My husband and I listed our first short-term rental (STR) unit--a tiny studio apartment--on Airbnb almost six years ago. Two years later, we added a second unit--a 2018 Gulf Stream Vintage Cruiser. Two years after that, we added another studio apartment.  All three have been well received on the Airbnb platform.

As you'd expect from the fact that we've increased our number of listings, we have enjoyed our experience as hosts. The benefits have outweighed the difficulties, and we've learned a lot.  If you're considering hosting on the Airbnb platform, this fifth content challenge post gives you an idea of the pros and cons you can expect.  

Note: From what I have learned, these pros and cons are similar regardless of which STR or vacation-rental platform you choose. They vary in degree but exist for hosts on VRBO, HomeAway, Booking.com, or another platform.​

Here are the most significant benefits we've reaped while hosting on Airbnb:

• Earning extra income. Our units aren't always booked, but we've averaged at least a 70% occupancy rate since we listed our first unit.  Bookings dipped only slightly even during the early days of the pandemic.  We beefed up our cleaning regimen and carried on.   
• Meeting some lovely people. The vast majority of our guests have been relatively easy to host. Some have been wonderful. A few have been absolutely splendid guests with whom we have forged strong friendships.  We didn't expect Airbnb hosting to provide that benefit, but it has.
• Expanding our horizons. We've hosted people from all over the United States as well as several foreign countries, including China, Germany, Canada, England, and Australia. We've learned much about other cultures. We've also heard riveting stories and benefitted from experiences different from ours.

Did you just hear a gentle "THUD?" That was the other shoe dropping. Here are the cons of hosting:
Dealing with a few stinkers. Some people are DIFFICULT to host. They look for something to complain about. They don't treat your things well. They do try to take a mile if you give them an inch.  Cleaning up after these folks and repairing what they damaged is time-consuming, expensive, and discouraging. Thankfully, we've had to block only a few people like this from being able to book with us again.
Constantly needing to be available (or make arrangements for someone to cover.) Hosting on Airbnb, or any other vacation-rental site, means we are in the hospitality business. ​As such, we need to be available. Our places must always be clean and ready when the next guest arrives.
Things get tricky when:

• We want to take a vacation. Do we block all the calendars, change the booking settings, find someone to clean for us, or do some combination of the three? 
• We get ill or face another difficulty. We both had COVID a few months ago. Fortunately, we had guests staying for a few weeks and didn't need to be near them or clean for new guests.  However, if things had been different, we would have been between the proverbial rock and hard place.  
• We want to have these units available for our family when they visit. We have four married children and thirteen grandchildren. All of them live at least 450 miles away. When they visit, they like to have the option of staying in one of the apartments. However, unless we can all plan several weeks ahead, it's likely that both will be booked.

Responding to the changing focus of the Airbnb platform.  When we started hosting, Airbnb had the reputation of supporting its hosts. When issues arose, company representatives listened and followed through on the promises of support and financial backing it made to hosts when they listed their properties.  That's changed significantly, thanks largely to COVID, which sent Airbnb stock plummeting and cost the company millions just in the first few weeks of the pandemic. Variants and uncertainty continue to plague Airbnb

To attract and reassure skittish travelers, Airbnb switched its focus. Now, company reps are hard to reach, and claims that appear to fit neatly into the coverage program are sometimes denied. Additionally, Airbnb has added an onerous cleaning protocol, even for hosts with excellent reviews for cleanliness. Hosts don't have to comply; if they don't, however, they risk having their listings removed from the site.

Airbnb uses the slogan, " You have full control of when and how you host," to attract potential hosts. Lately, that hasn't rung true. ​

We've benefitted from being Airbnb hosts, and plan to continue. For us, the pros outweigh the cons. As long as that is true, we will stay with the platform.

For today's content challenge, I struggled to come up with a YACHT that applies to everyone. Here are my thoughts:

 You Accept the CHallenge, Too! 

How would you answer these questions?
If you already have listings on Airbnb or another vacation rental platform:

• What are your pros and cons?
• Have you established a plan to deal with difficulties as they come?

If you don't have vacation rental properties:

• Do you have a passive income flow?
• If not, how could you develop one?

So long until tomorrow.


​

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines a phantom as “something apparent to sense but with no substantial existence.” That fairly accurately defines my recent freelance experience as a copywriter and content marketer. Since virtually everything is done online, it feels like I regularly work with--and for--phantoms. I’m confident that these people exist; I have some sensory connection with them. I see their texts and emails. I hear their phone messages. I receive the electronic payments they send. Practically, though, modern freelancing often feels like working with phantoms using smart devices. These are people with no substantial existence to me; nor do I exist substantially to them. ​

That’s a great question. A man named Jack Nilles is a big part of the answer. Technology is another. The COVID19 pandemic is a 3rd. Here are the highlights of a process that took over 200 years. ​

American physicist and engineer Jack Nilles believed that having employees working remotely was a great idea--for business and for the environment. Nilles--who is now known as the father of telecommuting and teleworking-- suggested that people living in rural areas should be able to work from home or at satellite offices which could be established close to their homes. Nilles argued that this approach would reduce traffic congestion into crowded cities and lower the amount of automobile exhaust expelled into the air. This, he pointed out, would benefit the environment while strengthening businesses. Nilles was a visionary. His ideas weren’t accepted immediately. Some scoffed at them. How could having employees working out of sight be a good idea?  Others thought his ideas were excellent concepts, but just not feasible. ​

Technology has advanced at light speed from the 1970s until now.   Several of those advancements have changed virtually every aspect of our society, including the field of freelancing.

The Internet revolutionized remote communication. Email allowed freelancers and clients to stay in touch and gave them quick, easy access to each other if a problem or question arose. 

The world-wide-web also made it much easier to research a topic. Trips to local or business libraries usually weren’t necessary. Freelancers or employees working remotely could find lots of answers with the tap of a few computer keys. The tricky part became sifting through a pile of information to find the most accurate and applicable nugget of truth. ​

The year 2020 showed us that remote workers could dress in work attire--at least from the waist up--and then sit down in front of a computer or iPad and Zoom into a brainstorming session or GoToMeeting with their colleagues online. They faced hurdles, surely, but many were able to function well from home. 

When Buffer asked people working from home to identify problems they faced, 2 answers received equal numbers of responses--communication-and-coordination issues, and loneliness. Some of the other factors workers mentioned included 1) being unable to unplug from their work, 2) dealing with distractions, 3) staying motivated, and 4) finding Wi-Fi that worked reliably.

We also learned that contract freelancers who normally work phantom-like from home were increasingly attractive to businesses. According to Upwork, the proportion of workers who freelance rose from 28% in 2019 to 36% in 2020. That upward trend is likely to continue. In June of last year Forbes predicted a coming boom for freelancers, noting that hiring freelancers gives a company flexibility. For many companies, the benefits of locating and hiring someone within a few days, and being able to direct the project by means of email, text or phone call outweigh the risks of trusting someone you often haven’t met and may recognize only from an online photo. This attitude extends to my field of content marketing and copywriting, as well as to many other disciplines.​

Compared to Sir Walter Scott’s “free lances,” today’s freelancers seem to be grossly ill-equipped for the battles they face daily. Appearances are deceptive, in this case. Armed primarily with a PC and mobile devices, this phantom army of gig workers is playing an increasing role in shaping the American workforce.  Although the transition of freelancing from armed mercenaries to phantoms using smart devices took a couple of centuries, the updated version  seems likely to remain indefinitely.​ 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phantom
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/freelance 
https://medium.com/@iworku2018/the-history-of-freelancing-a0b730084e4b#:~:text=Started%20as%20two%20words%20%E2%80%9Cfree,a%20verb%20and%20an%20adjective. 
https://www.freshbooks.com/blog/are-you-being-hired-as-an-employee-or-freelancer 
https://www.gspeakers.com/our-speakers/jack-nilles/ ​

The backwards look can be enlightening.  Once you're out of the emotion or frenzy of the moment, it's easier to see how the hand of the Lord moved by orchestrating details and guiding you step by step--even if you were traveling a path you wouldn't have chosen for yourself. 

The real value of reading events backwards lies in being able to correctly interpret what just happened. Without that clarity, we can misconstrue every critical event.  The key to really understanding the Lord's providence in our individual lives or in the lives of our family, friends or country is to interpret things correctly.  

When we look back over the year 2020, I wonder whether we will correctly interpret what the Lord was doing in our nation and in nations around the world over the past few months. Will we see the Lord working behind the scenes, showing us all how helpless we are to stop a microscopic virus in its tracks? Will we, instead, convince ourselves that "COVID-19 was a fluke accident," or that "the Wuhan virus was a well-executed but malicious plot?"

When we look back, will we realize that, as a people, we let panic rule to the point that we forfeited civil liberties that we may never be able to reclaim? Will we see that--as a nation--we blindly followed the advice of mostly godless people who assured us that we were not able to fight this disease on our own. We NEEDED the government to tell us how to live, what to think, and what we could purchase. 
​

I'm not trying to downplay the danger. I'm staying home. I'm wearing a mask when I do go out. I'm praying for healing of the sick, and protection for medical workers, police officers, and all workers who have to be out and about. 

However, history is replete with examples of the wrong decisions people make when they interpret events incorrectly, especially when they are whipped into a frenzy by media and act quickly. The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is just one example. 

I pray that when we have the opportunity to look back on the first half of 2020, we will do so with 20/20 vision. ​ I hope we won't see the path to recovery strewn with liberties that were hastily cast aside.