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Look at this. Airbnb says we can make 11% more if we turn on their automatic pricing so we can offer super low rates - automatically!
I’m writing this on September 14th, 2017. We’ve booked all but three nights this month for this room. Two of the missed nights have already passed. We only have a chance at booking one more night.
But, Airbnb says if we turn on “price tips” we can boost our bookings by 11% for September! But mathematically we could only increase by 3.33% at this point.
Oh and we booked 90% with much higher prices than they recommended. Every single night they were urging us to drop $12-$20 per night.
So funny. That’s how it has always been here. We don’t even notice it.
We like short stays though. The shorter the better as far as were concerned because short stays are a lot more profitable. Since we do our own cleaning, we keep the $30 cleaning fee. So if we get one night stays we make $30 more per night! Two night stays $15 extra per night. Ten night stays just $3 extra.
I did block one week this month so that I can take a week-long trip. While I am gone and the rooms are empty, Mr. FixIT, also known as Mr. SMT, will be doing work on the front stairs and in the kitchen.
These are projects that can not be done while we have guests coming in and out of the house.
Most months, my calendar look just like yours. And each new name represents more laundry.
I’d share my calendar, but I’m way too lazy to scribble out people’s names. As I sit waiting for my guests who are currently 7 minutes outside my 7 hour check in window.
I would say you aren’t charging enough if you are that booked.
Would you rather have less bookings at a higher price point or more bookings at a lower price point? Just curious. (I think Air makes more money on the latter.) Not critiquing you but there’s no way you have a life if you have two calendars that look like that!
Funny you should say that. I was just thinking the same thing about not charging enough after looking at these calendars.
When I look at them now, it seems obvious we didn’t charge enough. But at the beginning of the month we were only 55% booked and had no way of knowing the month would fill out. Almost all of those bookings came within 7 days of the time the guest arrived.
As far as having a life, we do! Very much. We take off around 2 days every year for Christmas! Haha!
No, actually, it can be a lot of work, but it’s certainly no harder than having a full time job. In fact, it’s a lot more relaxed than that. It gets hectic when we have two early check-ins on the same day. But that doesn’t happen too often. Usually, its like work really hard for 3-4 hours every 2 to 4 days and the rest of the time, we can relax.
Speaking of time off though, there’s something Air could do to really help with that. So many times we’d like to get away for 2-3 days, but we can’t because somebody is checking in. On Air, you can block those days off on your calendar, but that means Air won’t let you get any reservations where the guest will be in your place on any of those days.
We don’t care if someone is in our place while we’re gone, we just don’t want anyone checking in while were gone. If they checked in a day before we left, and stayed during the time we were gone, we wouldn’t care about that.
Air handles calendar blocking with a hammer when sometimes what you need is a glove.