Please be patient with me if this is a tired subject but I am new to hosting. Long time guest but just getting my feet wet as a host. My bookings were coming in rapid fire and suddenly very quiet. I thought I should look to see if my listing is visible and sure enough, I couldn’t find it. When I scroll around in the map I can see my listing but it is grey when the surrounding listings are red. I chose dates that are clear on my calendar too. Can anyone help with an explanation? Thank you!
If you can give us some search parameters quite a few of us will be happy to see if we can find your listing.
My listing is Historic Old Town Alexandria Private Apartment
$100 per night. The banner photo is of the bed.
Hey, I found it! It’s on page 3 of the listings when I zoom in on the historic area.
It makes sense that bookings have dropped off since you first posted, for a couple of reasons:
- Newbie boost that Air gives goes away.
- Your calendar has filled up more, so you can accommodate fewer date ranges (as opposed to when your calendar was wide open).
- Few people book over 45 days in advance, and your calendar is pretty full up to that point! I don’t have a single May booking yet, either, and I doubt most hosts do. Then again, I speak as someone whose peak season starts waning around this time… but the general principle holds.
- Your listing doesn’t have reviews yet, which I’m not sure helps very much with the search algorithm. Once they start coming in and your place is shown to be legit and great (as no doubt it is), you’ll get a bump I’m sure.
Now sure why the listing is grey, but I’m thinking it’s not a glitch.
One thing I strongly, strongly recommend is to get a professional photographer for your listing (advice I’d give to anyone). Or at the very least, take pics with a high resolution smart phone and dress it up a bit on a photo editing site like PicMonkey. Your place looks great and it could shine even more with better photos.
PHX, thank you so much for such a thoughtful response. As a newbie Airbnb host, I am really so appreciative of the time you took to help me get off to a good start. I plan to take all your advice - as soon as I have a day in between guests to get better photos, I’ll be doing it! I wish Airbnb had the professional photographer option in the DC area (I checked). Thank you also for letting me know you could find my listing. That was a relief. Funny that I wasn’t able to find it.