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Our listing on Airbnb, a whole property one bedroom granny annex, has been trading for 9 months. We’ve been very pleased with occupancy and earnings and have just had our most successful month in September, both occupancy and income. We’re a Superhost with 75 reviews, 5* star overall (only location is a 4.5 - marginally off a 5 by my calculations).
However, after the current guests leave tomorrow morning we don’t have any more bookings at all. The calendar is open for a year ahead, save some family holiday time. We anticipated a drop for autumn and some other listings in our city also look quieter; however, we are ‘left on the shelf’ when a lot of others are booked.
Has anyone else noticed a drop off? I know competition has increased dramatically in recent months and it is off-season. We’re still looking at ways to get bookings though. We’ve lower d prices slightly and are allowing some 1 night stays for the next couple of weeks.
Hi There! No worries. Your bookings will come through. We went through the same worry when we first started. Then I noticed a trend. The vast majority of bookings are last minute. We asked a couple guests about it and they told us that, due to air taking the whole fee up front, they didn’t want to be out the money until last minute.
Guests are paying for the entire booking and fees at the time of booking. Even months in advance. We as hosts don’t get it until after they check in.
I understand now, many folks can’t afford their card charges so early.
You will get the bookings. Hope all goes well for you!
We were definitely helped by that initially, to our surprise bookings were very frequent. We’re certain we haven’t benefited in a while from the boost. Through incognito browsing we used to show up around 2-5 in all of the listings for our city, having just checked we’re now 11.
We’ve been dabbling with prices and listing strategies over the months. Now a waiting game and new strategies perhaps.
We have noticed a lot more last minute bookings too. When we booked our own trip recently and we were given the option to pay half now, half two weeks before check-in (yesterday as it happens). I liked that as a feature.
I agree with @ranchlife, that the bookings will come and folks wait until the last minute in the off season. It always makes me a bit nervous too, but somehow we always book up. It is a change after that initial hosting period though. Between the new host boost, the calendar being completely empty, and prices on the lower side to get bookings just to generate 5 star reviews, I remember being out a a restaurant in the early days and my phone going, “bing, bing, bing”. The bookings seemed to be constant. Now not so much. Just be patient.
About keeping your calendar open for a year: I do that do with a moderate cancellation policy. Very few guests book a year in advance but closer to peak season things perk up. For my June-Sept bookings, things pick up in March.
I think part of it is Airbnb collecting the full payment when the booking is made. Some hosts have mentioned having split payments on Airbnb but I haven’t seen any yet on my listings. It could be it is not available in my area yet or the ones that occur were a test.
Have you adjusted your rates for the off season? Take a look at what comparable properties are renting in your area. After October, I drop my prices about $25 a night and offer long term discounts until the spring. I also agree that I have noticed a trend toward booking more last minute.
I don’t think we get to see this on our listings, as it’s an offer from Air to guests, not hosts. We’re just about to have our first Airbnb guest experience, which I booked in early summer. I was given the option of paying in two tranches.
I have a Sun-Fri guest, now into her fourth week, and here until the end of November. She is very nice, but wearing me down with inanities when she gets home from work. I don’t do inanities.
@Lynick4442 and @Yana, I would say October is mid-season in Scotland. It’s a traditional school holiday period for the family market but we don’t cater for that, so perhaps in reality a low season for us. We’ve adjusted the prices slightly, and we may do further. This includes per night reductions and an increase in the long term booking prices.
Well, we didn’t have too long to wait as it turned out. This morning we got a booking for a 3 night stay im early November which is great. We also got an enquiry for a 3 night stay starting from tonight which would be great but they wanted some visitors (that wouldn’t be staying overnight) who have a dog. We’ve advised that we wouldn’t allow the dog to enter the accomodation, so I expect this enquiry will not progress any further. Here’s to more bookings…
Activity has still been slow generally but we’ve also had a break away from work. In the last 12 hours we’ve had the enquires from 3 different platforms:
Airbnb: 6 night stay next September. They had an email enquiry about the distance to the event venue. This looks promising.
Trip Advisor: A 4 night stay next week. Unfortunately they are a party of 3 so we can’t accomodation them (they were hoping we’d allow the 5 year old to stay, presumably on the sofa). We’ve never had a confirmed TA booking.
Home Away: For a 7-14 night stay in November. We’re very keen on this one because of the length of the trip during a mid-season. We’ve responded with a quite so fingers crossed. We’ve only been on this platform for 9 days and this is the first enquiry.
There are some marketing strategies that you can use when it’s the low-season. For example, now is a good time to reach out to people in your network like friends and family and offer your place at a discounted rate. In addition to lowering your price, you can also increase discounts for longer stays. Lastly, you can also try changing your description so that it matches what guests are looking for during the low-season better. Good luck!
Thanks for your advice. We’re reluctant to offer more discounts. We already have weekly and monthly discounts from starting our listing 10 months ago (14 and 20% respectively). I’ve actually just lowered the weekly discount from 15% - we plan to keep it around that.
The Airbnb enquiry mentioned above is now a confirmed booking for September. We love 6 night bookings as we don’t give the 7th away for free!
Because we’re starting to get longer term bookings further in advance (a booking in July and September next year) we’ll keep going with current rates. For shorter term bookings, we’ve lowered the price a little (£2 a night) but the biggest change is allowing 1 night bookings for the next couple of weeks only, on a rolling basis. That plan has yielded all 5 bookings for October so far.
So, following on from my last post we had lowered the price slighly for tonight and tomorrow. About 1 hour after doing so we for a three night booking for guests who wished to arrive on 1 hour. They’ve just checked in and seem lovely.
It might be coincidental but I am delighted nonetheless. It takes our occupancy up quite a bit with a few days still available.
