Welcome to Hospitable's series of host case studies, where we take a deep dive into the unique experiences of our valued hosts. Through these inspiring success stories, we aim to showcase tips to help you succeed with your short-term rental business and better leverage your Hospitable subscription.
Who?
Mark Buchheim
Where?
Southern California, USA, and Panama
Properties managed?
30 properties
Favorite Hospitable feature?
Guest communication and AI—"One of my greatest feelings is when my guests think they're talking to me but are not. They're talking to Hospitable."
Meet Mark
Mark started hosting about 5 years ago after his divorce because he wanted to get extra income to "recover financially." He converted his garage into a rental and put it on Airbnb. "It was super successful. I recouped the initial renovation expense within maybe 2 or 3 months, and then from there, it was just great revenue."
Now, Mark manages several short-term rental properties in Southern California, including his cabin. It is called Bel Air of Big Bear and can accommodate a large group of people. During the pandemic, Mark traveled to Panama where he and his friends created a property management company, so he also manages STR properties in Panama.
Mark uses Hospitable to streamline daily operations and save time, which he considers a commodity. Watch the video to learn how Hospitable helps Mark manage multiple short-term rental properties in southern California remotely from overseas.
Automating Guest Communication
Mark admits that at the beginning of his hosting journey, he thought this business was mainly about cleaning and operations, and he didn't realize that it involved so much communication with guests. "It's always interesting to be that shepherd in the city. You know, people coming out of town just want some advice. And one of the great things about Hospitable is that it makes that process a little bit easier."
Mark uses canned responses to answer guest messages automatically and uses AI integration to draft detailed responses when manually messaging a guest. "Most of the communications I do across our properties are in Spanish, and the AI works in Spanish. It is unbelievable! One of the things, actually, one of the reasons why I just couldn't get off of Hospitable was their language integration," he points out. Mark also likes that Hospitable can determine the language of the conversation based on the message you receive from the guest and uses it to generate automatic messages.
"Many needy guests can be overwhelming, so I view my time as a commodity and my team's time as a commodity. So anything that I can do to reduce the amount of time interacting with the guests and even interacting with the property is great for operations, and Hospitable definitely helps," Mark underlines.
Have conversations with your guests even when you sleep
Why Hospitable?
Mark started looking for property management software to automate daily operations after they started adding more properties to their portfolio, and Mark became the managing partner of multiple companies. Mark reveals that he checked out and compared about 30 different PMS, and "it was just Hospitable that just stood out."
Mark loves that Hospitable has "a fantastic support team"—they are always ready to help and explain how new features work. He points out that the software has so many useful features.
"I love every time they have a new feature because I just know it will be amazing. They often catch up with your needs. There are times when technology or expectations within the industry sort of exceed their current feature set, and one of the things I like about Hospitable is if you're patient enough and you work with their support and development team, they will try to meet your needs."
Mark says he really likes that the Hospitable team has recently rolled out a smart device management feature. "Before, you would have to use maybe an outside company, and you're incurring an additional monthly cost so that they're managing the locks. But now it's built into Hospitable."
Mark is also excited about Hospitable's direct booking solution that allows him to increase his profit margins, save on OTA's fees, and have more control over his business. "I'm not beholden to whatever policies, rules, or Airbnb implements. Or maybe they might penalize me and cut me off, but I don't have that with my direct booking portal. I'm in control of my own destiny," he explains.
For the coming year, Mark hopes to increase direct bookings using different marketing tools, including emails, WhatsApp messaging, and social media, and he will offer discounts to travelers to incentivize them to book his properties directly.
Mark recommends that anyone interested in becoming a short-term rental host start with Hospitable "to have an automated way" to manage reservations. Even if you have one STR property, it saves time and reduces errors. "When you're dealing with 20 and now 30 properties like I am in multiple countries, in multiple languages, you have to use something like Hospitable, and I would recommend Hospitable," Mark underlines.
