How Isaac and I became Airbnb hosts...
Thirty plus years of treating my home making with a certain level of seriousness and professionalism has led me to run an Airbnb from our empty Peculiar Nest in McAllen, Texas. In a way, it was a natural progression of my life to become an Airbnb host, although it was never foreseen or planned.
Let me tell you how Isaac and I first became Airbnb hosts. On our property in south Texas, there was an old metal siding encased car port the previous owner personally built with her own two hands. We had no real use for it, so we decided to turn it into something else. When our child number one, Yooni, was a little girl, Isaac promised to build her a playhouse. He got as far as digging a litte plot to pour concrete foundation. And the project ended there. I always felt badly about father not fulfilling his promise to his girl. This empty carport can be transformed into a grown up playhouse for Yooni! Tiny house living was all the rage in 2019 after all! We also wanted a guest house so Isaac’s father could visit us more freely and more often. It gives me so much joy to preserve, reuse and repurpose whenever possible. This cabin was one of those projects. Throughout the first six months of the pandemic, Isaac and I poured ourselves into building this cabin. The original metal framing and metal siding were all preserved. Materials leftover from previous projects became the floor, bathroom walls, lighting, etc. The resulting product was a very functional and cute one bedroom one bath lakeside cabin.
Obviously, the pandemic prevented people from our lives from visiting us at all. The cabin sat empty. We toyed with the idea of listing it on Airbnb, but there was a lot of psychological resistance from Isaac. It must have been a masculine territorial thing. We started offering the cabin to our friends, to come and stay or even to quarantine. No one took the offer.
Then I got a call from Philip, our child number 2 from Brooklyn. His friend Frasier was making a documentary movie about monarch butterflies, and he was going to be in the Rio Grande Valley. Philip wanted us to host Frasier. We gleefully accepted, appreciating a chance for social contact with someone during those solitary months. Frasier and his camera man arrived, and they were our first “guests”. The movie “Where the butterflies go” was shot partly at Peculiar Nest, and you can watch it in its entirety on |Waterbear Network. Sometimes Patagonia will host a screening in cities near you.
My confidence was boosted after Philip’s friends visit. Frasier was a seasoned Airbnb traveler and a host himself. He gave me some good feedback to install string lights outdoor and to replace the two twin beds with something larger. Even with a very positive experience with Frasier and his camera man, there was a lot of inertia and it was difficult for Isaac and myself to get started with hosting.
Then came our child number three, Nicolas, home for the Christmas holidays. We told him about our plans, and in thirty minutes he accomplished what we were dillydallying for months. Our cabin was listed on Airbnb! At that time, Airbnb was kind of encouraging hosts to name their listing. The cabin was christened “Ethereal”.
The rest is history. We were so fortunate to start hosting during the golden days of Airbnb. People were avoiding hotels, many were travelling and working remotely, and there was still the excitement associated with novelty of staying at a stranger’s house. We encountered hundreds of people the first year who came from near and far to stay at our cabin solely based on some photos we uploaded onto the Airbnb site. Daniel, our child number four, was customer relations, setting door codes, greeting and occasionally changing sheets. It was truly a family endeavor.
Eventually other bedrooms were turned into guest rooms one by one to meet the growing demand. In 2022, Tiffany Kersten of 2021 Big Year birding fame started to host her south Texas Nature Ninja Birding retreats at our Peculiar Nest. Presently Nicolas is a superhost who boasts over 1000 five star reviews on Airbnb site.
Leave a comment if you want to hear more about our hosting journey!