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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/838617
ISTOCK JULY/AUGUST 2017 BCBUSINESS 141 TRAVEL Be My Guest Emily Plommer knew from her own experi- ence staying at Airbnbs that it was frus- trating to rent an apartment with a full kitchen and discover that there wasn't so much as a salt shaker or bottle of cooking oil in the cupboards. So when Plommer, an avid traveller and then 26-year-old women's studies grad, decided to make a living through hosting two years ago, she made sure the rental suite in her house in Vancouver's Strathcona neighbourhood was well provisioned. Pots and pans and utensils. Basic cooking supplies, like oil and some spices. Milk and cereal. Co ee beans. Fresh fruit. Eggs. Then she found that she was making a lot of banana bread with the leftover, disintegrating fruit or eating the cereal herself. "It was funny how people would book a place like this and then eat noth- ing at home," Plommer says. "In the end, I just asked, 'Will you be eating breakfast here?' before leaving things out." That's just one of the small lessons Plommer learned as she transformed herself into an amateur hotel operator, as many others around the world have done with help from Airbnb, FlipKey, HomeAway, VRBO and other such online services. Plommer and her partner rented out a spare room in their house for about a year. Then in 2015 the landlord asked if they wanted to take over the basement suite, so they began renting that unit as a self-contained one-bedroom apartment. Like others, they •gured things out as they went along. Plommer, who now lives in Calgary, has started a consult- ing business for people planning to earn money through renting out a room or an apartment. Her major piece of advice is actually not about supplies. It's about being in charge of who is coming in. "When you're starting out, have more control," she advises. "So I would say not to use the Instant Book feature [on Airbnb]." That feature means that anyone who puts in a request for certain dates is auto- matically accepted if the room is open. That's di erent from the slower method, where someone wanting to book sends a message to the host and at the same time they're encouraged to give some information about themselves, why they're visiting the city and what they like about the listing. "If someone sends an inquiry like that, you get a good vibe," notes Plommer. "You get a sense of why they're coming." That can be particularly important if the person is from the same city, a circumstance that can set o alarm bells. Sometimes people need a temporary place to stay because their house is going through a couple of days of unlivable renovations. But other times, those who book in the city where they live are look- ing for a place to throw a party, which may not be what you, the host, signed up for. Thinking of renting space in your home to travellers? Three veteran Vancouver hosts share tricks of the trade by Frances Bula ROOM TO SHARE Airbnb has some three million listings worldwide and more than 5,000 hosts in Vancouver NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW