Hello, welcome back to another great episode. My name Sarah Karakaian.

I'm Annette Grant, and together we are for visiting, and this is Hosting Hosting hotline.

You wanna get your questions answered on the hosting hotline, all you have to to hotline.com, your question, and get it answered here on podcast every Tuesday. These episodes are so fun, we have a question from Joanna.

Hi, Sarah, Annette. This is Joanna. I've been trying to follow through on your suggestions to upsell additional gap nights before and after a guest stays. I'm curious if you figured out the optimal timing for this. Is it soon after a reservation is made or seven days before check-in, during this stay? When do you recommend a set up those automated messages to go out? I'm I'm a rural drive to market in Central Virginia, which is primarily a weekend destination outside of the summer months, and we're really trying to get some additional nights booked. Thanks for any advice and tips.

I am so excited for Joanna because this is going to work.

It will work. Let's. Share with the listeners though Joanna is trying to sell gap nights. Some other people refer to them as adjacent nights, so it's when she has some openings in her calendar, has a guest that's booked and maybe there's a night before the the reservation or a night after the reservation ends that are wide open. And why not try to sell it to the guest to either arrive early or stay late. And the great thing. The wanna do this because don't need a new guest for that night. They've already chosen you.

They've already chosen you, and there's, there's no new turnover process, right? You might just need to communicate, not might. You need to communicate with your cleaner that stay has, the dates have changed or it's been extended, but all the extra cash that get for them staying the extra night. That all goes you because again, you're already hosting them.

And I think what a lot of hosts don't realize, this hospitality, I would love if I was able to check in early and it was available. Let me know. I, I would pay for this. I have paid for it. Uh, late checkout in places. So letting know maybe they don't need to get up, um, immediately on Sunday morning and start driving home. Maybe they could the afternoon and enjoy the amenities or maybe spend another night. So. I want you to think about it too, as an offer of additional hospitality to your guests also.

And you might think, well, I don't think guests are gonna say yes in my market or my property. And you would be surprised, especially if this is the advice we're gonna give joanna, if you package it in a way that gets your customer, and I'm using the word customer very specifically here, thinking in a different way. That is not sleazy. It's not, not that there's anything wrong with being sold to, especially if something you want to buy. But it can be something that unlocks, like Annette said, more relaxation time, a slower morning. Maybe someone in the party wants to get there beforehand to set up before everyone else gets there. I mean, there might be things they hadn't thought about because one, maybe they're maybe they're not a planner, like it's literally not in their genes or their brain to be thinking about all those things.

I can relate.

Or or things have changed

Yeah, I love that. Where there's so many times where like all of a sudden work lightened up on that day that I was traveling. I can get on the road earlier. I'm like, I would leave right now, or I'd leave the night before because my meetings tomorrow got canceled. And so just think that people's plans, believe it or not, do change. And these are offers that, um, we definitely you making. So, Jo Joanna, like, kuddos to you for starting to try this because you will see additional revenue. But to answer your question now after we've explained what they are,

Right. Joanna, before we get into your answering your question specifically, I do wanna tell you that when you implement this start tracking it and I mean, every single offer you make, track, track it. So if it's an automated message, put it in a spreadsheet or if you're fancy and you can automate that into a spreadsheet, I would do that because as you learn, this goes for everyone. As you learn, Joanna is asking, when should I offer it? Well, that depends on your property, on your guest avatar, like the, the typical guest who stays with you. That all can be tweaked and you can only learn when the best time to do it is, is by starting somewhere, make the offer. And so I would put in the guest name, the date of arrival, date of departure, the date that you offered the extension, or to arrive early, what they said exactly in response to your offer. And then whether or not they took you up off it, up on it or not. And the, the most important part of that is exactly what they said to your offer. Because what we can do is take their words, put it into chat, GPT, and have it find patterns amongst all your typical guests. Do you need to change the way you're offering it to them? Do you need to call it something else? One of our coaches inside of our hosting business Mastery coach, Wendy, she doesn't even call it a gap night or come, she calls it a half day stay,

or she doesn't call it early check-in. No. 'cause they get offended that, you know, some people might get offended that they just wanna come. You know? She's like, wait, just give me the early check-in. So it's a half day stay. Works really well for her.

And Wendy learned about the half day stay because a lot of peep, she's in the Phoenix, Scottsdale area and a lot of flights come into Phoenix, Scottsdale early in the day. Yeah. From the east coast. Mm-hmm. Because the east coasters are finding the there, the sun.

At 9:00 AM 8:00 AM

Right. And they have nothing do with their time. So again, Wendy learned that after trial and error. just don't want all of to like get this try it's not working.

Well, the other part with your spreadsheet, Sarah, is we talk to hosts so often and they say it didn't work. And my first question is, how many offers did you make? Uhhuh A, they either don't know, or B, they're I'm like. What we've gotta get a larger, like my goal for five people to say no to me every day about something like before noon. So I want you to make sure that you've really tested it before you say, um, it doesn't work. The gap nights don't work. Airbnb promos don't work. Like I wanna see the stats on it.

I love that tip because. No one talks about what it takes to make these hacks, these tips and tricks work.

And then you'll know what your stats are. okay, if one in 10, you start to understand, okay, one in 10 guests, take up on that. An extra, I don't know, maybe it's a hundred dollars, maybe it's 250, maybe it's 300. I don't know what your ADR is on those days, but you've got one in 10, and then you're like, okay, how many guests do I have a year? And then you're like, that's an extra amount of money. You can start to do the math there. You can reverse engineer what revenue looks like for selling those days that were already open.

I can tell you for our urban market, if there is a night available before or after the stay and the out all our offers that out, 40% of people said yes in some way, shape, or form. Did. That's pretty good.

I think that 40 per i, that is way better than my rate, my closing rate.

But yeah. So like, and again, like in some way, shape or form. it wasn't whole night,

maybe it was

an hour maybe it was some right. But let's, let's give Joanna somewhere to start.

The cadence of when she should be doing this. And we're gonna be honest with you. There is not a one size fits all here on when to do this. And Joanna, quite honestly I would not automate it in the beginning because of what Sarah's saying. I would get 10 to 20 underneath my belt so I understand what they're saying. Um, you'd probably have higher likelihood of closing them when you're, it's not an automated message. Making sure that your team is in the loop. So I would, in the beginning, not automate this, just to get a feel and then lean into it.

I like that tip lot actually. 'cause it, yeah, you can in real time perfect it over time. There are three different moments when you can offer this, make this offer. You can offer it after the guest books. We'll talk about that. You can offer it once your booking window closes. And you can offer it during the guests stay. You can offer it all three times.

I would recommend all three because let's say they don't decide until that third during their stay. It's not the first time they've heard you. You've been kind of priming them, nurturing ahead of time, nurturing them ahead of time. So I like the strategy of all three.

So if you still have a night available once booking comes in. You could whether it's a few hours later maybe couple Again, this on your guest avatar and, and when they're the most responsive. But you can say, Hey, there is a night available before your trip starts. I know that you're hosting for that birthday party. Would you like to purchase or would you like to, uh, start your, stay early and come the night before or early that morning stara head start. Like whatever it is that learned from that guest. Booking your place, and this is Annette's tip of not doing it automated at first can help you get that sale.

Yeah. You can speak to their needs, their wants and

Exactly. And you can say, then we can secure it now. So no one else books it. You wanna let them know that your place is in high demand. Even if Joanna, it's your season and it's mostly weekend bookings, she doesn't need to know your guest is a she. I don't know in my head. So having that. We can secure it now, so no one else books. Gives it a little bit of sense of urgency to your guests so they can make that decision quicker, sooner rather than later. So could do it after the booking confirmation, maybe a few hours later or the next the next couple days, and offer that up to them. Then the next time you could it, this when we usually do it in our urban market, because we, our booking window is so short and close guest arrival that, doing it after the guest books is often not ideal for us. Problematic is. So when we offered it is once the gap, once booking window closed, which for us is about four to five days before guest arrival. If there was a night available before or after stay, we send a message and say, heads up know, tomorrow night's still open, or this Thursday is still open. Would you like to add it at a special rate before someone else grabs You can say, however your guest wants to be spoken to Joanna, you wanna tweak it to your guest avatar. And then finally, during the guest day, especially if they've mentioned you that loved it, they may not want to leave or they might want to have slower morning on Sunday. 'Cause you said you have weekend and they wanna be able leave like maybe more towards the, um, afternoon or evening or even just the next day. So they can whenever they like it. You could, package that don't call it a late checkout, but say if you'd like to have slower checkout process or even just leave tomorrow morning or Monday morning, sunday evening is still available, we just adjusted the rates. You could say something like that. If you want me to secure for you, just let me know. And the cool thing about this is, is if you use a internet pricing software, it can automatically adjust pricing for you. And sometimes we didn't even adjust the pricing. Especially during our higher season and we had that gap night available that adjacent night to their arrival available. They, and just it goes into how you package it, just offer it to them And saying, Hey, we've been getting a lot of last minute bookings we just wanna let you know before this gets snagged up, that Thursday is available. So if you wanna get an early start to your weekend trip, we would love to have you arrive Thursday or early Friday morning you can tweak it.

And you gotta think too, like sometimes flights change, they get canceled and then people are like, wait, what am I gonna do with an entire day? So things really do change at the drop of a hat. So make sure that you are offering all of these, especially that during the guest day, if a, of course, if you have it available. And going back to, so Joanna, the one thing I really wanna highlight there is understanding your booking window, because we don't want you to cut off any, future, like long-term reservations for a potential one night stay. So understanding your booking window is gonna be really important into when you should have that second message go out to them.

You can, Joanna, if you know your off season, maybe you do have in your messaging that there's an automatic discount to that night, you could say we're offering 10%. To anyone who books the property within the next three days. We wanted to let you know again, a sense of urgency of when to do it always helps a customer make up their mind.

And again, like it is money for you that you would not have received. So, you know, we don't want you slashing your prices, but how could you make that additional revenue. And then when you are ready, you absolutely could. Do the automated messaging?

Yes, and know for sure our partners at Hostfully, and if you have breezeway messaging, offer this conditional logic. Called if there's a day available before the stay starts or after the stay starts, and maybe you start to learn that people book two nights you know you can change that conditional logic whatever you need. Both of those softwares and others in the, in the software space, offer this technology so you can automate it. The easiest automation is after the booking window closes, to have that go out. I think it could be a better conversion rate if you offer the stay right after they book. If that is a more manual process that either you or if you have a guest service team can kind of. If the guest has alluded to the fact that it could be really helpful for them and they haven't thought about it, maybe that being a more of a manual opportunity.

And for all of you out there, we all get the, can I check in early question? Correct. So I also wanna take this opportunity right now. Why not sell them if the day before is open? That's where you could sell them a half day stay. That's where you get into the copy, see why they wanna check in early. I know sometimes people are coming for a wedding, like they wanna get ready, they need to like, you know, they need to shower, they need to get dressed, they wanna, you know, steam their clothes, iron their clothes. They maybe wanna have, you know, a little cocktail or two before they head out. Like listen to why they're wanting to come and instead of just an early check-in, offer them the full night ahead of time or that half day stay. So it doesn't have to be, you know, like the gap night. It can be as they're booking like, Hey, this, this is what we can offer you right now. And some people have never thought of that before. I have. I tell this story often 'cause it came into my mind. I have a friend that every time he goes to Europe, he always books the day before. A lot of time, if it's a hotel, you need to tell them because they might, they might sell your room, but just letting the host know, Hey, I booked the day before. Because we get in super early communicating, he's like, I always get, I'm not gonna have my wife and daughter at a coffee shop with their luggage for 12 hours once we've been on an international flight sitting there waiting to check in. So he always books the day before. Let's the host know so he can get all of his check-in instructions. Let them know we are not gonna be there, not, not to be alarmed that they're not gonna check in that night, but right when they land, they're gonna check in and it has been a game changer for their family and like the enjoyment of the trip. So offer that, like once I learned that hack, I was like, oh my gosh, Sarah and I have started to do that. Either stay late somewhere, even though we're flying out late that night actually, we took up, uh, that. Coach Wendy, we actually took her up on her half day stay because we were staying there and our flight wasn't till late at night. We're like, we wanna actually stay, um, and enjoy the pool. And we actually did that. We did add on lovely and

I'm, I, I can hear a lot of hosts right now old Sarah would think same way of, gosh, well that guy sounds like a dream guest and my guests want these free check-ins. Here is, that is an opportunity everyone, if a guest wants a check-in and they say, you know, you might wanna say, sure for $50, like instead of telling 'em the price, you could say something where it's a little sales psychology of it sounds to me like it's important you into the home early so that you can ease into your weekend. Since we never know how a guest the space our cleaning the day arrival, it would be best if secured the night before. That way whether you come the night before or early day of check-in, you know that ready for you and your party, what a great way to start off time with us.

Mm-hmm. And I like throwing in there too. Like we cannot rush our cleaning team, nor do you want to be rushed, you know? And I think that's just, yeah. Helping that sales psychology them understand. 'cause like I just said, if not they're be spending time and money at a restaurant, which will equal the same exact way. Do you wanna be, um, Ubering and forth to different places, going different restaurants, potentially spending more money than you would have if you could have went ahead and checked in? Joanna, you are crushing it. Everyone, please, we have heard all over the country that are using this and they are making money, extra money on these reservations on days that would've sat empty. All right. I know we're all trying to figure out ways to quote unquote upsell things. This is the first quote, unquote, upsell you should be focusing on because it is your core product, which is the overnight stay.

Absolutely. With that, I am Sarah Karakaian

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

Talk you next time.