Airbnb Hosting Hacks For More Success
Hey guys... Here are some more hacks for success as an Airbnb host.
Reduce The Likeliness of Single Night Stays
So imagine that you have a property listed for $220/night. One day someone decides that they're going to book your place for a full week straight. So you're going to make $1,500 for their booking. Except right before they book someone else books for 1 day in the middle of the week thus causing your booking to no longer be available. So you just traded $1,500 for $220 which isn't good. What you want to do is mitigate the chances of this situation occurring.
One way you can do this is by having a minimum night stay. If your property is in high demand and is usually 90% booked or more every single month then this may be an option. However if you're somewhere between 50% and 90% then you may not want to do this because you could be turning away revenue that you wouldn't otherwise receive.
A better strategy is to make it undesirable to rent for one night by increasing the admin costs associated with a single night stay. For example the cleaning costs. You can increase these for a single night stay and make it similar to the cost of two nights thus causing that person to usually book at least two nights. This will save you from losing out on revenue from people who want to stay longer.
Adjust Your Daily Rate
You should always know your market like the back of your hand. You should know about local trends, events, concerts, super-bowls, etc. that will be taking place in and around your market. Then you should use this data to increase your daily rates based on seasonality, day of the week and special events. Every market and sub-market will have trends that you should pay attention to so you can act accordingly. This can be the difference of making several thousands of dollars per month vs several hundred.
There are apps and software programs you can use to automate this process once you're at that stage in your business growth. The tool I recommend is called Beyond Pricing.
Instant Book
Instant book is a tool on Airbnb that allows you to skip the process of approving a guest and will automatically allow them to book your listing. This will save you time, energy and effort once you get above 3 properties. Instant book also allows you to have standards for who you rent to such as reviews, previous stays and identification. This is a built in tool for automation which will become essential if you want to scale your Airbnb business to 6-figures or more.
If you found this useful you may also like: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/530/topics/696164-how-to-dominate-airbnb-seo
Jason