00:01.81 Bill White Everybody laughs when it's my turn to to introduce the show all right? Let's see if I can do my best Chris Webster impression here. Hello and welcome to hello and welcome to the crm archeology podcast episode 2 67 00:03.18 Heather Are. 00:05.28 archpodnet Um, yeah. 00:09.95 archpodnet Do it. 00:19.48 Bill White Ah, for the month of June Twenty Eighth twenty twenty three I'm going to be the host today Bill White I've got my guests or my other colleagues here with me I've got Andrew in California. 00:30.62 archpodnet Um, hey guys how's it going. 00:35.76 Bill White I've got Heather also in California. 00:36.35 Heather Hi everyone thanks for joining. 00:40.10 Bill White And then Doug my colleague in Scotland you're in Scotland now. Still. 00:46.58 Doug Yep yep, beautiful sunny Scotland. 00:48.40 Bill White And I'm actually coming live from a beautiful sunny st crox in the us virgin islands. It's nice and warm and today we're going to talk about something that I'm living. Yeah, you would think it's fancy, but that's the reason why we have the topic for our show today because today we're going to talk about. 00:52.76 Heather Who fancy fancy. 01:06.21 Bill White Benefits and drawbacks of staying in vacation rentals while doing archeology because right now I'm down here doing an archeology project on the island. It's the fifth year of a um field school that we've been doing at the estate little princess on st croix and there's several. Um. 01:25.58 Bill White Vacation rental units. Well I think there are condos but others have taken many of them over and turned them into vacation rentals and so for the last um well we had a delay for covid but this is the fifth time that we've stayed in this complex and hosted. Groups of students and it is always a mixed bag. There's always something every single time with with these places and you know there's just some benefits to staying in these and some drawbacks. Um, and you know like. For this specific project. We're kind of over a barrel because we have so many people and we're staying for so long and so one of the benefits is that you can rent them out for a long time and they're livable right? They have furniture. They have kitchen and all that other stuff. But you know I think I'll save save my. Thoughts on some of the cons for later but I just want to pass it over to other folks. Do you ever? you rent these out for your crews and use them doing archeology any you have any experience doing that. So. 02:20.36 Heather Oh. Well we I typically I mean there's there's first there's a company stance then there's the stance of whoever is budgeting the project the manager the project manager and then there's the stance of the client. Which is usually in in line with the company because the company has to go along with what the client wants and the airbnb usually I just let those that are um, you know on the crew make their own decisions I try my very best to have. Um, to give them per dm and just give them a block per Dm and they get to spend it how they wish and if they're careful with it. They can you know it's it's extra money for them. But that doesn't work all the time and and a lot of clients now are requiring receipts and so. 03:21.59 Heather And now even more so a lot of our clients are not allowing Airbnb which is crazy like they want a straight receipt from a hotel. So what's the reasons so because. 03:31.47 Bill White Um, but what are the what are the reasons behind not letting folks rent airbnbs. 03:40.29 Heather Airbnbs I guess there's different versions I'm not an expert in airbnb I've only stayed in 1 once actually. But um, and and it could be a misnomer on the client's part but they're saying it's usually a larger agency or a utility company or something like that. Will say that they want to receipt knowing for sure that it was spent on a hotel which to me I think it's another business but maybe there's things I don't know and why they want that. So what they say is people could be giving them a receipt that is bogus. So they're stay at their friend's house and they're pocketing the predium is what they're saying and so they have they they are saying they're saying in the airbnb but they're not and so I think that that is maybe why some of the clients do not allow airbnbs anymore. We're seeing it more and more. 04:25.44 Bill White Yeah, well I mean oh go ahead. 04:38.40 Heather Which is a problem because you know the airbnbs allow people to stay together. You can rent a whole place and it's more economical but we're running there. Actually we have clients that are saying we want an actual hotel receipt. In fact, they won't even take hotels.com receipts 04:57.83 Bill White Wow. 04:58.80 Heather Anymore you have to get it from the hotel and the hotel won't give you a receipt because you booked it through hotel.com sometimes you can talk them into it but sometimes not yeah so that's that's the start I have other things but I'll stop talking. 05:06.22 Bill White Yeah. 05:13.43 Bill White Sure sure yeah cause there's a lot there Doug please. 05:17.25 Heather Yeah, yeah. 05:21.44 Doug I was just ah so we use I use hotels. It was just a comment off of that. It was interesting and this might just be like ah either a regional thing or ah, a chain thing or maybe it's a country thing but um, we use hotels dot com for. Booking for work I mean mainly it's the the video work and we do it because well I mean they're getting rid of it I guess at some point but use get like you know every tenth stay free or something every tenth night free and so it's it's like a 10% discount and you can. 05:49.79 Heather Yeah, yep. 05:54.72 Doug Yeah, we've talked about this in previous episodes where you if you're doing your own um bookings. It's great to use reward systems like that because a lot of companies. Let you basically keep that um so you can you know, build up some free hotels and stuff like that. But um, we always. So We we can use like because it's all internal. We can use that. Um, ah you know hotels dot com but we've I've never had a problem asking for a receipt from a hotel especially when like sometimes you'll have to book things separately like parking. Um, and things like that and so they always have been pretty Good. So I'm I'm just wondering if that's like a um, a regional thing or maybe that particular hotel chain or if it's a ah national thing or you know country but because we've we've been I mean I just did this. 06:43.22 Heather Um, um. 06:45.37 Bill White Um, yeah. 06:47.37 Doug Literally? Well okay, two months ago a little bit in April because we we had to pay for parking separately and we had to pay it at the hotel and stuff through hotels dot com and didn't have a problem getting um invoices and receipts and stuff like that. 07:02.40 Heather So hotels more and more now we're having a difficult time we're having crews having ah a very difficult time getting a hotel receipt. The hotels won't do it. They just unless you get somebody who's sympathetic at the front desk. They won't do it and I don't know why that is other than there's people that are always looking for a way to scam and so I guess hotels are like you know what? just to avoid there being an issue. We're not going to give you a receipt if you're not booking through us which because they don't know what you paid right. 07:35.33 Bill White Yeah. 07:37.32 Heather They only know what they would charge you and hotels.com would have and so now what they're doing is they're having to give you ah a really a false receipt because you would just tell them this is what I paid. So I think maybe that's the main reason why the hotels won't give you a receipt. 07:47.44 Bill White Ah. 07:53.86 Heather Um, if you're booking through through a third party entity. Um, and then go ahead. Yeah yeah. 07:55.10 Bill White Yeah I I've I've written into this problem many times with the third party thing ah with Cruise and stuff doing the hotels dot com because I also used to I used to recommend folks get the. Chain of hotels that we were going through like Marriott or you know Hilton or whatever get that? Um, like you know what is it called the rewards program right? folks sign up for that and then you know have each person claim their own stays if we stayed through that chain. So. 08:21.99 Heather Here. Yeah. 08:30.72 Bill White You know I always like going through holiday and express if we could a lot of times in the old days. It used to be within the budget now that's another. That's another thing we should talk about now these budgets for how much you get to spend on lodging. Are you know they're they're not super functional anymore. But back in the 2010 s in the twenty two thousand. 08:44.43 Heather Yeah. 08:49.91 Bill White Um, everyone sign up for the loyalty program. Everyone get their points and then I would also have folks sign up for hotels because just like Doug was mentioning folks. Get you know, stay 10 nights and you get a free night I mean that's awesome because you're going to be staying 10 nights pretty frequently and so if you go through hotels. But. Even back in the two thousand s it was a problem with the hotels dot com receipts handing those things in and the hotel's not wanting to give it I don't know I think it's I think it's a matter of like that you went through a third party and so they're just basically like yeah we don't even really know anything. Ah, you know we're just going to wash our hands of everything and we're just going to provide the room. 09:12.87 Heather Oh. 09:21.72 Heather Right. 09:22.88 Doug I. 09:27.51 Bill White And basically talk to them if you want to get an official receipt and so you know that's where the loyalty programs would really come in super handy because if you had your um, ah holiday and express or motel 6 or whatever you were staying then you you could ah make those arrangements and it was going direct. That was one of the reasons why I told folks to do that and. 09:47.87 Doug And so I'm actually just realizing how how we do it and how we've got around that is that we usually don't pay in advance. We pay at the hotel so you can do on hotels.com some not all hotels and obviously yeah, when you're. 09:50.19 Heather Um. 10:06.41 Doug Working in the middle of nowhere Idaho or someplace else and there's there is the one hotel and that's that's your only option you you may not have that. But if you do I think if you do that like pay with hotels.com. They have the option pay at hotel or you know pay in advance if you pay at the hotel. Definitely have the amount you're supposed to pay them. Um, so that's that's I don't know if anyone's if this is helpful for anyone listening. But um, if you if you need to work on receipts set it up so you do the pay. Ah hotel. And they'll definitely know the amount because they're going to be collecting it from you. Okay. 10:42.65 Heather Um, yeah, well that that I think that's a excellent, um solution. Yeah I think that's great. 10:42.95 Bill White Yeah. 10:52.16 Bill White Yeah, but I mean the the whole loyalty points program thing is one of the number 1 reasons why it sucks wasting your money at airbnb I think folks know where we're going to go in you know section 2 here with the downfall of these airbnbs. But um, you know. 11:01.54 Heather Yeah. 11:09.90 Bill White I think that that's you know you can stay seven months a year at an airbnb or a vacation rental and never get a single penny of loyalty or anything else. No free night. No you know 10% discount like nothing because it's all going through you know. 11:17.51 Heather A. 11:28.15 Bill White 20000 individual small-time landlords rather than you know anyone else and so each one of them that's on these platforms is essentially a mini business or when someone owns 4 or 5 which that's the other thing too that we should. Get around to how people can absolutely dominate an entire apartment complex and take away housing but you know someone who has multiple ah vacation rentals. They're not really a corporation like holiday inn or motel 6 or you know best western or something like that. And so you know you get when they decide that they want to reduce the rates five or ten percent then that's great, but they only own 1 place in 1 town and they're not everywhere. So your your money is basically just going straight into someone else's pockets and you no matter how many times you stay you get almost nothing back for that. 12:19.71 Heather Well I think that airbn b oh yeah, go ahead. Doug. 12:21.22 Bill White Think Doug first or heather. 12:27.26 Doug And I was just gonna because I'm going to have absolutely savage airbnb and all of those likes um very shortly well I'll save it for so segment 2 But ah yeah. 12:37.61 Bill White Ah, yeah, exactly because I want I want us to start burning. 12:41.78 Heather Ah. 12:42.86 Doug I was ah so this is this gonna be my slight defense um of it as it as it stands now is um I I understand we have no, you know it's It's archeology we we we can't dictate this but I in principle I'm against the um. 13:01.42 Doug The idea of limiting um, saying people can't use airbnb because you know you can't get receipts and stuff like that because to be honest, like anyone with a word you know Microsoft word or you can even just use open office with ah with a word processing document can make up. A false invoice if they want to and no one's going to check like you. You do not like there's like I know people who do like the finances. Um I am promoting you know? Well I'm promoting choice like it shouldn't they shouldn't be dictating. 13:23.65 Heather Um, ah. 13:30.85 Heather What are you promoting Doug but. 13:40.31 Doug Where people want to sleep and if they if they want to use an Airbnb and ah ah okay I understand there's like always the occasion like you might be health and safety issues things like that. Why you may want to dictate or like maybe you've got a great deal and stuff. But in general I'm basically. 13:49.81 Heather Oh. 13:59.65 Doug I Think it's a stupid excuse. That's not going to prevent fraud um to limit people because if people want to get airbnb I Personally don't think as we're just talking about all the um rewards program. It's it's worth it's but you know. And some occasions people may want to use it or they may prefer it. They may prefer having um, a kitchen or you know, um, a living room with you know stuff like that like there's this all sorts of different things I don't think you should be limiting Choice. So in general. 14:21.41 Heather Yeah. 14:33.41 Doug I guess the most pro thing about airbnb is I could say is it. It opens up a lot more choice for people who may want different things other than say getting rewards nights There may be other considerations. Um that they maybe need to take into account. Ah, airbnbs may be It may be more accessible. There might be um, you know disability reasons I think I can think there's probably like a dozen reasons why people may want to choose an airbnb. Even if it's not my first choice I think they should be allowed to have that choice. But again, we'll probably have no way of. 14:58.33 Bill White Yeah, yeah. 15:09.62 Doug Of dictating that. But if there are any company owners who can dictate that. Ah I would recommend not limiting. People's choices. 15:10.64 Heather Yes. Well I have something to say about this. But I think we should probably take it in the next segment there. There are reasons why it is that way? yep. 15:16.77 Bill White Yeah, yeah. I schner. Yeah well my own mind only rule about the whole thing is the crew must domicile in a shelter at night like you cannot just take all of your per Dm and then sleep in your truck in a you know Walmart. 15:34.94 Heather Ah. 15:36.97 Heather Um, yeah, yes, yes. 15:39.82 Bill White And never take a shower never just to save all the money like that's the reason why when I was a crew Chief I stopped letting people have the full perddeum because some people did actually start sleeping in their cars and they weren't really using the hotels and then they would come over to someone else's hotel room and shower and use that there and there was you know health and safety issues and stuff and also. 15:52.90 Heather Um. 15:59.21 Heather Yep, yeah. 15:59.43 Bill White People not showing up on time right? because we're sitting there in the parking lot waiting for so and- so who parked god knows where or stayed at a campground or something like that I mean Chris is probably going to explode when he hears this comment right sleeping in an rv somewhere on side of the road. But yeah. 16:11.13 Heather Um, yeah, door van. 16:15.91 Bill White The only agreement is you must have shelter at night you can't just you know, stay out unless it is the middle of Idaho and there is no shelter all right I think this is a good time to stop this segment and um, go on to the next one