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

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

If you wanna get your hosting questions answered here on the hosting hotline, go to hostinghotline.com, ask your question, and we'll answer it here on our Tuesday episodes. Today we have a question from Danny.

Hi Sarah, an Annette. My name is Dayne Phillips and I just took over being the landlord for my mom for two different rental properties, and I have lots of questions, but I'll stick to two today. When it comes to couches. What are your thoughts on couch cushion covers? Does that make things easier or does it make it harder with more laundry every time that you have to do a cleaning? We have them at home for our dogs and we love them, but I don't know how that translates to an Airbnb. Number two, how do you feel about temperature controlling and having some kind of an AC device that does not allow guests to go above or below certain temperature controls to make sure that you don't have a ridiculous bill if they're not paying attention or if they like extreme weather conditions indoors. Thank you guys so much. I'm brand new to hosting and I'm just loving all the content that y'all put out.

Dayne, welcome to the world of hosting.

I wanna pause for a second. Dayne, your mom, I A, wanna meet her. She sounds awesome. And I just love, and this is for every listener out there, if you can, um, have your family help you with your properties. Sarah and I are huge component or proponents of partnerships of working with friends, of working with family. We're gonna put it out there that I think if it is structured and everyone can communicate, it can be an amazing, amazing way to connect with your family, be grow wealth with your family. And so Dayne, we speak to so many hosts that the reason they are purchasing property or hosting is generational wealth for their family. It seems like you are taking part of that right now. So we're just really excited for you and glad that, um, you and your mom are kind of working on this project together.

Dayne, I don't know what sofa cushions or what sofa you're using, so I do wanna lead with the caveat that it might be super easy to take off your cushion covers and wash them and all that kind of good stuff. But I will say that I've found great operational efficiency with getting couches that have awesome performance fabric so that if and when someone spills something on the sofa, it really beads off and it's incredibly easy to. Vacuum up pet hair to get it, you know, cleaned professionally every six months and just to do some spot work every once in a while. But honestly, if the performance fabric is great, performance fabric's, performing wouldn stain,

if it's performing, if it's performing the way that it should,

it's perform correct. And so I, I don't, that's my vote, is that if you haven't bought the sofa yet, I would instead invest in a sofa that has incredible material used for the sofa upholstery,

and I'm going no couch cushion covers because yeah, you're cleaner. The less that we have to command demand of the washer dryer during the turnover, the more efficient they can be on cleaning other things. I just think it's an added element that, like Sarah said, there are other options out there that can make your turnover professional's life easier, your life easier. I would go that route. And then also depending again on the couch cushions. As a guest, if you know that they are covers, you might be wondering what's underneath those covers. Are they, are you trying to hide something? Uh. I'm going no on the couch cushion covers. And like you said, you prefer them at home, Dayne. And as we lean into this next temperature con controlled question, you are going to have to look at the world through a different lens. Now, this is not your personal home. Uh, someone is paying for this stay. So a lot of decisions that you've made on your personal residence. Are no longer valid in the quote unquote commercial space, a space where paying guests are staying. So we wanna start now to dig into the temperature controlling.

Dayne. In all my 12 years of hosting, I've never had an electric bill that was out of this world. I have had reviews from guests saying thank you to this host for allowing me to control the temperature in the home as I see fit. Now, I would be lying to you if I didn't tell you that we found out that a guest had the AC on in the dead of winter. And you're like, what is happening? And you can just go to that place of extreme decisions of, well, now we're not gonna allow. Mm-hmm. Whatever. And we're gonna put a governor on the, and I, Annette and I. We will stand firm in believing that we want our guests to feel comfortable in the space. And one of the people who left a review thanking us for allowing her to control the temperature was a woman who was pregnant and she was like, I love having it cold and this host let me make the temperature whatever I want. What I can tell you, Dayne, is if you're really worried about it, a lot of the new smart thermostats will allow you to not let it go below a a a level that you think is extreme. But I would just caution you to control your guest comfort too much. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, because who know? Like your, actually Sarah, this is a funny story. We are sitting in my house right now. Sarah has a blanket on. But it is 74 degrees on my thermostat. But like, and this is truth and like, so she is not comfortable. I am comfortable and even within our own environment, we're, we're trying to control it. Um, and I just think that that's one of those things, again, in hosting. There's gonna be moments where like someone, it could be the dead of summer and they don't like AC at all and they just don't turn it on and you win. You know, there might be someone in the winter that still likes it chilly, and they don't turn the heat up. So there's gonna be, instead of thinking about, um, the worst case scenario there, think about all the times that these guests are helping you support your utility bill. I would just kind of shift your mindset there and yeah, no temperature controls there. Um, and because. Again, like Sarah said, you have no idea what's going on in someone's world with like health or just anything and you want them to be comfortable and temperatures are very important.

I do support using the setting where if the thermostat doesn't detect motion, it goes into an eco situation mode.

Right.

I've seen hosts try to ask guests to, you know, turn off the AC when you leave the home and listen everyone. I forget to do that in my own home. You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. Like so when they're on vacation mode or they're not in their normal habitat, I expect that of our guests I think is asking a lot. And I know there are a lot of you out there right now that are very much disagreeing with Annette and me and that's okay. And Dayne, you are the CEO of your own business, so you get to make the decision now hearing our, our thoughts. But having that mode where if it doesn't detect motion and it goes into an eco setting, having that be something that automatically happens, I support that as well.

And being, I mean, you know, and getting a smart thermostat that you could control, um, and help you out. But I think you're gonna be good to go. But we're excited for you, Dayne. Send us the links to your, uh, properties. I, I don't know if you're just, if your mom was, if it was like long term and you're taking it short term. So, uh, email us hi@thanksforvisiting.com. We wanna hear more about how that's going down.

And with that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

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

Talk to you next time.