Jasper is joined by Henry Bennett, Co-founder and CEO of YourWelcome. YourWelcome’s product is a tablet system that hosts can use to provide important information to their guests as well as sell additional services!
In today’s episode, Henry explains why he started the company, and how YourWelcome can save you time, increase the likelihood of a 5-star review, and even generate additional income!
Some of the topics covered
How Henry came up with the idea to start YourWelcome
- Rented out his house on Airbnb
- Left out a tablet for guests to use and realized they were using it to research local activities/hotspots
How hosts can customize the tablet for their Airbnb
- Ability to create custom recommendations
- Ability to display instructional videos
How hosts can use the tablet to sell additional services to guests
- Late checkout
- Mid-stay clean
- Parking permits
- Food delivery (most popular)
The cost of YourWelcome
- UK: £49.99 for 6 months, £99 for 12 months
- US: $59.99 for 6 months, $119.99 for 12 months
- 20% of revenue from services
Typical ROI when using YourWelcome
How to sign up
- Visit yourwelcome.com: Use code “GPFYP” for a 30% lifetime discount
What’s next for YourWelcome
Henry’s tip on using YourWelcome’s Analytics Portal
- The host will get to know the needs of their guests
- Can find out what recommendations are actually being used
- They can customize the tablet according to what the guests mostly use
Why using the YourWelcome tablet can help you get 5-star reviews
Connect with Henry Bennett
Resources mentioned
yourwelcome.com: Use promo code “GPFYP” to get a 30% lifetime discount
Connect with Jasper
Email: jasper@getpaidforyourpad.com
Twitter: @GetPaidForUrPad
Instagram: @GetPaidForYourPad
Facebook: www.
This episode is sponsored by Hostfully.com where you can create a custom digital guidebook for your guests!
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Complete Transcript for Get Paid for Your Pad Episode 123
Jasper:
Welcome to Get Paid For Your Pad, the definitive show on Airbnb hosting, featuring the best advice on how to maximize profits from your Airbnb listing, as well as real-life experiences from Airbnb hosts all over the world. Welcome.
This episode is brought to you by Hostfully, a company that helps you make beautiful guidebooks for your listing. Make your own at hostfully.com/pad, and a special for Get Paid For Your Pad listeners, you’ll get a free guidebook consultation after you make your guidebook.
Welcome, everybody, another episode of Get Paid For Your Pad. My name is Jasper, I’m your host, and today I have Henry Bennett on the show. He’s the co-founder and CEO of YourWelcome, which is a tablet that Airbnb hosts can use to provide information to their guests and sell extra services. Did I say that right, Henry?
Henry:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I think you summed it up pretty succinctly, actually.
Jasper:
Okay, great. Great. Welcome to the show. Let’s start with your background. You’ve been an Airbnb host, right? Or are you still?
Henry:
I still am, absolutely. So, basically, I started doing it after we previously exited a business we were running before, and I listed my house, which I’ve got with my wife and three kids, just on Airbnb and we just decided to see how it goes. We took in some really decent people, people booked, and it went pretty well, actually. So, the idea of YourWelcome really started from the pain points we experienced of renting out the home we live in, actually, on Airbnb.
Jasper:
Okay, and what was that pain point, exactly?
Henry:
So, the house is growing old. It’s like 260 years old. So, the typical guests that we got were American families who had seen our street on period dramas, and basically, they’d read about the house, were very excited, and actually, the practicalities of living in a house of that age meant I got quite a few phone calls and a lot of Airbnb host experience. So, for example, how you light an open fire, how you lock doors in the house is very wonky.
So, essentially, what happened, although it was very profitable renting on Airbnb, essentially what it meant was that I got a lot of phone calls. So, after doing it probably two or three times, I decided to…well, we, myself and my business partner basically trained up and hacked together a very simple application that just had a series of videos in it, which basically, so I started saying to my guests when they arrived, I said, “Look, you know, before you phone me about anything, can you look on this really simple app on this Android device that’s out for you? It’ll have a video explaining any of your problems, and if you phone me up without looking at them, I’ll just tell you to look at the video.”
And the thing that happened that was quite interesting was, one, obviously, it streamlined, materially streamlined the amount of phone calls I got, but the interesting thing about it was, is that I left it on the side just by the kettle, actually, and when I got back, I realized that people had just used my tablet just for searching. So, it started an idea where we thought, this is quite interesting. And, obviously, all of my guests had turned up with iPads, laptops, phones, but because I’d simply left the tablet out, they were prepared to use it to look for things.
And so, the idea was conceived between myself and my business partner that, actually, if you left a bit of hardware out, guests would use it, and actually if you could marry what previous guests had kind of searched for and looked for, and then serve up appropriate services, you’d probably get quite an interesting business. And that’s actually what has happened in that all the hosts that have now installed our tablet, the usage that amasses is, yeah, like a recession time over the last six months to 11 minutes. So, the fact that there’s a practical hardware that has information on it, and then also services that you can buy, and additional information, means that guests use it. And I think it’s the hardware, is the enabler on that.
Jasper:
So, what you’re saying, when you first left out that tablet, people weren’t just using it to watch the videos that you provided, but they were also using it to look up places in the neighborhood or stuff like that.
Henry:
Just, yeah, just searching for, ‘How do I get…’ Well, my house is in London, so looking for, ‘How do I get cheap tickets in London Eye? What’s the best restaurant?’ all the stuff that, typically, you’d imagine that guests would search for. Because they didn’t clear their history, I just thought it was very interesting that, just because I’d simply left out a device, they’d used that rather than using their own device, because it was by the kettle. And that’s really where the idea started to formulate. And it’s very interesting to see, just the volume of usage, because clearly, most guests that turn up have their own devices, but because of the free one sitting out with loaded information on it, that’s the one they’d choose to use.
Jasper:
Right. So, you were thinking, instead of having people using the tablet to search on Google Maps or search in Google for the best restaurants, etc., we might as well just provide that information to them, anyway, so that they don’t have to waste their time searching.
Henry:
Correct. One of the things that we kind of looked at quite early was that when you stay in a hotel type accommodation, there’s a lot of information that is given to you and easily accessible. So, you know, I could talk to the concierge, I can call to the receptionist, there’s always a book left out with more detail than, obviously, an Airbnb host would do or likely to do, but when you stay in short-term accommodation, whether it’s vacation rental, Airbnb, or a serviced apartment, actually, the onus is really on the guest.
So, often, an Airbnb host will leave out 10 recommendations – “This is a great restaurant; you should check it out.” – but then the guest, themselves, then has to often Google that restaurant to find out, where is it, how do I get there, is it public transport, is it taxi, is the price right, is the food right, have they got availability. Whereas, we considered that if we could streamline that process within our own ecosystem, we could then quite easily and seamlessly turn host recommendations into guest experiences, which would benefit the host because, obviously, the host wants to feel like they’re giving good tips, and also, from the guest’s point of view, that’s a great experience.
So now, for example, on our tablets, when someone needs a recommendation on it, it’s not only got it with a map, it’s also got a direct API for a taxi service so you can get a live taxi price for how much it would cost to get there. There’s obviously a direct link to get to the website. They can also get directions sent to their phone. So, basically, as I said, it’s streamlined our processing that recommendation experience.
Jasper:
So, if I understand correctly, if one guest finds a restaurant, uses the tablet to find a restaurant, then the next guest can book that same restaurant. Is that how it works?
Henry:
So, no, the host leaves out their series of recommendations for the restaurants, which then they have easy access to be able to find them, but we also, as YourWelcome app, have also left a whole lot of recommendations. So, for example, if you’re a host in London and, like me, you live on the South Bank, I would leave recommendations all around the area, but what I wouldn’t do is leave recommendations if they want to go to Mayfair. But, what YourWelcome’s done is that we’ve gone through and left recommendations for the whole city, so there’s a whole load of recommendations which you can turn off if you don’t want ours, but it means that your guest is capable, whether they decide to stay locally or if they want to go to other areas in the city, as well.
Jasper:
Right. So, as a host, you can completely customize the tablet for what you, as a host, think is best. So, you can use some of the recommendations that you’ve installed on there already, and you can add some yourself, some of your own recommendations.
Henry:
The tablet looks entirely like your own tablet because you can record a welcome video, of which, having talked to Airbnb, they… And I think there is something in this, where if you can’t greet your guests personally, which occasionally sometimes is the case or you decide to do it that way, if someone can see it’s your home, if you leave a video saying, “Hey, welcome to my house, I hope you enjoy it as much as we do,” I think people will tend to treat it better because of the person attached to that place.
And then, you can leave a whole series of instructional videos about how things work. So, popular ones that people tend to leave are, what happens if the boiler trips out, or here’s how the appliances work, security… Every house has a nuance, where you think, if you live in it, where you learn to live with problems in your house, sometimes it’s not easy to write out, for example, how to reset the boiler, but actually, you can leave a very simple 10-second video. So, it is quite customized if the person’s house is what is explained in the tablet, and then the recommendations, you can just have your own or you can mix yours and ours, however you want to do it.
Jasper:
Right, okay. And what else can you add to the tablet?
Henry:
So, you can also, which is kind of one of the biggest USPs, which is everything we considered when we set this up, is that if you look at how hotel businesses run, they make up to 20% of revenue from anything other than selling space, so you know, selling food, selling experiences, spas, etc. Whereas, if you’re an Airbnb host, it’s actually quite difficult to monetize the guest outside of purely selling your space. So, what you can now do on the tablet is you can upload services that you can sell.
So, popular ones people do is, obviously, late check-out, so you can purchase through there. You can sell mid-stay cleans, left luggage, parking permits, pretty much anything you can service. There’s even, some people have set up stuff like you can order meals through it and the host will then cook it themselves and bring it over. And then, also, we’ve set up a whole series of partnerships with third-party food delivery companies, taxi companies, which you also earn a percentage of that revenue through.
So, all we’re trying to do is kind of bring a fairly significant additional revenue stream to sort of the short-term accommodation economy.
Jasper:
Very cool. Just going back to those recommendations, you know, what I usually do when I travel when I’m in an unfamiliar place, I usually use an app like Foursquare or something to check out the different restaurants in the neighborhood, and what I really like is that it always has this Uber button where I can immediately order an Uber taxi through the app. Is that included in your tablet?
Henry:
So, from city to city, we have different taxi partners. Some have API access, so you don’t even have to sign up, you can just literally press a button, put your credit card in, and a taxi turns up. And then, we also have, if we don’t have a taxi partner, we have an Uber WebView of it. So, obviously, people who have their own Uber account can do it by their phone, as well, but we see a lot of people ordering direct through the tablet. So, because it’s our own version of Android, we don’t have other apps within our system. Everything is WebView.
Jasper:
Okay, very cool. And is it available everywhere?
Henry:
Yeah, you can order it anywhere in the world. We currently have hosts using it in, I think, 18 different countries now. I don’t know how many cities it is off the top of my head. So, everywhere from Bali, countries in South America, we’ve got a lot in America, we’ve got a lot in the U.K., obviously, a lot in Holland, Amsterdam obviously, we’ve got a lot, Barcelona. So, yeah, pretty much everywhere, essentially, in terms of bigger cities.
Jasper:
All right, very cool. And do people… Because I’m trying to think as an Airbnb host, what my concerns would be. Do people steal those tablets?
Henry:
So, no, is the answer, but it isn’t their liability, anyway. So, basically, it’s exactly like saying if someone stole your television during a stay, what would you do is, you’d report that to Airbnb, and as soon as someone sends us that report, we just ship them another device. So, it’s entirely our liability because the product works on a subscription basis, so you don’t own the tablet. You pay a monthly subscription, or you can buy a 6-month or 12-month subscription. So, if anyone did steal it, then we would ship another one, but we’ve had 1,000-plus devices in the market and we’ve not had a single one stolen to-date yet. I think people understand that they’ve booked something with their credit card on whatever platform they’ve come through, so if they steal something, you know, it’s pretty clear.
Jasper:
Right. I also like to believe that most of the people that are using Airbnb are generally quite good people who wouldn’t steal something in the first place.
Henry:
Yeah. And, also, the other thing about it, as well, is the tablet is essentially a dumb tablet in that it’s linked directly to the address, so the tablet can only do two things: It can only connect to Wi-Fi and load YourWelcome app. So, if someone took it out of the property and tried to use the app for, say for example, they took it home with them and tried to order a takeaway, the takeaway would turn up to the address that it’s fixed to. So, there’s no use for the tablet outside of the property that it was in.
Jasper:
Right, okay. Makes sense. It’s not really a concern, then.
Henry:
No. And, also, when you sign up, as I say, if anyone breaks one or steals it, we ship another device, so it isn’t a liability to the host, anyway.
Jasper:
Right, okay. And what are some of the services that are most popular amongst your users?
Henry:
Food delivery, by an absolute mile. So, among the different services that we stat, we see a huge volume of deliveries being ordered, which, to be honest, we were quite surprised about at the start, looking at the times when people order. I guess when people arrive in the city and it’s quite late, that’s a typical thing. We see a lot of taxis being ordered, gym passes. And then, from the services that the host themselves set up, late check-out by far and away is the biggest, and then probably second is left luggage, I believe.
Jasper:
That’s interesting. And can you see what hosts, on average, charge for late check-outs?
Henry:
The average in the U.K., I think, is £20, I believe. It obviously varies territory to territory, and obviously, it depends on how long they can offer that late check-out, and then, people tend to charge £5 for late check-out. So, we kind of give some recommendations based on data we’ve got on what people pay for.
Jasper:
And does YourWelcome take a cut out of the actual money that Airbnb hosts make?
Henry:
So, we take 20% of revenue from services they sell, pay away 80% every month.
Jasper:
Okay. And how much does the tablet cost? You said it’s a monthly subscription?
Henry:
Yeah, because you can order monthly, although, true to life, the majority of people do the six-month or a year. So, it varies, in what currency you pay in. So, if you were… I don’t know where most of your listeners would be located, but if you’re in the U.K., it’s typically £99 for a 12-month subscription, or £49.99 for a six-month, and $59.99 for a six-month subscription in the US, and $119.99 for a 12-month subscription. But, obviously, at the end, we’ll be offering a 30% promotional offer to your listeners.
Jasper:
Right. And the extra services that you can offer through the app… Because I’m thinking, you know, if it’s about, what was it $9 or $8 a month, depending on what subscription you get, I’m trying to think, how likely is it that I will be making that money back by selling some extra service. Can you see how much the average tablet owner makes through those extra services?
Henry:
It varies hugely. I mean, it varies hugely depending on what platform that people tend to market on and what type of short-term accommodation it is. So, for example, if you’re an Airbnb management company, which I believe, some of your listeners rent out more than one property, a lot of people ask for a late check-out. And the thing I always say to people is that YourWelcome is a transactional portal. We don’t own the guest.
So if, for example, a host puts a tablet in and, just as the guests arrive, says, “Oh, there’s some information on that tablet,” then, you know, you’re not going to see a huge amount of revenue. If your guests arrive and you say, “Look, basically, I’ve left you some great recommendations on the tablet. You can get discounted tickets to tourist attractions. I’ve left loads of good recommendations. And, by the way, if you want the late check-out, all the information, and you can purchase that on the tablet,” you see a very strong revenue stream. So, it’s about how you position it with your guests.
So, if you’re interested in running your Airbnb business and having an additional revenue stream, you’re going to set up your .coms in order to monetize the guest and property, you’ll see some pretty strong revenue. If you just leave the tablet out, then obviously, like anything, you’re not going to see a huge amount of revenue. So, it varies very, very differently by host.
And also, we’ve noticed quite a lot of trends on where the tablet’s located and what the revenue is. So, for example, if a lot of your guests are families, motivation’s pretty high, I guess, because they’re in more, they’re buying things like tourist tickets. We’ve got a good partner for that. They’re more likely to stay in and eat, so you can monetize that side of it. If you tend to see your market is 18- to 21-year-olds, they’re coming to party, come stay and party, obviously they spend very little time in the flat and they’re unlikely to order anything through the tablet.
So, a lot of it depends on who your audience is, and also, how you position it to your guests.
Jasper:
Hosts, I can’t emphasize how important it is to share recommendations of things to do or eat near your listing beforehand. Your guests won’t have to go through TripAdvisor, Foursquare, or Yelp. They won’t have to scratch their head and think about possible places right in the moment. I’ve been using Hostfully to create an online and printable guidebook to show my guests my favorite coffee places in Amsterdam. They use my recommendations, and I’m getting fewer questions from my guests as a result. I’ve also included screenshots of my guidebook on my Airbnb listing as a way to differentiate my listing from others. So, make your own guidebook at hostfully.com/pad.
Awesome. So, for the listeners out there who want to give YourWelcome a try, who want to start using those tablets, what’s the sign-up process like? What do people do?
Henry:
So, you go onto our website. It’s a very simple check-out process. Our website’s www.yourwelcome.com. You go onto it and you obviously go to the Buy section of our website. You then choose which subscription package that you require, the cheapest being buying the year in advance, but you can also choose a six-month option and a one-month option in the UK. I think it’s only the six-month and the year being available in Europe and the U.S. And then, what you then do is you go to the check-out and you can enter in the Get Paid For Your Pad exclusive code, which gets you 30% off. The code is ‘GPFYP’, and you add that in, you get your 30% discount. And then, the next day, we ship you a shiny new device, which you then set up via our Web portal. You add in your details, your information about your property, your welcome video if you like, and then it’s ready to go. It takes minutes to set up.
Jasper:
Awesome. And how long does the shipping take? If I sign up today, when do I get my tablet?
Henry:
We ship the next day, so in the UK you’ll get it the day after. Obviously, if you’ve got a property in Bali or somewhere, it takes a little bit longer, but we ship it out first-class straightaway. So, you know, it should be a matter of days, but obviously, it depends where you’re located. And it is free shipping, as well, I might add.
Jasper:
Okay. And does the tablet support different languages?
Henry:
So, we’re just introducing that now as we’ve got a lot of tablets that are in Paris, so we’re under pressure to get that feature there, but currently it only supports… I mean, obviously, you can input any language that you require, so you could have the whole tablet set up in Portuguese, French, whatever it is, but we’re introducing a toggle between English and a second language. So, that will be available in the next quarter.
Jasper:
Okay, very cool. And what are some of the things that you’re working on for the future? I’m sure you’ve seen some feedback, you’ve seen some requests from your customers.
Henry:
Yeah. So, one of the big things that we’re working on at the moment is, we’ve introduced a guest check-in feature, so guests can enter all their contact details which can populate your CRM so you can remarket to them. But, where we see some real value in this is in cities like Milan that have a city tax. So, what you’re able to do, particularly if you’re not able to greet them in person, is the guest basically checks in, name, address, email, their address, they can then take a photo of their ID, which is required in cities like Milan, and they can then pay the city tax directly to the tablet, which we then pay on to you guys, to your account, back to the city.
And, actually, that’s proven to be a real USP within cities that have that because it’s a material problem of, when you greet your guests, you then say, “Oh, I need some cash from you and I’ll need your passport,” people are understandably wary about handing over cash the second they arrive at someone’s house. So, that’s a definite USP for us.
Jasper:
Oh, that’s interesting. I was going to say, because in Amsterdam, Airbnb collects those taxes through the website.
Henry:
Yeah. So, it varies in how they prepare the bill from city to city, but in Milan, currently, the onus is on the owner to take that city tax in their account backwards. So, it depends on what the rules are in different cities.
Jasper:
Right.
Henry:
And we’re expecting to see more of that legislation coming in.
And then, the other kind of interesting thing that we’re offering, as well, is that, particularly where there’s regulation coming in around the amount of days that you can rent, we’re setting up an ability for guests to purchase their stay when they book through booking.com through the same e-commerce platform that the tablets are powered by, which means when the guests arrive, their credit card details, if they wish, are already stored so they can purchase stuff without re-entering them, which we think will be interesting, to increase the transactional value.
And something else interesting, stuff on ground rules, so doing a lot of pre-shooting videos for appliances. So, for example, in the UK, people typically have either Sky TV or Virgin Media TV, so we’re shooting videos for, this is how the Sky TV operates. So, from our versions, people can just go, I want that video, that video, that video, that video, to save time on setup.
So, the big three things that are coming early this year.
Jasper:
Just to get it right, when you were talking about booking your .com, so you’re saying if somebody books your place through booking.com, then their credit card details will be already in the tablet, so if they were to purchase anything else, any extra services, then they won’t need to re-enter those details.
Henry:
Yeah. So, for example, if you’re running your own transactional website, (there are lots of people that do it currently), so you go, ‘come here and pay for the rest of your stay’, if you use our platform, it means that when your guests arrive, they’re already on the same system so we know their name, who they are, it greets them personally, and then it also has their payment details, so actually, when they purchase additional services. So, that’s something that’s coming at the end of this quarter. And it’s something that, actually, a number of our clients have requested, so that’s where that’s come from as a bit of a departure from the core product.
Jasper:
Right, okay. How long have you been doing this?
Henry:
So, we launched on May 1st in 2016, so whatever that is… Eight months, is it, I think? Seven months?
Jasper:
Okay.
Henry:
So, yeah, relatively short, but we’ve got thousands of tablets out there. I think we’ve signed up 65 short-term let or vacation rental management companies. And we also have, I think, about 10, what we would call, serviced apartment or corporate apartment suppliers that have signed up, and a couple of hotels.
Jasper:
Yeah, I was going to say, this could be an interesting thing for hotels to have, as well.
Henry:
Yeah. I mean, our core focus was, and I think will always remain, that bringing an additional revenue stream to short-term letting, I think, is where it’s at because, you know, realistically, the more properties that come on, the price gets squeezed. Now, obviously, you can use lots of clever pricing tools to try and optimize your yield that way, but actually, if you can then add another $25, $30 revenue per stay by selling things that you currently comp or you don’t have the ability to sell because you’ve got no transactional portal, we think that materially affects the probability of this type of model, that people will eventually, who are on Airbnb, to connect to our platform.
Jasper:
Cool. We’re getting to the end of the show. Is there anything else you want to share with the listeners about the YourWelcome tablet?
Henry:
The only other thing that I was going to end with was, the other thing that’s quite interesting, is you also get access to an analytics portal, so you can start understanding a bit more about who your average guest is so you can tailor the in-property experience better. So, how that works is that over a three-month period, we basically aggregate the most popular search terms and purchases that the guests are doing so you, then, can get an overall picture of what your average guest looks like to be able to then improve what you’re doing in-property.
And then, the other thing that’s interesting about that is, you can start to get a better understanding of why people booked your property. So, for example, my house, which is on the South Bank in London, some weeks I get like 20 inquiries, and we couldn’t work out, actually, for the life of us, why some weeks… Because, obviously, there’s always stuff going on in London, particularly in the area that I live in, and it turns out, it’s to do with rugby. I’ve got no rugby stadium anywhere near me. Twickenham is like 15 miles away.
But, actually, it turns out that on big rugby matches, it’s an ideal place to stay because right in the tourist center, it’s got a train station that goes directly to the rugby stadium. So, now our pricing calendar is now fixed to the Twickenham fixtures schedule, which we never would have known without having some analytics about what the guests do in-property. So, actually, that’s a quite interesting feature, as well, for Airbnb hosts.
Jasper:
And how did you figure that out? Did you see on the tablet that people were looking for rugby tickets?
Henry:
Yeah. I noticed that on a month period, the most searched for thing by miles was Twickenham, so then I realized, obviously that’s why people are staying at my property.
Jasper:
Oh, interesting.
Henry:
And you could argue that I should have done more research and understood it, but because, particularly on the South Bank where I live, there’s something going on every weekend, festivals, kids’ festivals, everything going on, it’s quite hard to determine why that would be the case. But, yeah, it’s something that quite a lot of the management companies we work with now are looking at because when you suddenly have 25, 30, maybe 50 properties, that target information materially affects your yield across those properties.
Jasper:
Right.
Henry:
So, yeah, it’s quite interesting as you start looking at these things, but also, the other thing that’s quite interesting, as well, is you get specifics of things that your guests are wanting. So, say for example, you’re an Airbnb host and you’re, for example, in your 60s or you’ve got a family but your average guest might be a lot younger, you might not be the best person to actually give what your guests want, but by looking at the data, you can then start going, “Okay, so if 40% of my guests are looking for ‘does the tube run 24 hours in London’…” One of the biggest searches we saw, particularly where our office is located, around Brick Lane, if you have a lot of properties is, ‘what time does the tube start running’, so then a host would be able to go, “Okay, this the information the guest wants,” they can start leaving out more information of what actually the guest wants rather than what they think they want.
Jasper:
Interesting.
Henry:
It’s having a data-driven approach to basically what you’re leaving out for your guests, which is quite interesting.
And the other thing that’s interesting, as well, is that you can really streamline what information you leave for your guests. If you’re leaving out 50 recommendations, we can tell you which of those recommendations are actually being used. So, if for example, you have 50 recommendations, you have hundreds of guests, and none of them look at recommendations to do with coffee shops in your local area, you can take a view about whether you keep updating that because no one’s looking at this, and you can actually streamline.
Jasper:
Right, so then you would maybe look at some of the things that your guests look at most, and then maybe add a few more options around that.
Henry:
Correct, exactly. So, for example, one of the things that surprised a lot of Airbnb hosts is that guests do what a typical tourist will do, as well as living like a local. And, understand, if this is your first, second, third time in a major city, you’re going to do the major tourist attractions. Very few Airbnb hosts, from what we see in our data, leave any information related to ‘how do you get cheap tickets’. You can buy them on the tablet, but how else would you get there, ways of getting to places that people want to get to. And so, now they’re looking and going, “Okay, so 60% of my guests are actually going central and looking for major tourist attractions. I should leave some information that’s useful to make an au pair experience.”
Jasper:
Right.
Henry:
You can always look at the value as giving your guests what they want, getting a good review, and getting more occupancy. Everyone’s after the same thing. So, I think the tablet, it’s basically giving you a data insight into what your guests really want during their stay. If you can deliver that, you’re going to get better reviews, simple as that.
Jasper:
Right. So, to kind of summarize why would Airbnb hosts get this tablet, it basically improves the guest experience by giving you a very convenient way to provide your guests with local recommendations, it’s very easy to use, and it has more functionality than, for example, if you print out a guidebook, or so, because you can actually, you can order a taxi, you can order food through the application, and so probably save your guests a lot of time. And the second part is that, as an Airbnb host, you can offer different services. Let’s say you want to rent out a bike, you want to sell late check-out, you can offer the service through the app, and so when your guests order those, then you can make some extra money on the side.
Henry:
Correct. So, the way we always summarize it is that you can save yourself time, and therefore money, by leaving video guides, to getting less phone calls, less callouts; you can make money by upselling additional services to your guests whilst in-property; and you can get better reviews by actually getting a data insight about what your guests really want, and tailor your in-property experience accordingly.
Jasper:
Right.
Henry:
That’s kind of the three unique selling points that we kind of express to everyone that signs up.
Jasper:
All right, very cool. Well, I’ll just repeat how people can sign up if they’re interested. The website is yourwelcome.com, so ‘your’ without any other weird symbols, just Y-O-U-R, and then ‘welcome’, no dashes or anything like that, ‘.com’. And there, you can find more information, you can check out the tablet so you can see what it looks like, and then if you want to go ahead and try it out, you can enter the code. As always, I always use the same code, ‘GPFYP’, which of course is the abbreviation of Get Paid For Your Pad. So, if you use the code, if you apply it, you’ll get 30% off. And that’s not just the first month, that’s recurring, right?
Henry:
Correct, so it’s for lifetime.
Jasper:
For lifetime, so that’s quite a nice chunk off the price, so thanks very much, Henry, for that generous offer.
Henry:
Pleasure.
Jasper:
And thanks for coming onto the show. I definitely think this is a really interesting product, and very creative, as well.
Henry:
Thank you.
Jasper:
So, I’m sure lots of people will be interested in it, and I wish you all the best with your company.
Henry:
Thank you.
Jasper:
Hopefully, it will be very successful, and hopefully we’ll be able to chat again in the future.
Henry:
Perfect. Thank you so much for having me.
Jasper:
No worries. And, for the listeners, of course the show notes will be at getpaidforyourpad.com/podcast, where you can find all the other episodes, as well. You can listen to the episodes, as well, on the website, so you don’t have to go to iTunes or Stitcher. And, also, I have a transcript. I get these episodes transcribed these days, so you can find the full transcription on the show notes page, as well as all the links that you need, and also the promotional offer of the 30% off will be there, as well. So, all the information is out there.
So, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
