Drop off after new listing boost on AirBNB?

Question

My partner and I just launched an AirBNB in a mountain community in the western US. We closed in early October.

we used AirDNA for our analysis of locations < 4 hrs from our place. Bookings and rates seem to mirror expected occupancy. A little higher even. So far so good.

so far we are still riding the awesome "new listing" boost on page rankings. We have acquired three 5 star reviews. So far so good.

We are also leveraging the instant book feature and smart pricing feature, although we are overriding where AirBNBs recs are stupid low.

Any experience with booking / revenue drop off once the new listing boost goes away? We want to know if we are in for a cliff, or if it's relatively straight-line assuming no poor reviews.

Luke Carl · Answer

@John Mark Morelli. if I may offer one more price of advice..... you need to set a timer in this property and these shenanigans. 30 days. Set this property and forget it. You can’t spend this much time on it for more than 30 days or you’ll end up selling it. Smartbnb. PriceLabs. You’re done.

It’s about long term generational wealth.

Chris Gottshall · Answer

@John Mark Morelli The biggest thing I’d focus on coming off the new listing high is making sure you’re set up to qualify for super host status during the next evaluation. If you need more 5-star reviews, you can always let friends stay there for a discount in exchange for helping make that happen. When I started, I felt like I was giving it away for the first few months but it helped make sure I had a solid number of reviews to qualify. The Superhost search filter is one that they make prominent for guests, so that’s always a focus area for me.

Paul Cox · Answer

John,

As a 1 year newby, who rode his new mountain cabin purchase in the smokies right into a worldwide pandemic, I have not seen any sort of a drop-off in bookings. We like a lot of others on here experienced the rash of cancellations from Covid starting in March and we completely shut down our cabin for the month of April so as to be good community citizens when the local leaders asked people to stay home. When May hit, and the stay at home orders were lifted, we sky rocketed in our bookings and at increased prices. We have a 1 bedroom / 2 bath including a loft with a King bed as well and we are set to close out the year pulling in over 58K gross. As it stands right now we'll keep about 46% or 27K of that in cashflow. I know there are many others on here with much bigger cabins that bring in much bigger numbers, but for us we consider this a Home Run. All in at closing and including set up for an STR to include a new Hot Tub we outlayed just over 50K. So I believe that works out to about a 54% ROI? (Math guys correct me on this if I'm wrong)

We've kind of been priced out of the Smokies market right now, so we just closed on a 4Br/4Ba Golf Villa in Branson, MO for # 2. We take over management of that at the first of the year and are hoping and praying for similar results there.

Best of luck to you.  You'll learn a ton from this group!

Paul

Luke Carl · Answer

@John Mark Morell

I’d say you’re over thinking it. I’d also say that if you’ve already got 3 reviews your new listing boost is probably over by now anyway.

Also..... you went from having a white calendar that having a bunch of bookings. There’s less things that book so you will get less bookings.

Congrats! So awesome!

Paul Cox · Answer

John

The Hot tub is my biggest headache and worry. If you didn't have to have one here in the Smokies to be competitive, I'd ditch it. Cleaners here are used to having them, but you're always a bit worried that they don't pay the hot tub any special attention. Having a hot tub is just part of the cost of doing business here in the Smokies. In the future, if it's not absolutely necessary to be competitive than I'm not putting one in. Just my 2 cents though

Paul

John Mark Morelli · Answer

@paul cox, interested to hear how the cost / benefit of the hot tub works out. We have a limited number of cleaners in the area, and a couple hate or won't service them, but it snows a lot so it would appeal to guests. We don't have one, yet...

John Mark Morelli · Answer

thank you both for the responses. This is a 3 bed with a loft and a pullout couch, so we are at 8 guests conservatively. If we reach $60k, we will feel happy with the investment. Our runrate is around 40k per yr, but we consider ourselves in a trial period, and intend to raise rates to a little less than our chief "enemy" once we achieve a substantial number of positive reviews, which would bring us to 60 - 80k per year if the 3 year occupancy / rate trend continues.

On a side note, @Luke Carl, love your posts. I'll have to start listening to your pod...

Drop off after new listing boost on AirBNB?

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