People sometimes want to scout the property, and sometimes that requires a long drive through traffic for me. I’d like to start charging people who come to see the place - sometimes they either flake, or they’re looking at so many properties that they decide to go with something closer to the city.
In other words, they waste my time. Can peerspace offer a scouting FEE feature?
I think you might have a hard time collecting a scouting fee. However, one thing I do to avoid being stood up is I don’t give them the address until they are ready to come. I tell them what it’s near so that they can plan their time, but the actual address comes when they are on their way.
I don’t allow it anymore. My excuse is covid. Some people are scouts and it’s their job to occupy their work day with scouting. If you think it will make a difference ( ie if you don’t allow a scouting visit), then send them a special offer/custom price. For the most part a scouting appointment involves about an hour of your time, so calculate a price for your time, if the scout is serious about booking, he or she won’t have a problem with that fee to be applied towards a future booking. However, most of them are looking a various places and then won’t bother you.
I remember these two guys who came to scout; then called back to re-scout.
I’m like, ok, whatever… until they showed up with 4 people total and started blocking out scenes and shooting “test footage” with props, even.
It was hard to remain polite but I told them I charge for what they’re doing… they were ‘sorry’ but they returned on shoot day and no problems!
LOL
Three options:
Set a “scouting schedule” that is convenient for you and refuse to show the space outside of it. Professional location scouts should have no problem respecting your schedule as long as you commit to the times you say you’ll be available.
Install a remote entry option and some cameras. Conduct remote scouts on facetime or speakerphone (we do this option all the time)
Charge a non-refundable deposit for location scouts that gets credited to the final booking fee if the guest commits. That way serious inquiries will still be interested in scouting and flakes or guests genuinely unable to commit will stay away.
If Peerspace can implement a refundable deposit field, it could be operated as a pre-cursor to the formal booking and come with an option for being refundable according to a scheme (like cancellation fees) for folks like me and my team, who need to use it as a threat-of-action for excessive damage, or switched to non-refundable by folks like you who need to use it as a deterent to flaky booking practices.
Agreed, while I don’t have people over scouting my location Peerspace needs to have a refundable deposit field. I an thinking of adding it to my cleaning fee and noting that a portion will be returned if there are no problems.
We charge a scouting fee of one hour. Highly recommend it.
But peerspace takes a fee and you don’t get that back if you refund after the event, correct?
Brand new here. I had my first, “can we come and scout the location” and I immediately said, “Sure, just book one hour whenever you want to do it.” They haven’t done it yet, but is this wrong? I could see spending quite a few hours a week just walking people through the place for free!
Well David you’re definitely gonna lose some business… You may want to let people scout in the short term to get a feel for the odds of them booking, before turning scouts away.
Also, take into account how frequent you’re asked, and how sweet the offer may be if you do land the gig…
Another idea is that you can let them do a FaceTime call as you walk the house.
Feel things out, guests are all different. Spotting flakes is an art!
If it is strictly just a scout trip to come and see the space, then I don’t charge. I am a production company myself and if a studio asked me to pay for an hour to come and see their space, I would never work with that studio. So you will definitely lose business from real companies this way.
However there is a different between a location scout and a tech visit. Bringing in crew ahead of the shoot to block off shots and plan where the gear is going is NOT a location scout and absolutely should be charged for.
I always seem to be on the same page with Chris D in these threads lol… create a schedule where it is convenient for you. While I think location scouts should be a free service, no reason you should bend to their schedule for free. Maybe put something in your ad like ‘location scouting is available Monday and Fridays from 9-1pm unless the space is booked’.
I recently had a booking which was scouted before hand by the producer and a tech scout schedule 2 days before the shoot. My client booked with an extra hour to cover the time for the tech scout!
Maybe upload a virtual tour on your IG or email marketing to better assist with the visuals. Just got the idea from reading this. I too hate flakes
Agreed! The majority of my scoutings convert into bookings so I am happy to provide the service. It also helps me see who they are and get a feel for how respectful of the property they will be. Knock on wood, so far so good. Love the FaceTime idea too.
The way we do it is we only schedule walkthroughs within the hour before another booking this way we’re already on site anyway. If it doesn’t work for them we just kindly apologize. We need to have our full calendar open for people to book so we do not have set walk-through days.
If they are serious about booking and are professional they will respect your calendar and work out an appropriate time to come and do their walk-through which we limit to 15 minutes because our space is pretty small so it’s enough time for them to take pictures walk the space ask any questions and see what features we offer.
We have had people in the past it seems to always happen this way people that are not professional or serious will promise that they are going to book but they just wanna see the space first and then you drive all the way over there and then they don’t book, or tell you they will let you know after you just used your gas driving all the way over there on your day off. so we don’t do that anymore unless the person has already booked and paid. Even then we will only do it if we are in the area or they have a really big booking. People are quick to take advantage of your time for their own personal gain and don’t care how it inconveniences you.
If they start asking to test audio or visual equipment and plug their stuff in or play with the lights we charge them our 1 hour tech fee but give them a little more Time.