A day in the life of an AIRbnb Superhost ! 

Following on from our previous blog https://cairnestateagency.com/cairnbnb/

Cairn BNB – The story so far by Mark Coll

The seed was planted for Cairn BnB back in August 2021 when a certain COP26 conference was coming to town and there was a real demand for properties at the time. We heard of countless crazy stories of daily rates skyrocketing into hundreds, and even thousands, of pounds per night which was expected to a degree – but this was off the scale. Perhaps we were a little late to the party on this occasion, but it certainly got us thinking ‘why aren’t we doing this too?’.

As many of you know, we are a well-established letting and sales agency in Glasgow where we have been operating since 1999, so we have bags of experience across the letting sector which entails almost all the requirements of running a successful short-term letting management business. It is only natural for us to keep growing and this exciting new venture is another area of the business that we are rapidly gaining experience in – and thoroughly enjoying it!

With the start to any new venture, there are always ups and downs where I have had my fair share so far. As you can see on our website, https://cairnestateagency.com/, we have various executive properties here in Glasgow and Edinburgh which have generally been running smoothly with many bookings coming and going without any issues at all but when things start going wrong it’s only natural that they all come at once as they always seem to do!

Let me share a story with you – One day last month (typically on my annual leave I should add), I had 3 boilers with issues all within hours of each other. The first boiler failed a few days earlier, so we found out that it needed a part which was all easy enough to deal with – or so I thought! The contractor from the boiler manufacturer was fixing the boiler in the attic when he had to fetch a part from his van, except he hadn’t tightened one of the valves and the water was then pouring down into the 3 brand new flats below. Nightmare! At the time I was at the barbers with the gown over me when I had about 9 calls one after the other where I knew something was up, as I am not normally that popular! After a few looks from people in the barbers, I left and nervously checked my phone to try and find out what was happening. Things had escalated from a leak, and it was now the restaurants 3 floors down that were reporting water coming in too so I thought, ‘where do I even start with all of this?’ Long story short, I got my head down and everything was sorted very quickly, the cleaners cleaned up the mess and all guests (and restaurant owners) were happy that it had been sorted. My 12 years of experience in the letting sector was certainly tested and it all came to my rescue as it was a hectic couple of hours, as you can imagine!

This has all been a learning process where I am quickly learning the best way of working and I am thriving in the new position. Now that I have had some excellent experience under my belt so far, I am looking to grow this side of the business where I am confident that this can be done over the next few months. I am delighted to say that we have recently achieved Superhost status on Air BnB which is a fantastic achievement and a real credit to how far we have come in a short space of time. For those who don’t know, being a Superhost puts you in an elite club where our listings appear at the top of searches and some travellers can search for ‘Superhost only’ properties which all our properties now have this status as Cairn BnB is the host. This is a real positive for all current and any new landlords who want to dip their toes in the short-term letting sector as it’s a huge advantage to have and we now have an exclusive market of guests who only want to stay at the best properties during their stay.

That’s our story so far and here’s to the next few months!

Thanks for reading.

Mark