My guest for tonight just sent me a message that she checked-in. My wife has been betting me all week that the guest would cancel and she was ready to gloat at 11:15pm 
. I fully expect this to be the last reservation I host for about 6 months.
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I feel I’ve been pretty lucky here in York. I’ve had lots of cancellations, but one of my properties had a guest in who just extended to stay a month.
Another guest just extended for 1 week, and might go further (self isolation after a holiday cut short).
Then, the UK government announced that even small leisure and hospitality businesses would both get their business rates paid for 2020/21, and a £10,000 grant. For us that’s 20-25% of our gross for the year.
I do have a lot of vacancies, and I’ve contacted summer bookings to ask if they wanted to cancel sooner rather than later. At least then I could try to do something with larger unbooked blocks, but many want to hold on to cancel at the last min, so I have a couple of long vacancies interrupted by short bookings.
So as an experiment I’ve cut the rates in one property to 1/3 of their normal, and set the minimum stay to 14 nights - I’d rather see if there’s demand for longer lets. Is that working out for anyone else?
For the others, I’ve cut the rates to more like 3/4 of normal, and started accepting 1-night bookings for the whole summer.
Aren’t some of these in danger of not being refunded? Are you on the flexible cancellation policy?
My stock in trade over 6 years has been the one night booking and in busy times, 80% booked in a month and back to back nights. I absolutely would not do that now. It’s irresponsible and dangerous. I’m not even going to open my calendar that far out because things are too unpredictable.
Too many people are still acting like this is nothing or an overblown hoax or we will lockdown for 3 weeks then go back to normal. If that is your expectation, prepare to be disappointed. If you live off STR income, you have a difficult life ahead. Use any uptick in business or any apparent return to normalcy as an opportunity to diversify and get into other lines of work. Unless you are 70 years old you aren’t going to be able to do this the rest of your life. This is just a trial run. Use it wisely.
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I’m trying two very different booking strategies, I don’t know which is going to work (possibly neither, but I’ve had a couple of enquiries this weekend). I’m not reliant on it, and maybe they should change to furnished short-term rentals (i.e. a one-off 3-6 month let, rather than our typicaly holidaymakers). But it’s too soon to tell.
I don’t like back-to-back 1 night bookings at the best of times, so I’ll start with buffers between them if that happens. I don’t think it’s irresponsible given our cleaning regime, but I’ll close if we’re advised to.
There may well be a New Normal for holiday rentals, though I’m sure what’s appropriate may vary wildly from place to place. I’d hope that - of all the accommodation options in a small city - whole home rentals with no communal facilities (i.e. all of ours) are the best option for minimising contact.
We usually have 50 nights booked across 2 rooms (occasionally a third for overflow) in May. We live in an area where many people are coming to college related events. All colleges have closed. We have 5 reserved nights left. I will be surprised if reservations bounce back as soon as July.
Yep, 2021 is looking grim. Here’s hoping for a good 2022!
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Any results from lowering rates/requiring longer stays yet?
Hi! Yes so while holidaymakers have gone, I’ve seen long-term demand from house movers stuck in limbo, self-isolators and building contractors with jobs on. So one guest booked a follow-on stay (direct) until May, the other 2 have enquiries of similar lengths through Airbnb.
I guess they’re pretty cheap? So I wonder whether I’m leaving money on the table. But then if you want a 30-day “whole home” stay in York, from an Airbnb Superhost, starting tomorrow, there are >100 available 
Pretty strange times, so I’m happy to have some costs covered.
Well, my last pre-COVID-madness booking cancelled today. The booking was for April 16 and she said that she was coming for a conference, so I was amazed she hadn’t already cancelled and that she said 2 weeks ago that she was still waiting to see what would happen. I sent her another message today about the most recent developments including Airbnb’s official extenuating circumstances policy being extended to May 31 and how the governor issued a stay-at-home order today. Her reservation was still 3 days inside of the penalty-free cancellation for my listing’s Flexible cancellation policy. She thanked me and said that she thought it was best to cancel and then she actually cancelled a few minutes later.
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Not a whole lot of success for me. I’m outside the main city center and my rates were already in the low $40s. Can’t really go a whole lot lower without getting dealing with razor thin margins. I’ve had a few guests who were nurses request to book if they could do so for $30 per night or less for a 3 week stay. Even after I offered $29 per night in an attempt to seal the deal, she opted for a posh place in downtown PDX that was the same price.