It's been six months, it's been 12 months. Like reselling people that have already experienced it and maybe it's like, Hey, do you have a friend or family member that didn't get to enjoy the escape room. Um, bring them this time. So think about the people that have already stayed and might wanna come back and have that escape room experience again, or with someone else.

Or have them give the gift of the escape room by referring, I dunno if you said that, but yeah.

Oh yeah. The, the referrals too. Like, Hey, yeah, Sarah. So fun. You're smart. Someone should be in business with you. Uh, no, Michael, we are jacked up, jazzed, excited because. Everyone listening, truly, the possibilities are endless on the ways that we can use our creativity to make money and it's fun. I want you to see it as a challenge and fun. So everyone, what if, whatever property, wherever, whatever type of property you have, I want you to just get out a piece of paper and write down the, you know, 10 marketing things that you could do today. We actually did this on one of our last boot camps. It was really fun. We did a challenge. Um, there's a book called Go For No, and it was like, I want you to reach out to. I forget how many people and like someone showed up the next day and she had done it and got some bookings. So it's just like, write down what that marketing you can do yourself and just start taking action on it.

So exciting. Mike, really good question. Again, kudos to you for building something unique and for always be strategizing on ways to bring more revenue into your business creatively and really well done.

Please everyone check out their Instagram. I would love if you would follow them and then give them a little DM that you found out about them from our show. Let's just do a little community building there and please check out, I wanna highlight, look at some of the other amazing features of their properties. I don't wanna give it away 'cause I want you to go to it. There are some really cool custom things that they've done for families, um, just on their entire property and I wanna call that out. So make sure that you go to their Instagram and check it out. And they've done a wonderful job partnering with influencers also. So check that. I will tell you that one. But you want, I want you to go see the content that has been created and some of the other magical moments they have there on their property.

And with that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

I'm Annette Grant, and together we are. Thanks for Visiting.

Talk to you next time.