Most owners stop answering their own guests within a month of joining us. That sounds like a long time for something they came to us to stop doing, and it is. The reason is that nobody turns off the notifications on day 1, so for a few weeks every guest message still lands on their phone with a buzz, and they read it, and some nights they answer it.
So the last thing we ask on the onboarding call is also the hardest. Turn them off.
Why the buzz is the problem
Your listing is in your name, and it stays that way. That means Airbnb still sends you every notification it ever did: the new booking, the guest message, the review, the payout. We're reading the same messages, and answering them in under 5 minutes, but your phone doesn't know that. It buzzes as if you're still the only one on duty.
Three things go wrong from there. You read a message at 9:40 pm and spend the next 20 minutes wondering whether we've seen it. (We have.) You answer one yourself, which puts 2 voices in one thread and confuses the guest about who they're talking to. Or you train yourself to ignore the buzz, which works until the one night it's your kid's school calling.
The notifications aren't information. They're the habit of being on call. The habit is what you hired us to take.
What to turn off
In your Airbnb notification settings, turn off the push notifications and text messages for guest messages and reservations. That's the buzz.
Leave the emails on. You'll still get every one, so nothing disappears: the booking confirmations, the message digests, the review when it posts. The difference is that an email waits for you. You read it on Sunday with coffee instead of in the parking lot on Tuesday. If you like seeing the money land, keep the payout emails too.
Don't touch the account and security emails. Those are between you and Airbnb, and you want them.
We walk through the exact screens on the call, and if Airbnb moves the settings around, which it does, message us and we'll find them with you.
What still reaches you
Turning off the buzz doesn't mean silence. It means the right things reach you, on purpose, from us.
- A monthly statement. One line per reservation, our fee at the bottom.
- Anything urgent at the house. If a guest reports no heat or water where it shouldn't be, your local contact gets a text the moment it's judged urgent, and a VCoHost lead is on the phone within 20 minutes if it isn't resolved. You hear about it before the next check-in, not in a review.
- A question only you can answer. Where the breaker is, the first time anyone asks. Once. After that it's in the guide.
- Anything over your numbers. A repair above the limit you set, a credit above your goodwill amount. You decide those. We decide everything under them.
That's it. In the homes we run, most months the owner hears from us once, and it's the statement.
If a guest calls your phone anyway
Your number is on your Airbnb profile, so once in a while a guest will call or text it directly. Don't solve it. Say "the fastest way to reach us is a message in the app," and we take it from there. The guest gets a better answer, because we know what's happening at the house today and you may not, and the conversation stays in the thread where Airbnb can see it if there's ever a dispute.
The rest of letting go
The notifications are the visible part. There's a quieter version of the same thing with the other 2 people in your rental.
Your cleaner. Every turnover is on their phone the day the booking lands, same-day turns flagged. They send photos when they're done. You don't need to text them "is Saturday still good" because the schedule already told them, and we confirm they saw it. If they can't make it, you hear from us, not from a guest standing at the door.
Your local contact. They have the guide, they know where the shutoff is, and they're the first text when something at the house can't wait. You picked them because you trust them. Let them be trusted.
Us. We know the house as well as you do by the end of the first month, and better than you do about what's happening in it today: who's arriving, when the cleaner finished, which code is live. If you want to see a guest thread, open the app and read it. Just don't reply. If something looks wrong to you, message us, not the guest, and we'll fix it inside the conversation that's already going.
The honest test
The owners who get the most out of this are the ones who go the longest without opening the app. Not because they stopped caring about the home, but because they found out it was fine without them watching it. The reviews kept coming in at 5 stars. The cleaner kept showing up. The statement kept landing.
You didn't buy a rental to carry it in your pocket. Put the phone down. We've got it.
Questions about your own home? Write to [email protected], or read the other posts.