20 minutes. That's the longest a real emergency at one of our homes goes before a VCoHost lead is on the phone with the owner, the local contact and the guest. Most are solved well before that, by a text to one person.
Owners ask about this more than anything else on the call, and the question is really 3 questions. Who hears first. Who decides what gets spent. And how often does this actually happen. Here is how each one works.
What counts as urgent
Not much. No heat in January. Water where it shouldn't be. A guest locked out. A smoke alarm that won't stop. Things where waiting until morning costs the guest their night or costs you a floor.
Our AI assistant, built on Claude by Anthropic, reads every message the moment it lands and judges what's urgent. Everything else, which is nearly everything, gets answered in under 5 minutes and you never hear about it. A hot tub in economy mode is not urgent; it's a 9-minute message thread. A broken coffee maker is not urgent; it's a replacement and a small credit. The ladder is reserved for the things that need hands at the house tonight.
The ladder
Each rung is a text with what we know and what we'd do.
- 0 minutes. Your local contact, by text, the moment it's judged urgent.
- 10 minutes. If there's no reply, we text you. If you're the local contact yourself, we text your backup contact instead, which is why we require one in that case.
- 20 minutes. A VCoHost lead gets on the phone with you, your contact and the guest, and stays on until it's fixed.
The reason it's a ladder and not a phone call to you is that the fix is at the house, and you usually aren't. Your local contact is the person who can be there in 15 minutes with a wrench or a key. We tell them what the guest told us, what we've already tried over message, and what we'd do. They go. We keep the guest informed the whole time, so the guest is never sitting in a cold house wondering if anyone knows.
If you'd rather we call your own handyman or plumber directly, tell us at setup and we will.
The 2 numbers you set
Before go-live you give us 2 numbers, both yours.
Guest goodwill. Up to $100 per reservation unless you pick another amount. This is for the small stuff: a late cleaner, a broken coffee maker, a hot tub that took a day to fix. A modest credit the same night turns a complaint into a review that says "the hosts handled it right away."
Repair limit. The most we'll have your local contact or handyman spend on a fix before checking with you. Most owners pick $150 to $500. The Terms call it your routine expenditure limit. Below it, we get the thing fixed. Above it, you hear from us first, except where a booking platform imposes a refund on its own.
We never spend our own money on your home and never hold yours. The cost goes to the provider from you, and every dollar shows on your statement as its own line. The 2 numbers aren't about us spending freely. They're about not waking you up to approve a $40 plumber visit.
What happens after
Fixed before the next check-in is the standard. When a guest reports a problem, you or your local contact hear right away with what we know, so the next guest never meets it. If the fix can't happen before the turnover, we tell the arriving guest before they arrive, and we decide, inside your numbers, what to do about it.
Then it goes in the guide. If the dishwasher door needs a firm push, the next 50 guests read that before they ever message about it. A lot of what looks like an emergency the first time is a sentence in the guide the second time.
How often this happens
Rarely. Most months you won't hear from us at all. Across every home we ran last year, the day-to-day was 1,869 turnovers and 5,821 guest nights with the owners mostly out of the loop by choice. The ladder exists for the handful of nights a year when something at the house can't wait, and knowing it exists is most of its value. One owner put it this way: if something needs him, they text his dad first, then him, and that's maybe once a month.
What this isn't
It isn't on-site management. We never come to the house. If you want someone who drives over, meets the plumber and restocks the paper towels, that's full-service, and our sister company Sans Souci Hospitality does it around Saugatuck. For everywhere else, the local contact is the model, and it works because the person who can get there in 15 minutes is someone you already know.
Before you need it
Pick your local contact now, not after, and a backup if that contact is you. Ask your cleaner who they'd trust with the house; they'll have a name. Decide your 2 numbers; $100 for goodwill and somewhere between $150 and $500 for repairs is where most owners land. And put a backup lockbox with a key by the door. We don't require it, but a locked-out guest with a working lockbox isn't an emergency at all. It's a text.
The furnace will die someday. The question is who finds out, and how fast.
Questions about your own home? Write to [email protected], or read the other posts.