Post by Luke of HonorTab.com Let me start by saying this: I am not an AirBnB host.
My first AirBnB experience was at the end of a 24 hour road trip from Austin to Los Angeles. My wife Rebecca and I had booked a studio apartment off of the Sunset Strip, and upon arrival were greeted by a very gracious host who showed us around his apartment. It was small and modern, set in a high rise with an amazing view of the city. It did the job.
We were both exhausted and hungry from our marathon road trip, so as soon as the host left the apartment I immediately headed towards the refrigerator in search of refreshments. To my surprise (dismay!), the fridge was empty.
I was starving! I wanted food! We were strangers in an unknown land!
Sure, I could get take-out, after wading through Yelp reviews, or I could scope out where the nearest grocery store was and hope I didn’t get too lost on the way there. And maybe 40 minutes later I would have food.
Just for context, I’m 6’3” and I’m built like an NFL linebacker. Waiting for food isn’t my thing.
Long story short, Rebecca and I made the oh-so-usual pilgrimage to the local Trader Joe’s, stocked up on some basics such as drinks, cereal, snacks… normal away-from-home food.
At this point you’re probably asking yourself what any of this has to do with helping you as a host.
The answer is that money would have solved my problem. I would happily have spent an obscene amount of money not to have to do the stupid grocery store run. I don’t like waiting for food, and I’ve made a living identifying things that I don’t like and fixing them. So I made HonorTab.
HonorTab, makes it possible for Airbnb Hosts to make luxury-hotel-like amenities available to their guests.
The concept for HonorTab is fairly simple. It has 3 main components:
1. The Pantry
Consider the Pantry your master item list.
You can add items and their corresponding prices to the Pantry, from which they can later be added to a specific HonorTab, that you create, for your guests to access.
2. The HonorTab
Pantry items go into HonorTabs. If you only have one location, this is easy – you just have one HonorTab.
If you have several rental units, each location should have a corresponding HonorTab that you create for it. Each HonorTab has a unique “HonorCode” that is generated automatically. The HonorCode is a five character code such as “XT2MV” that can be used to quickly access an HonorTab. Once an HonorTab is created, you can add items from the Pantry to it.
3. The Coupons
Coupons are probably my favorite feature. If the presence of delicious snacks wasn’t enough to entice your guests to use your HonorTab, you can use coupons to push them over the edge into snack heaven.
Coupons can be generated on demand as a one-time use item, or as reusables. You can also specify whether or not a coupon requires a minimum spending amount. In the example above, I create a coupon for $5 that requires they spend at least $10.
LearnAirbnb readers get special perks!
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HonorTab Tips
I’ve partnered up with LearnAirBnB to offer some cool tips on how to earn more money as an Airbnb host with HonorTab while still providing great value to your guests.
Oh, and we have Swag we’d like to give you!
We have very attractive fridge magnets, tags, and stickers that allow you distinguish what is up for grabs and help guide your guests to a corresponding HonorTab. These items actually cost more than you’d think to manufacture, so we usually charge a nominal fee to deliver these items to hosts.
We’ve waived that fee for LearnAirBnB readers.
Tip #1 – First impressions are everything. In order to encourage use of your HonorTab you need to make sure everything you have available is packaged individually and sealed. If there is a half-filled bottle of ice-tea with an HonorTab label on it, you’re going to have a very low purchase rate. Your guest is going to think you’re nickel-and-diming them and will probably leave a bad impression in their minds.
Tip #2 – Your HonorTab needs not only to be a way for you to generate extra revenue but also a convenience to your guests. Leave extreme perishables off of the list. If they are going to go bad if your guest doesn’t consume them, then it’s just viewed as wasteful.
Tip #3 – Be creative with what you put on your HonorTab. Obviously when I think of HonorTab I think of snacks, but a lot of AirBnB hosts can offer so much more to their guests, such as time spent using a provided vehicle (think jet ski. I love jet skis.), or even a way to re-imburse the host for pre-paid event tickets. A good example of creativity is from one of our HonorTab hosts who has individual baskets stocked for different rooms. For instance, in her bathroom she has a well-laid out basket that contains cosmetic and hygiene products. That’s a smart way to utilize the flexibility of HonorTab!
Tip #4 – How you price the items on your HonorTab is just as important as what’s in them. Pricing your items isn’t tricky, nor does it require complex formulas. My suggestion is this: price your items as if you were ordering them from a regular restaurant. You’re not trying to be competitive with your pricing, what your offering is convenience. At the end of the day, your guests will only be happier for having easy options to choose from.
I designed HonorTab to be intuitive, attractive, and accessible. HonorTab is a cross-platform web-app, meaning that there is no app to download. Your guests simply go to HonorTab.com, enter the HonorCode you give them, select their items, and checkout whenever they’re ready.
I also made it super easy for guests to use HonorTab repeatedly by implementing a “QuickPay” option. If they chose to QuickPay, it saves their contact information and texts them a security code that they can enter for subsequent transactions. This is cool because it doesn’t matter which HonorTab they access, their payment information is saved. That means as more and more hosts adopt HonorTab, the probability of a user using it goes up dramatically because their payment information has been saved.
At the end of the day, I just want to go to an AirBnB and see an HonorTab set up that I can use. That’d be awesome because it means that there would be snacks. And as I let on earlier, I love snacks!
Have any questions? I’m very accessible! Feel free to email me: [email protected]. I consider customer support to be the cornerstone of HonorTab. Make sure to mention you heard about HonorTab from LearnAirbnb.
LearnAirbnb readers get special perks!
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I don’t think Honortab is an active project. I used it a while back and decided to start honor bars in our units again. I downloaded the app and checked out the website. The app isn’t working properly and the website hasn’t been updated in a long time. The project is dead I think.
Totally agree with Steven.
I get redirected to edylaw.com.
It’s a pity, because I loved the idea.