Running a crew house without the spreadsheet

Running a crew house without the spreadsheet

Crew houses run on turnover. Beds change hands weekly, guests arrive off a flight at midnight, and half of them extend by text message. Most houses are still run from a spreadsheet and a phone. There is an easier way.

Sell the bed, not just the house

A crew house does not have one calendar. It has one per room, and often one per bed. Set each of them up as its own bookable unit with its own rate, so that a dorm bed, a private room and a couple's room can be sold separately and none of them twice. Airflow treats each as a resource with its own calendar, which is how it handles several properties under one account too.

Let crew book and pay without calling you

Dayworkers book late and move fast. A booking page that shows what is free tonight and takes payment on the spot wins the booking over the house that replies in the morning. Payment goes straight into your own account. See accepting payments from guests and adding a booking widget to your own website.

Deal with extensions properly

"Can I stay till Friday?" is the most common message in any crew house. If the extension is a new booking on the same calendar, the bed is closed to everyone else the moment it is agreed, and the money is recorded. If it lives in a chat thread, sooner or later someone arrives to a bed that is taken.

Give every guest the house rules before they arrive

Door code, quiet hours, laundry days, where the dock-walking starts. A guest portal and scheduled messages mean every arrival gets the same information without you typing it again. See automating guest messages.

Know what each room earns

Seasonality in a yachting town is brutal. Knowing what each room earned in April against October tells you when to hold your price and when to drop it. Airflow's revenue reporting shows it per room and per month, and each booking can become a draft invoice in your accounts.

Be found by crew

Crew HQ has partnered with Airflow so that crew houses run by our members can be promoted to the people who need them. Link your Airflow account to your Crew HQ profile, once it has an active listing, for one month of Premium Membership free, and read more on the Crew HQ and Airflow page.