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I’m the same, I only use Airbnb these days. I promote the rental primarily though my website and social media. For example, on the dreaded Facebook, you could join local groups. Send a link to your listing with a message such as:
Do you have friends, family or clients coming into our area? We offer fantastic accommodation and a friendly host who is happy to help you live like a local.
Then add a link to your listing. It takes two minutes but it works. You can do the same on Google +, Twitter, Flipboard etc. Quick and easy.
I don’t like to post too many links to my website because I am here to help and to learn - not promote my site. But you might get a few additional ideas here:
Again, excuse the simple question, but isn’t Toronto freezing in the winter? Are you hosting mostly out of towners? If given the choice most visitors will want to come when they can at least walk around for ten minutes without getting so cold they have to duck in somewhere. Now my sons and I are nuts, we like to travel to the cold and snow, but that’s because we live year round in Hawaii and crave the change. When summer comes here and it is nice elsewhere no one comes to Hawaii Island. Makes sense, and I don’t blame them. I would leave too if I could!
You may be overthinking this. Your problem is seasonal. Unless you cater to some other type of local customer, such as a business one.
Just wait it out! That is what I do when summer comes!
Yes it’s cold, lots of snow and ice, but I have had bookings in January for a cottage in the country. We can’t hibernate! People still travel, go conferences, visit family etc. I have guests coming for a guitar workshop in 2 weeks.
this is 99% reason why your search is not showing up. you are probably browsing it as host or not logged at all thus you do not have any reviews and your listing doesnt show up in the search results. i would recommend removing this request and your bookings should increase siginificantly. airbnb is still a fairly new service and there are many many guests who try it for the first time.
another option on my mind is that you have instant booking fikter enabled on the search.
I’m not talking about promoting your rental on other sites, I mean promoting your Airbnb listing. I too prefer not to take guests away from the platform. My reason isn’t reviews though, it’s because using Airbnb is simply less time consuming than going it alone.
So when I promote, I direct people to a) the Airbnb listing itself or b) an article about the rental that links through directly to Airbnb. That always perks up activity and usually leads to bookings.
Hi there Tatsi… I had this situation occur a couple of months after I joined. I simply called airbnb. The person on the phone did a search with me and found I was correct. She had it rectified quickly. It really depends on who you get on the phone. Try to call during hours they are not too busy. If the person doesn’t resolved it call back until you get someone who will. It does not require hours on the phone. But it did take about 30 minutes of my time and once done I started getting bookings again. Most of the people on the phone are pretty good.
Thanks for bringing this up. I had forgotten about it. I haven’t been getting any enquiries so I am just on the phone with them now. Hopefully it will get resolved.
Check out our listing. https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/8992002 We’re probably half of what you’re charging. I think there’s a certain demographic that will always look to stay outside the city because it’s thought to be better value. (I’m one of them).
People need a place to stay for all kinds of reasons. There’s are hotels and motels near our house that stay in business, so it’s logical to think we can draw some of that away. More than one guest has said they’re tired of the “motel experience” and we’ve always kept our price just below the average motel. Our space isn’t too fancy either, and we keep the cleaning fee low.
The guy staying now lives 30 minutes away. He’s having his only bathroom renovated so needed a place close to work. I couldn’t say for sure, but it’s a question of value. Luxury rentals on Air are the exception. I think if you want business, you have to look at the closest hotel/motel in your area and price yourself accordingly, especially in winter.
We don’t do anything special to promote our listing, except i tweak it often, changing the wording, highlighting features of the area that I discover (a great restaurant for example). I also try to suggest activities - like waterfront walks or checking out the National Park.
We made more than double the average for Toronto last year in only 10 months so we must be doing something right ;).
Hi there you say you are charging half of what I am … I went to your listing and you are asking $66.00 per night. I am asking only $43.00 per night in the core of the city. So something is wrong with that. I have figured out what was going on thanks to someone else here giving my memory a jog.
Logged out and my listing does not exist on their map anymore. Called in and tech support is supposed to get on it. You have to be a bit pushy. It happened about 5 months ago and it takes them a couple of days to rectify. So hoping that will solve the problem.
Just found out about this forum and it is great to have. Everyone weighs in with their helpful bits and it can serve as a reminder of where to look to solve problems. It is very helpful to know what different people charge in different neighbourhoods. I am near all the hotspots of the city and I include parking which is hard to get here. So thanks for the info.
It sounds like that technical problem was the issue for you, but as another Toronto host I can confirm that demand is way down in January and February. I am also right downtown, central location, whole apartment rental, free parking, etc. I’m also one of the top ranked hosts in the city in terms of search placement - I am the number one search result in Toronto on a regular basis and as a result tend to be 100% booked if my pricing is in line with the market. I’m still getting bookings this month, but had to be very aggressive with weekday pricing and allow one and two day bookings which I don’t normally do. People who do come to Toronto in winter spend less time here for obvious reasons!
Another problem is that there are many new hosts coming online in the past few months. There are also lots of deals on hotel prices (Hotwire, etc.) and you need to compare your all-in pricing to what hotels are offering. I worry that all the publicity around Airbnb has encouraged too many people to jump into hosting, but that’s more of a longer term problem.
Thank you… that was my guess that bookings are slow in Toronto. Do you mind showing a link to your listing. However, just this morning thanks to another host here I have discovered that my listing is not on the map at all… totally gone… so tech support is now on it and hopefully that will resolve things in the next couple of days. Thanks.
Wow, good thing you persisted! I keep a close eye on views, both on the mobile app and the desktop version, and there was only one time that we went off the radar (touch wood). As the Air rep told me the other night, the software engineers are always trying out new features and it seems like something of a minor miracle, there aren’t more glitches.
In July there were 10,064 hosts in Toronto and at December 4, there are 12,029, according to insideairbnb (http://insideairbnb.com/toronto/). It’s to be expected that hotels fight back and lower prices - what else can they do? Luckily, Toronto is one of those cities with lots to offer, winter and summer. With our 150 birthday celebrations combined with the New York Times article on must-visit places (Canada being #1) and our sexy PM, we’re sure to do more than OK this year.
wow! surprised at how fast you were able to resolve it! I don’t understand what I am possibly doing wrong trying to get any assistance from them. I have been on the phone with 3 people, and the last one was the nicest of all and actually admitted the issue, she said she would escalate, but this didn’t result in anything. I spoke to her before Christmas, my listing still not showing. Besides that, I have been on touch with at least 4 people via email, and then there was Twitter to top it up. All in vain.
Please, let us know about how it went fixing it this time.
this is 99% reason why your search is not showing up. you are probably browsing it as host or not logged at all thus you do not have any reviews and your listing doesnt show up in the search results. i would recommend removing this request and your bookings should increase siginificantly. airbnb is still a fairly new service and there are many many guests who try it for the first time.
thank you for the advice, but unfortunately this is not the case. When I first noticed the listing was not showing, I had the instant book OFF. Then I played with different settings, trying them all, IB on and off, additional requirements on and off, etc. Nothing helped ((
well before Xmas is a long time… the squeaky wheel gets greased. You should recieve an email from their rep as soon as you get off the phone. This indicates they did something. If I don’t see it show up in 72 hours as promised i will be emailing back and calling to squeak some more… I think you just have to be polite and pushy lol… otherwise they give you a list of excuses, don’t look for the problem… you have to be indredibly insistent… So they will eventually hear from me first thing every morning until it is fixed.
@aeriol. I have had my listing blackholed twice in a year. Recently I have had no bookings made in Dec. New years was booked well before.
I have gone from almost fully booked from May through October to nothing. As I have had two requests from bargain hunters, I guess I am actually there somewhere. Here I think people were hunkered down till after the election and are still holding their breath.
I suggest you raise your prices…too cheap sounds like a backpacker place. Put parking in your first sentence of description as that will come up in a Google search…the resweep the web every month.
I have great reviews and the pictures demonstrate it is not a backpacker place. I only have a single bed so that does limit and a single is not going to be able to pay what a double does. That’s why I have not raised the price so much.
The reason you have had some enquiries is we are all on the site and if people search manually they may find you. But if they search the map they won’t. So what does everyone search today with their iphone… the map of course and that’s the answer to that nagging little problem. At leas that is what I am told.
