Worried about the lack of inquiries/reservations

Shameless self promotion of my service: If you want an independent look at your rankings in search result, I recommend running a listing report on https://smartbnb.io (it is free, no nothing required). Here is one example for a listing in Belgium https://smartbnb.io/report/2bnM7mtKvN?currency=EUR

Wow, @sandy2. You charge USD 300 a night? Iā€™m awestruck.

I have created a smartBNB account and can not find where I would create this listing report. Suggestions?

Oh no, it was not necessary. Just get here https://smartbnb.io/#report and enter your listing number. I am sending you the link by email.

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I agree with you, it is becoming over-saturated with new host. Many new host and many are not legit. However during the time before they close doors or doors are closed on them, they will ad to over saturation of the market.

Lowering prices depends on the location and its seasonality, it will kick many to the curb. You have to make some profit bottom line.

My area is very seasonal but there are host in my area that are making money even during this time. During the high season their rates are high so cutting their rate 50 or 60 percent during low season and guest who are taking advantage of it will kick most of us low priced properties to the curb. There is just not enough margin to play the field and expenses can put you in a minus are in no time.

What is the answer, donā€™t know at the moment.:dizzy_face:

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Very interesting. Thank you!

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Not enough hotel rooms in Boulder for summer or special events, like the University graduation. I get even more that week and require five nights, minimum. I just checked and the St. Julien is already booked for the graduation week in May, 2017. I open my calendar for six months out but I may push that further, now knowing the main hotel is already booked. This is a business and itā€™s supply and demand.

Thanks for the link! Turns out, Iā€™m below the median price for a place that can sleep five people!

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Wonderful tool. Very useful.

Iā€™m sorry if you think like that but I;m not trying to self-promote my place. If you test my ranking with your own tool you will see that most of the time Iā€™m at the first page so the ranking isnā€™t a concern for me right now. My only concern was if I was able to get messages from guests. I experienced every kind of technical glitches in my account and one of them was not been able to receive messages. Due to the fact, I was not getting any inquiry I was afraid if the same problem was happening again.

I find your comment a bit ironic. If someone is self-promoting something here is you with your tool.

Self-promoting to whom? This is a site for hosts, and while some of us travel, we are helping each other with vital information on how best to run our short-term rentals. However, I also discovered some of our hostā€™s Airbnbā€™s I want to visit. Florbone, just so you know, that wasnā€™t my comment; that was written by smartbnb.io, and yes, he is self-promoting. I donā€™t know if heā€™s a host, or not.

I just checked, he says heā€™s a host.

Oops! I think there is a mis-understanding here :laughing:. I obviously am the one who is self-promoting my service, which I thought would be clear with the colon ā€œI am announcing some shameless self-promotion: here it isā€.

You are perfectly right to ask for any other opinion. I think this platform is great for that purpose. I might mention my tools because I believe they might be useful to the community, especially on the issue of rankings, but I am a host too which is why I developed smartbnb in the first place.

I am very sorry and I want to apologize if you thought my comment was inappropriate: I have clarified to make clear that I would not dare criticizing a host asking for a help on a very helpful forum, and that the object is self-promotion, is indeed, my own service.

I am, in Brussels (though currently on a break because guests might not appreciate me screaming around the house attempting to fix bugs at random hours of the night).

No worries. Thank you for the clarification. I think that will make Florbone feel better about asking for help :slight_smile:

Oh, forgive me then!
Yes, it seems I totally misunderstood your comment and thought you were referring me :frowning:

Your tool as I said, I find it wonderful specially for the rankings section. This was always a big concern for hosts and you are delivering a great solution. You help me realized that Iā€™m well ranked expect for a 2 nights stay which I fall outside the 300 limit count. I wouldnā€™t imagine that without using your tool and I note I always have a hard time trying to fill vacancy holes of 2 nights.

If you ask me, Iā€™m tired about the search algorithm. At some point, I believe hosts will need to create their own exposure (social media, own website, etc) to then link to their Airbnbā€™s page. And Airbnb will be used like a source of trust for guests to make their payment. When your city holds more 10K of hosts getting the right exposure becomes an impossible task.

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Interesting tool, what radius does it use for the comparison?
I come out as #1 every time, but thatā€™s probably because I am the only one in my little village.
But hardly anyone would use my village name for a search.

It would be nice if I could enter the name of the nearest larger place and run a comparison.

You can absolutely do that once you create an account, and you would also have a lot more hypothesis. You can have a look at Sarahā€™s comment here: Smartbnb: Automated guest experience from inquiry to review, and more tools to make your Airbnb business a success! - #7 by smartbnb.io - Tools - Airbnb hosts forum

It doesnā€™t use a radius per se, so that is only the city or the area that guests would look into. Per default, for that listing report, we indeed search for your listing in your city (or, village) without any notion of the actual ā€œrental marketā€.

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You are absolutely forgiven, no worries. I had a good laugh, and I will never apologize again for promoting my product :imp:

You cannot imagine the amount of effort and care to be able to provide a service that would you tell you what any guest would see when they are looking for a destination.

There needs to be a fully dedicated server which will never see any listing or host profile in detail, with obviously no account, cookies or any kind of identifying information (full stealth mode, not just incognito). After a few searches, the results are also tied to the IP, so the IP that the server uses to connect to Airbnb needs to be refreshed every 24 hours. And just out of an abundance of caution, the country of origin of the IP is also changed. This is ridiculous.

And it will continue changing. What it is true about Airbnb is there are many releases out there being delivered to us. The one you are seeing might be completely different than mine. You never know which one is Production and which one is a Beta version of the site. In my search page (and when Iā€™m logged in) Iā€™m only able to see IB listings no matter if I deselected IB from the search filters. The only way I can turn IB off is to narrow the search to a number that gives me less than 300 results of IB listings so Airbnb complete the remaining ones up to 300 with the ones that are not IB, (after that IB is turned off). You canā€™t be sure your ranking position if you test from the same server, same IP, same session. You can just estimate that you are well ranked or not but get an specific number is inaccurate. That is why I believe none of us should be worried about the search ranking and move towards promoting our listings in other places that link to Airbnb (or not if you find your way to charge for your rentals).

Browser cookies arenā€™t that sophisticated - you can access those set in another browser. I would always use Chrome in Ingonito Mode when trying to get an accurate sense of Airbnb ranking.

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@Chris, I mentioned on the other thread that I log in and change the terms to different towns nearby, different sizes of groups, etc, so that I get a better idea of how I actually show up.

I just searched my place through Chrome Incognito and I am no longer the first one on the page. In fact, I had to zoom in on my location before I showed up. I feel duped.

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