With the explosion of competition on Airbnb, many hosts are opting for concierge services to delegate tasks relating to their rental listing.
There are many reasons why a host might call on a concierge to manage the listing and operation of their property on Airbnb, or other platforms (Booking, HomeAway…). Indeed, you might need time to invest in another project, or you have little time to invest in Airbnb because of your work, or even simply you want to have peace of mind and wait for your check at home…
However, using a concierge service means handing over the keys to your home (and your finances) to a company whose primary aim is to make a profit. Under these circumstances, can we really trust a concierge service to rent on Airbnb? To answer this question, we tested one of these concierge services ourselves. Here is our most objective opinion possible.
What is a concierge service, and why do we use it?
Not to be confused with concierge services, concierge services are not dedicated to the tenants of your Airbnb property. In fact, it’s a company that offers to take care of your home for you, on the private-to-private rental platforms. Basically, you hand over the keys to your property, along with the login details for your Airbnb listing, and simply wait for your check.
The concierge can take care of optimizing your online listing, photographs and advertising for your Airbnb accommodation, as well as welcoming your tenants, handing over the keys and cleaning the property. They can also take care of welcoming your tenants, handing over the keys and cleaning the property. Guests often use the services of a concierge because they don’t have the time to manage their listing or property themselves. Thanks to concierge services, guests gain time they can use for other things in their lives.
In our case, while traveling in the North of France for 1? months, our Airbnb apartment welcomed 4 tenants, each of whom stayed for around 7 days. Given the reasons for our Nordic trip, it was impossible for us to simultaneously manage our online advert, the cleaning of the property and the handover of the keys to the tenants, which is why we enlisted the help of a concierge service.
The benefits of concierge services
Thanks to a concierge service, everything was taken care of without us even having to think about it. At the end of our adventure with the concierge in question, we simply received a summary of the stays, finances and received our due. On the plus side, this concierge service helped us get organized and focus on our trip. They took care of everything from A to Z, from our advert to the management of our Airbnb accommodation.
Secondly, concierge services are modular. For example, if you only want a concierge to take care of cleaning and key delivery (and manage the ad + rental management yourself), that’s perfectly possible. Your final bill will logically be lower.
The disadvantages of concierge services
There are only two disadvantages to using a concierge service. On the one hand, your rental property loses its warmth, humanity and authenticity. Because it’s managed by a (logically less friendly) customer service team whose main mission may not be to make friends with your tenants. As a result, your property becomes more like a hotel than a guesthouse.
Secondly, as we said above, despite the services they provide, concierge companies charge a lot for their services. The vast majority of them capture 20% of the revenue generated by your Airbnb accommodation. Which is quite a lot, when you consider the reasons why you decided to rent out your property on a seasonal basis (most often for financial reasons).
In the end, to trust or not to trust concierge services?
Ultimately, trust in a concierge service depends on a number of factors. However, we’ll focus on just one, which we believe to be the most important. It’s the type of concierge service.
There are a growing number of conciergeries in France. Some have the legal credentials to carry out this activity, while others operate in absolute illegality. The big difference between the two is the final bill. Illegal conciergeries will always charge less for their services, in order to attract more and more customers to fleece.
That’s why we absolutely recommend that you choose reputable concierge services. They present less risk of breach of trust. BnBLord and Luckey are two of the most reputable and reliable concierge services on the market.
Our opinion
After a few successful attempts with a concierge service, we highly recommend their services. Freeing up your time and mind, these companies offer real added value, helping you to concentrate on more useful projects.