Top Ten Tips for Renting Your Place as a "Guestnest Host" in Tampa, FL

TAMPA, Fla. - Dec. 3, 2013 - PRLog -- In Tampa Bay, Guestnest.com is a great way to turn extra living space into cash. Guestnest helps people turn vacation homes or rooms into income by renting either nightly or monthly.  Nightly renters are typically professional workers or travelers. Monthly renters are local professionals looking for all-inclusive rates or flexible terms. And Guestnest makes it super easy to get started in Tampa, Clearwater, and St. Petersburg areas, and now available in Tampa, Clearwater, St. Petersburg, South Tampa, Westchase, Channelside, Westshore, New Tampa, SoHo, Countryway, Palma Ceia.

“Guestnest really focuses on quality. The other thing I really like is that Guestnest provides credit card processing so I get paid online and on-time.”

As a Guestnest Host Mentor, this article provides “TOP HOST TIPS” to make your first time hosting at Guestnest as easy as possible.

Guestnest is a peer to peer accommodation platform that allows everyday people to post their places, spaces, homes, apartments and spare rooms for other users to stay as a guest. The Guestnest rental platform facilitates this by bringing "verified", "professional-minded" people together to rent from each other simply, quickly, and securely.

You can rent out a whole apartment, home, mansion, house boat, villa, bungalow, house or just a spare room.  Guests book and pay hosts a nightly or monthly rate right online.

Guestnest research shows that average hosts renting to local guests earn approximately $677 per month and hosts renting to vacation guests make $108 per night in Tampa, Clearwater and St. Petersburg. This extra monthly income can now be yours.

“I started off renting one room locally and then added another for vacation nightly rentals. This is a great way to earn money from both markets.  I use this money to pay for my own mortgage.”

Based on my own experiences, here are my top 10 tips to obtain the best guests and make renting on Guestnest simple, secure and fast.

https://guestnest.com

Pictures worth 1000 words
1. Photos of your place in Tampa are the most important factors to success, so upload at least 12. Take a photo of every room, the front of the property, photos of unique features of the home. You are selling a “space for living,” so show off the place's personality.

2. If you're not a competent photographer, don't worry: Guestnest will soon have a team of photographers that can come to your place and take professional photos - FREE. Contact Guestnest - info@guestnest.com -  if you are interested in this service.  This service is coming soon.

Communication

1. Guestnest is a platform where communicating and setting the right expectations are critical.  Remember most guests will be booking online without a site visit.

2. Guestnest search rankings take into account your reply time to ensure a consistent experience for guests when booking, so make sure you reply quickly - ideally within an hour of a potential guest making contact.

3. Guestnest builds your rental agreement right into the system to make it easy to cover all terms. You can use our Rental Agreement Suggestions template, based on 10 years of rental experience, and modify them according to your wishes.

Detail Orientation
1. Guestnest is a premium service that provides all the tools for regular home owners or apartment lessors to rent their entire place or an extra room.

2. When setting up your profile, give Guestnest as much information as you possibly can. Fill out every one of the fields and be as detail oriented as you can be.  Guests will be evaluating everything you say with the goal of booking without a home visit so its important to be thorough.

3. Listings should include features, benefits and important information about the room, home, place, neighborhood and city.

Tampa Pricing Strategy: “Lower your rate to get going”
1. When starting out on Guestnest, we recommend starting low to traction. Once you obtain reviews, your business will take off. To maximize profit, we recommend considering renting monthly rentals to locals and nightly rental space for short-term travelers like professionals and vacationers.

Cleanliness
1. Before taking pictures of your place, you need to make your place super clean. Your place needs to be as clean as a hotel room.  People are expecting your place to be spotless.

Security:  “Safety is a top priority”
1. Guestnest is founded on trust and reputation. Profiles are set up to ensure that people are who they say they are, and a robust rating and review system is in place to help everyone maintain focus on others.  The processes in place help weed out the "bad" guests and hosts.

2. Verifications are the cornerstone of trust.  Fill out all of your verifications to give yourself the best chance for success. This is how you establish your quality score as a guest and host so it’s important to take time upfront to give the community as much info as possible. Verifications like ID, phone and email take just a few minutes to complete. Your privacy is always protected by Guestnest.  Verifications let the community know you are legit, while keeping your personal info hidden from public view.

3. Guestnest strongly recommends that you get between 1-3 References using Guestnest's simple reference submission process.

Getting paid.  “Payments are secured by Guestnest to keep you focused on service”
1. Guestnest handles all payments to keep everything secure & fair. Once a guest submits a booking request and the hosts approves (hosts are given a right to refuse anyone for any reason), the Guest's account is charged, and monies are held in escrow until move-in.

2. The service holds onto it until 24 hours after the guest has checked in, when it then passes it onto the host via bank transfer.

Hospitality: “I treat others how I would want to be treated”
1. When you go above and beyond, you are rewarded with return customers.  A welcome basket or care package with pop-corn, wine bottle, or some other personal touch sets the relationship on the right course.  Respond to your guests needs quickly.

Welcome Guide: “Welcome home.”
1. Write an informative welcome guide to give them the inside scoop on local recommendations about the neighborhood.

Reviews help you grow
1. At the end of the rental experience, your guest will clean up and move out. They will give you your keys back, click “Move-out” on the Guestnest dashboard and part ways. After that, it's their job to review you and your place, and your job to review them.  You will do a walk-through of the place after they leave, and sign off on the deposit, so they are refunded in full within 72 hours. If there is significant damage, you can easily submit a claim against the deposit online.

If you are interested in learning more about hosting and the quickest way to turn space into income, visit Guestnest or call. Welcome home. https://guestnest.com