You are the owner of an apartment and you wish to rent it for short periods during your absences? You may need to hire a concierge service agency to take care of most of the tasks you need to do. But what exactly is the added value of this type of company and what services can they provide to you and your tenants?
Why the name Airbnb conciergerie?
Due to the growing popularity of the American behemoth, Airbnb has become over time a synonym for short-term rental accommodation, even when it is not necessarily rented via this platform. As this expression has become part of everyday language, it is easier for short-term rental agencies to define themselves as such.
This is all the more legitimate for GLAMAPARIS as the agency holds the status of superhost on Airbnb and this since 2019.
What is the role of an Airbnb concierge company?
Each concierge agency has its own particular way of operating and it is not necessarily relevant to draw up an exhaustive list of the services that this type of company offers. However, a certain number of tasks are shared by all of them, as they are necessary steps, without which the usefulness of such an agency would be quite limited.
The marketing of your property
In chronological order, the first operation required for a concierge agency is to inform potential clients of the existence of your property. In order to do so, the agency will gather as much information as possible about the apartment or house in order to describe the experience that the tenants will have during their stay. The agency will also have to collect the most representative photos, either by asking them to you, or by taking them themselves, the goal being to enhance the value of the accommodation while being honest about the reality. It is useless to be excessive on the supposed qualities of the place, it will only provoke disproportionate expectations from the customers who will not be satisfied.
Once this is done, a holiday rental concierge will have to publish the ad to display the accommodation with both the text and the photos on the different rental platforms on which it wishes to position itself: Booking, VRBO, Airbnb… If the concierge company has a website on which it records reservations (like GLAMAPARIS), the new apartment will also appear there.
Management of the booking calendar
Once the advertisement is online, the agency is responsible for making it available at the right time and therefore for blocking the dates in the calendar during which the property will be occupied by its owner (and subsequently by the tenants). In agreement with the owner, in a desire to maximize the rental profitability of the property and to deal with the owner’s eventual imperatives, it will be a matter of finding the ideal periods to welcome tenants. For Paris, the high season is roughly from May to July as well as the month of December. In a ski resort, it will be from December to March.
Moreover, in Paris as well as in cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants (and other surrounding municipalities), the law forbids renting out one’s accommodation for more than 120 nights per year, which is an additional constraint in terms of optimizing the annual calendar, which is most often defined at the beginning of the year.
Rental follow-up
As the accommodation is now ready for rental and the reservation windows are correctly defined, the concierge agency will process the reservation requests. If the criteria defined with you to accept a rental are respected (minimum length of stay, presence or not of children or pets, etc.), the request is registered. A deposit can then be requested from the future tenants in order to block the dates in the reservation calendar.
From then on, the preparation of the welcoming of the clients can already start. Regular communication with the future occupants of your home is essential in order to understand exactly their needs and expectations. It is also important to know precisely their arrival times in order to organize their reception in the best possible way, all the more so if several arrivals take place on the same day at the agency.
Reception of the tenants
Once the date and time of arrival of the tenants are known, their reception is done in two steps
- transportation from the airport (if they come from abroad)
- reception at the residence
At the airport
An Airbnb concierge service can indeed organize the transportation of your tenants up to their place of residence. This is notably the case with GLAMAPARIS. We have a partnership with the company Paris Chauffeurs. Its employees accompany our clients from the moment they get off the plane to guide them through the airports of Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle and Orly to the address that will be theirs during their stay in Paris.
At the place of residence
From there, it is the responsibility of the concierge agency to show the clients the apartment or house they will occupy. An exhaustive visit of the place of residence followed by the signature of an inventory of fixtures are essential. It is also nice for the visitors to have some advice on the apartment, the building or the neighborhood, whether it is about restaurants, stores or means of transportation nearby.
The presentation of a technical guide specific to each dwelling is also, if not indispensable, at least highly recommended. It should include all the appliances in the home and a summary of their use. An additional guide with a more touristy character (visits to be made in the vicinity, transport, restaurants, theaters, etc.) is also appreciated.
Finally, a welcome kit including hygiene and food products (salt, pepper, oil, vinegar…) as well as more upscale items (bottle of champagne or wine, pastries) are elements that are regularly found in housing managed by concierge services.
The organization of the households
The maintenance of your property is obviously one of the major reasons why owners call upon a concierge service. In fact, the organization of cleaning before and after a rental is systematic. Clients may also request additional cleaning of their property during their stay, which a concierge will be able to provide.
Likewise, the linen can be renewed automatically if the rental exceeds a certain number of days or if the tenants request it.
The maintenance of your apartment
An Airbnb concierge service like GLAMAPARIS offers many services to owners, including regular attention to the apartments we manage. The reason for this is the high standards we strive to meet in terms of the quality of the apartments we offer. This is all the more important since in cities like Paris, in the vast majority of cases, it will be a primary residence, which you will occupy for most of the year. It is therefore the duty of an agency to ensure that tenants, as well as owners, can live there comfortably.
Whether it’s for small repairs, water damage or ordering an appliance, a concierge is regularly called upon to handle these types of situations and can be a decisive asset when time becomes pressing.